Thread: Am I Dreaming?

Metaconsciousness (being able to recognize the act of thinking) doesn't really help you to know that you are dreaming. As it suggests, metaconsciousness requires consciousness, and often in dreaming we aren't fully conscious to the point of being aware that we are dreaming, hence no lucidity, and we definitely don't stop and realise that we are thinking in a non-lucid dream.
Or did I not understand your point?

Originally Posted by sylviadenis

There are signs that do not deceive. Dream looks really unrealistic.

Actually, they don't, if you are not already lucid. NLD's are in the business of deceiving, and they do so regardless of the most incredibly unreal of signs. In other words, if you are not at all lucid, dreams do not look unrealistic until after you wake up and remember them.

Because non-lucid dreamers lack access to memory during a dream, they are unable to acknowledge (through referencing facts about the actual world that they've stored in memory) that unrealistic things are populating their dreams... indeed, they are more than likely to accept even the most bizarre of elements as perfectly real and acceptable, because to them their dream is reality. So they would not only fail to question it, but they would know that, say, their house can fly, because it could do so for the entire history of reality (of course they don't know that this history has only existed for a couple of minutes).

In other words (and contrarily, I suppose), there is no "odd" in dreams at all until after you are able to lucidly register that "odd." And sure, meta consciousness is a fine tool to do this registering, but something has to activate it before it can function as you wish it to in a dream; there is nothing to stop your dreaming mind from giving you a dream about thinking meta consciously.

That activation, I think, is a lucid mindset, developed by daywork in areas like self-awareness, memory, and, sure, meta consciousness (which to me is a subset of self-awareness, BTW). Once you have a lucid mindset firmly in place, it might just find a way into your dreams so that you can honestly say to yourself something like, "Hey, I can't breath underwater and squids don't talk; maybe this is a dream!"

[EDIT: I forgot to mention above that solid intention/expectation, also developed with day work, are very helpful toward nudging a lucid mindset back into being during a dream.]

I think that one of the dirty little secrets of the LD instructional community is that things like critical state tests (RC's) or looking for the "odd" actually do not make you lucid; they only work after a spark of lucidity has already flared. What makes you lucid is developing a sense of self-awareness (aka, lucidity) that is on hand as often as possible, to the point that it emerges during dreams... once that happens, pretty much any exercise will work, including using meta consciousness.

Originally Posted by Sageous

That activation, I think, is a lucid mindset, developed by daywork in areas like self-awareness, memory, and, sure, meta consciousness (which to me is a subset of self-awareness, BTW). Once you have a lucid mindset firmly in place, it might just find a way into your dreams so that you can honestly say to yourself something like, "Hey, I can't breath underwater and squids don't talk; maybe this is a dream!"

[EDIT: I forgot to mention above that solid intention/expectation, also developed with day work, are very helpful toward nudging a lucid mindset back into being during a dream.]

I think that one of the dirty little secrets of the LD instructional community is that things like critical state tests (RC's) or looking for the "odd" actually do not make you lucid; they only work after a spark of lucidity has already flared. What makes you lucid is developing a sense of self-awareness (aka, lucidity) that is on hand as often as possible, to the point that it emerges during dreams... once that happens, pretty much any exercise will work, including using meta consciousness.

I haven't really been actively practising lucid dreaming for a bit now and what you wrote here really struck a chord in me. I realised what the difference is between when I have been successful at LDing and when I haven't, and that is my level of awareness. When I have been successful I have felt more 'alive' and aware throughout my waking life as well as in dreams, and this has been accompanied by more intense reality checks and other such techniques. When I haven't been successful however my dream practices have just been on autopilot and my mind and awareness haven't been involved nearly as much. I probably already knew this deep down but your post really connected the bits of the puzzle together, I realized to get anywhere with this I need to redouble my efforts on honing my self awareness and developing a 'lucid mindset'. Do you have any specific techniques you would recommend for improving this aspect? I am thinking that reverse reality checks are probably really good at improving both memory and critical thinking, and perhaps meditation will help a lot with self awareness.
Thanks

Originally Posted by BlairBros

... Do you have any specific techniques you would recommend for improving this aspect? I am thinking that reverse reality checks are probably really good at improving both memory and critical thinking, and perhaps meditation will help a lot with self awareness.

