Automatic Lucidity

[Moto]

Ok, so I was reading my psychology textbook, and of course I just happened to come across Conditioned responses right after thinking about Reality Checking. Its pretty simple, you tie a external stimulus to an internal effect-soooooo, why don't we tie the external stimulus of a dream sign, to an internal affect of increased lucidity. First, you find out common dream signs, maybe its your sister, maybe its sex . Then, you condition it. Now, according to my psyche book, it takes 7 times to fully condition a response to make it automatic and unconscious. Then it lasts for 12 times with full intensity at that conditioning level until it begins to drop. SO, heres the "technique". Find out dream symbol. Draw it, or get a picture. Put picture face down in your lap. Clear your mind. Raise picture so that you can see it easily whilst looking away, then flick your eyes toward it. Once your eyes hit, State aloud, "This is a dream" and mimick internally the feeling of knowing its a dream. Repeat 7 times, and make sure you get the full feeling before you put the picture down. This also has to do with thresholds of awareness, and how you are kickstarting your threshold. You can also condition a Reality Check, but be warned, this will be a conditioned response, meaning that you will do it automatically- so say you are in front of a cute girl, and she is wearing blue earrings, and this is a dream sign, you will immediately pinch your nose and try and breathe through it...so just be careful lol. Thats why I am doing the "This is a dream" knowing/feeling conditioned response to all stimuli, and to just have it constant. Anyways, let me know how it works.

[Avalanche]

Explain a bit more. You attach the feeling of awareness that you need to have a lucid dream to external stimuli that is a common dream sign for yourself? Like video game related dreamsigns pop up all the time for me. So if I to the "This is a dream" thing 7 times whenever I play my games, it will attach itself to the dreamsign, so when I next dream and see the game or whatever in my dream, I will tell myself it's a dream?

[Moto]

Lol, srry, I tend to let people make their own techniques, and just explain the idea behind it. Ok, people are doing this already. What they are doing, is recognizing dream signs, that is, common things that are universal to a dream, a shoe, a hair pin, or in your case, a specific video game. Now, every time in RL when they come across such sign, they do a RC. Eventually, this "bleeds" over to the dreamworld. Except that it is not "bleeding" over, but is rather a result of conditioning. SO, if we use this understanding, we can make it "bleed" over much much faster. Ahem. So here is the tutorial. First: Identify a common dream sign. In your case it is video games. That is sort of general, so I suggest you see which game it is, and identify the scene that you normally see in a dream. Second: Start playing the game. Third: When the scene comes up, in response, say aloud, with force, "This is a dream" whilst feeling that the world around you is a dream. Four: Repeat the Third step six more times. Five: Go eat something, go run, have sex, distract yourself. Six: Start playing game again to test whether you have conditioned response( you are re-exposing yourself to dream stimuli). Seven: If conditioned response has been set, there should be an immediate response to the situation just as you practiced Eighth: Every time you play the game, make sure that you do not fight the response when it comes, but rather embrace it, to keep making sure it "sticks", so to speak Nine: Go to sleep, and focus on recall, and report back to me results. Any questions?

[TruMotion]

oww, I got it. If my dream sign is a person, can I use a picture of that person?

[Avalanche]

Hm... ok, yeah I find if I play one game often enough it over rides any other games, so any game should work for me provided I play it enough. I'll do it right now.

[Moto]

[QUOTE]oww, I got it. If my dream sign is a person, can I use a picture of that person?/QUOTE] For sure. You basically just want the most similar stimulus to the dream, and connect it with a response( being the initiation of lucidity, which I advise either "Hey, I'm dreaming!", or the classic, "This is a dream"), and feel that you are dreaming in response to the stimulus. You can even include a RC if you want. And then do it 7 seperate times, stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus, response. Then test it. Don't even think about the response, just put the picture up. It should be conditioned when you automatically start doing it, without conscious awareness. It is kind of a paradox, to have an unconscious, no awareness response, generate awareness, but it already works for people, as recognizing your dreams signs in Waking Life is an important step towards becoming lucid, and aware in the dream world. This is sort of hacking that mechanism, which takes the know how( which I explain), and the hard work( which you guys can do). Let me know what happens.

[TruMotion]

Well, I don't even know what it feels like to be dreaming yet, so I guess this wouldn't work for me. But it looks very interesting, I'd like to see the feedback. How did it went for you, Moto?

[Moto]

Had a lucid the other night . I've also been doing other practices as well, but def the initialization was due to this one right here. You do know what it feels like to be dreaming!!! Because you have dreamed again and again, just remember how it feels, and apply it to the current situation. Remember how a dream feels, thats how it feels to be dreaming .

