Here is some help with awareness, as some still struggle with the idea.
If you think about how you actually perceive this world, you'll recognize that what you see, hear, touch, taste and smell, is all a thought conjured up in your brain from your 5 senses. Everything is being projected by your brain from the inputs. In a dream, your brain is replicating previous inputs it has received, to conjure up a thought or dream. While the two are different in where it receives its sources of information, one external one internal, both are just interpretations of that information within your mind.
When you realize that the two are quite the same, yet so different, you can start to see where the fine details separate between waking life and dreaming life. In waking life, we have object permanence. If you look at something, look away, and look back, it will still be there, as per your sense of sight. In a dream, if you look away and look back, your mind is only going to replicate what it thinks is going to happen, or your expectation. It will draw from the previous input of your expectation. Many see this with the RC check with a clock. Clocks will always show the same time in waking life, but in dreaming life, the clock will always show different times when you look at it.
What we see with this is the small imperfections in the dream conjured in our mind. It is creating an amazingly realistic scene as it has already received those inputs, it just has to replicate them. But what is different is that the dream world is inconsistent, as it will base its information on random previous thoughts, rather than fed-in information.
But at the same time, we realize that without noticing these tiny imperfections, how could one truly tell if they are dreaming or not? Normally we only know when we wake up. So how do you know you aren't going to just wake up 10 seconds from now? Most of us go through life just accepting these inputs as external without question. If you have such a strong belief of this, then the consciousness (you) won't even bother to question if an event or something is truly happening, or if its just a replication in your mind.
This is where the idea of awareness comes in. Since you and your brain will have a difficult time realizing if you are dreaming or not, you need to be constantly looking for these small imperfections. It needs to become a part of your life to randomly think "Am I dreaming" and continue to try and evaluate your surroundings to confirm that you aren't dreaming.
What this does is it reinforces the fact that recognizing your state of mind is important to you, so your brain will adapt. By searching for these imperfections, you'll need to be analytical. This is the section of your brain that will switch on when you become lucid, your consciousness. You need your consciousness to be able to store and evaluate information at hand. If this becomes a daily part of your waking life, it will become a part of your dreaming life, as both are the same thing.. except one is internal inputs and one is external inputs.
By reinforcing the fact that there is really no way to tell if you're dreaming, unless you notice these small imperfections, your brain will take a hint and start to help you out. You need to be the one to initiate the desire to question your state of mind, though. Your mind will not accept this as a normal, needed routine until you have done this for a week or more, questioning yourself about ten times daily. Then, your brain will recognize its importance, and will start to send ques to remember to question your surroundings. This is when the consciousness will be switched on, and thus allowing you to analyze the inputs and make the call, am I dreaming?
This is just like memorizing something. Read it once, your mind will interpret and then most likely forget it. Try and recall it from memory, and you will fail. Read it again, your brain will pay a little more attention to the details. Try to recall it from memory, and you'll do a bit better. Each time you do this, it places more emphasis on the importance of the task, and the mind will adapt. Eventually, you will be able to recite the list from memory with minimal effort.
Practicing awareness of our surroundings is the way to communicate to the brain that we need our consciousness in our dreams. So in the end, all we are really doing is caring over the quality of consciousness to our dreaming life. And what is lucid dreaming? Having the quality of consciousness while dreaming.
Please post any comments, questions or suggestions.