Strangely, I don't have much to offer; self-awareness is really very much more a decision -- a life choice -- than it is the result of any technique. Your sense of self is something you need to nurture over time (even years) until it becomes an intrinsic part of your life, of your experience, of your identity; it really isn't a particular thing or behavior that can be triggered by a technique. Indeed, that RRC was about as close as I could come to a technique to develop self-awareness, and if you squint a little, you'll see it isn't so much a technique as it is an excuse to take a moment and simply be self-aware. All that said, though, it's funny that you ask right now:

Just the other day, after another morning of struggling with the book I'm currently writing about LD'ing, I was searching for examples of being self-aware in waking-life activity and drawing a writer's block-type blank. But serendipity ensued that afternoon when Oneironautics "liked" an old post of mine from a long-dead thread that I think might fit the bill as an answer to your question. So, mostly out of laziness, I'll just share the post here, and hope it isn't too out of context to help:

Originally Posted by Sageous

Self-awareness is a state of mind that is not so much triggered by exercises as it is welcomed and nurtured by a mind interested in (or suspicious of) its presence in reality. Unlike critical state tests (RC's) which ask simple yes/no questions (i.e., Am I dreaming?), techniques for assembling self-awareness must by their nature be much more nebulous, more ongoing, and more centered on teaching yourself to float thoughts like "I am," thoughts that are simply not conducive to stimulus/response techniques. So the effective self-awareness techniques you do come across tend to be years-long -- sometimes life-long -- programs or disciplines like Vipassana yoga, and not short, ready-made actions like RC's. That said:

Can you give some specific ways in which we can increase self awareness ie: whilst im driving my car, brushing teeth etc.. What should i be doing exactly to increase self awareness?

You might not be able to increase self-awareness while doing decidedly rote things like driving or teeth-brushing, but you can tap it during such mental down times. For instance, think about what you're doing, literally, when you are driving: notice that you are hurtling down a road at speeds unimaginable just a short century ago, that you are altering your place in your local reality every second, and that you are piloting a couple tons of focused kinetic energy that could change reality for many, including yourself, if your piloting is poor. Recognizing your presence in the moment of driving your car might take an extra few seconds, but that presence can prove profound, once discovered.

Simple chores like brushing your teeth might offer fewer opportunities for to spot your presence in the moment, but even those offer a hint: When you are brushing your teeth, you are generally standing at a bathroom mirror looking at your reflection. If you can use that mirror to take a moment to observe yourself going through the process of simple hygiene, then you might be able to assemble a moment of real personal discovery, a moment that has you wondering things like how you got to that mirror, why you are brushing your teeth every day, who that person is in the mirror, and any number of other things.

Self-awareness is all about acknowledging, experiencing, and accepting the presence of "You" in any given moment, and associating that presence with the local reality with which it is interacting. Unlike RC's, which demand constants (i.e., your finger cannot pass through your palm in waking-life), the nature of that presence, as relevant to its interaction with reality, is in constant flux. Self-awareness exercises are infinitely variable, and always dependent on the current interaction between You and your local reality... so the technique to trigger self-awareness, if there were one, would have to change every time you did it (this BTW is why the RRC asks essentially open questions and will tend to be different every time it is done).

So in a sense techniques that help you conjure, massage, and develop self-awareness would be in constant flux, and always be dependent (in a circular sort of way) on your interest in and ability to see and define whatever particular moment you might be navigating. Self-awareness techniques, then, would always be changing and rarely work well from one person to the next without modification. This is why it makes more sense to develop, over time, a mindset that welcomes self-awareness as a part of its being so that self-awareness will become a permanent part of you, rather than something to trigger when needed.

Sageous. Please be sure to let us all know when you are done your book on LDing. It would be nice to be able to download your book as well as have the option to buy a hard copy. I wish you well on it.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Strangely, I don't have much to offer; self-awareness is really very much more a decision -- a life choice -- than it is the result of any technique. Your sense of self is something you need to nurture over time (even years) until it becomes an intrinsic part of your life, of your experience, of your identity; it really isn't a particular thing or behavior that can be triggered by a technique. Indeed, that RRC was about as close as I could come to a technique to develop self-awareness, and if you squint a little, you'll see it isn't so much a technique as it is an excuse to take a moment and simply be self-aware. All that said, though, it's funny that you ask right now:

Just the other day, after another morning of struggling with the book I'm currently writing about LD'ing, I was searching for examples of being self-aware in waking-life activity and drawing a writer's block-type blank. But serendipity ensued that afternoon when Oneironautics "liked" an old post of mine from a long-dead thread that I think might fit the bill as an answer to your question. So, mostly out of laziness, I'll just share the post here, and hope it isn't too out of context to help:

Sageous, It is exciting to hear that you are actively writing the book! I am definitely looking forward to it.

I also wanted to mention that I added your RRC to my day practices early on. At first, I had trouble understanding what the benefit of it was but I kept it up on faith and eventually it started making more and more sense. I experimented with different ways to raise my self awareness to keep my practices fresh and interesting. I have noticed my strongest lucidity does indeed appear to be tied to times when I am actively practicing self awareness, including your RRC. I have also added such practices to the time I am up for WBTB which seems to be a very powerful way to practice them. Thank you for everything over these past 4+ years Sageous!

Please do tell when your finished with your book and make sure you have an ebook so i can download it i cant wait to read it

Thanks guys! All my books are available as ebooks, and so too will this one, of course!

I must give fair warning, though: my writing process is an odd one (I sort of write in explosions of nonstop work, with long gaps of nothing in between), and it might be quite a while before this book is done... I am hoping for the end of this year, but that may just be wishful thinking. At any rate, I'll certainly announce when it is done, because I believe it will be very helpful to DV members.