[Qwer]

Is this anchoring?

[Moto]

Not quite...if you are referring to NLP anchoring. This is more along the lines of pavlonian conditioning, or causing a conditioned response. As I was reading my psychological textbook, I realized that this is what people are doing with regards to dream signs. I bet if someone plotted the amount of times they have to have a RC per dream sign to get it to "bleed" over, it would be around 7 times minimum. In any case, putting a definite way to create a response to tried and true methods, with application towards lucid dreaming.

[Avalanche]

Ok, well last night when I was playing my game, throughout my time playing I tried to keep myself from being engrossed my saying out loud "This is a dream". I must have said it over a hundred times, but I went to bed kinda late (or later than usual, as it was a saturday, so later than my usual times on weekdays). I had only 3 dreams, which for me is pretty bad. I was going to do a WBTB, but was too tired. My dream signs for some reason is always one of my friends who pops up almost all the time, or me being in a helicopter. The helicopter is from a game I really liked and used to play, but it's funny how it's sticking around. Right now I'm going to go back over my dream journals and write out a list of dream signs, and pick the top 5 to do your technique with. Other than this, I'm stuck with only WBTB.

[Moto]

Ok. So you want to do your most common occuring dream sign, not temporary ones that are incurred by mass stimulus. Common occuring dream signs are those that come every night of the week, every other day, every 3rd day, I dunno, you gotta figure out your own dream cycles. When you figure this out, then in the Real world, you do the following. You either find a picture of the stimulus if its visual, so say I have a re-occuring dog in my dreams. I either find an exact, or near exact replica, or draw it myself. Then I take that picture, and lay it face down. I clear my mind. I pick up the picture, and upon seeing the picture, state This is a dream, while mimicking that dream sensation you have when you are lucid to my environment. I then ask, am I awake or sleeping, and do a RC. I then repeat this 7 times. To figure out whether it is set, have the picture randomly around, or, better yet, put it randomly in your picture box, and photo view the picture, paying attention to the details. When that picture comes up, you should automatically, without having to think about it, do the reaction. If its not set, then do it another 7 times, and make sure you put a little time( like 30 seconds where you can clear your mind) between the stimulus. That way it is registered as separate stimuli by the brain, and actually gets a Conditioned response out of it. Anyways, let me know how that works, and I'll do it today as well.(Didn't do it yesterday, and no lucid, and none of my dreams had previously set conditioned stimuli).

[Avalanche]

Ok, I get it now, I think I can do that with google images on my laptop. I'll find my dreamsigns now and post what they in a bit.

[Avalanche]

I have 2 and a bit copy books filled with dreams spanning 6 months. I only took dreams from the latest 2 copies to work out my dream signs as I couldn't be bothered to go through other other full one and I don't think it would have changed the standings anyway. My top 3 dream signs are: 1. Bad Company 2. I dream about the online multiplayer maps mostly, and about being in the vehicles on those maps, be they tanks or choppers. I almost always have a gun. 2. School/classmates. Either at school or with people from my class. Never really noticed how often they appeared. 3. Call of Duty: Black ops. I picked this up recently and played it as I got tired of Bad Company 2. Mostly multiplayer maps and the guns are Incorporated into other dreams. I had a few others, but their numbers were low compared to these and they don't really appear that often anymore. BC2 appeared 26 times, my school 20 and black ops 11 times. Now, how should I do this technique with these dreamsigns?

[Avalanche]

I got some google images pictures up and I look at them and tell myself 7 times "I am dreaming", as well as trying to feel the feeling you get when you are dreaming. I did this, then went and read a page of a book. I then came back 3 minutes later and did it again. I'm not really feeling any different, I don't automatically get the feeling when I see the image..

[TruMotion]

Wouldn't automatic RC's be meaningless?

[Avalanche]

Automatic as in you do them as soon as you notice a dreamsign. That's what this is, I think. How is this meaningless. I thought R.C.s were supposed to be done when you see something weird/ a dreamsign, and then doing one automatically doesn't mean you do it mindlessly, you just do it without having to put 2 and 2 together to think of doing one in the first place.

[marwanin]

so just say this is a dream 7 times for everything to multiple chances

[Avalanche]

Yeah, but to build up a reaction to each one would be pointless, as after a while, you can't do it to loads of things, it would just wear off. It's better to figure out your most common dreamsigns and build up a reaction to that, instead of lots of them and have them not as strong as the one. Well I did this technique last night, and I did in fact dream about my two most common dreamsigns, and it could just be me, but they seemed a little more vivid than usual. I'm keeping up with this tonight as well.