ADA and bad science

I was thinking about ADA (All day awareness) today. In modern times we are all quite knowledgeable about science - even if we are not formally trained in science. But if someone practised ADA 500 years ago, they might see things very differently to how we see them now. The way they saw the world and explained things might be very different:

If, today, a massive bolt of lightning came down and hit the tree next to the path I'm walking on, I'd say to myself: "I walk lucky there was an object taller than me to attract the lightning." But 500 years ago, someone might have said, "I have been good this week and the lightning god saved me by making that lightning swerve and hit something else instead of me."

I reckon you could "borrow" from bad science to make a kind of "dream science" where that science makes you think about things in way that is more likely to make you lucid.

My dream science is this: All around us are LABs - that's Living Air Beings. The air is alive, it can think, it is an entity. The science of the Living Air Beings can be used to "explain" stuff in real life. Eg: The leaves rustling in the trees is the Living Air making the leaves rustle. When I fall over but don't get hurt it was the air supporting my fall by acting as a cushion etc.

Dream Journal

Also the dream science of the Living Air Beings could be used to describe what went on in dreams. If my mother-in-law went crazy and threw an axe at me, I can say it was the living carbon dioxide in the air that went to her head, deprived her of oxygen and made her a little crazy. Or maybe it was me that was deprived of oxygen and had gone a little crazy and thus hallucinated? If I saw the space shuttle explode in front of me on the launch pad, I could say that the oxygen air-being had rushed to the shuttle and made it overheat and cause the explosion.

The idea is, eventually the fictional bad science would permeate your dreams and, in the long term, make you more likely to become lucid. You'd be living in an alternative world where the air is alive and you can command it to do things.

This could potentially work, but you would have to actually convince yourself that this is true. You do still know what the scientific explanation about all the things around you are, and I think this won't work unless you actually stop believing science as it currently is. So if you are going to do this, I hope you won't get a job related to science and that you aren't afraid of the LABs :P I could be wrong though, good luck!

The deal is you would have to waste a great deal of time (and perhaps effort) in order to convince yourself, and that just defeats the practice. There's so much that can improve your lucidity skills, that making the process harder and longer just seems counter-productive. You can improve memory, visualization, focus, meditate, and these few options are already huge on their own, and have direct and easy to comprove effects on lucidity, dream recall, amongst other components of dreaming. Making a whole new excuse in order to make your brain change views on something would be making the game harder without any reward, because in the end, you'll know (unlike the people back in the days) that the air is not a living thing. Forcing beliefs is not as easy at it seems :)

Thanks for your input Spy and zoth. I agree with what you say and will use your input to move forward. I have a hunch that ADA is missing a thinking component and I'm trying to establish what that is - for me, anyway.

Saegous' WILD classes has a section on his version of awareness, which emphasizes thought and self awareness.Also, as someone who does science as a hobby, I would disagree that the general public knows much about science. Theres a huge amount of pseudoscience entering conventional thought--mystical stuff about quantum physics, theories of travelling between universes (physically defined as impossible) and rubbish about human evolution occurring today/in the future (evolution won't happen until we start dying en masse. Even then, the changes will only be observable after tens of thousands of years..

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Originally Posted by VictoReverie

Saegous' WILD classes has a section on his version of awareness, which emphasizes thought and self awareness.

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Yes, I was reading about that. Very interesting. It has me thinking about the interaction between ourselves and the environment. There's something about ADA and awareness techniques I just don't get though. I practise mindfulness at points in the day because I enjoy it and find it relaxing. Sometimes this behaviour carries over to dreams but it doesn't make me realise it's a dream. For example, the other night in a non-lucid I was in a friend's house and I stopped to look around the room. I looked at the furnishings, the texture of the wood, the wallpaper and the way the patterns in the wallpaper "danced". Didn't make me lucid though. So what's missing?

Another type of mindfulness/awareness technique I don't get is the one where you ask, "What was I just doing?" or "Do I remember how I got here?" or "Do I remember getting out of bed this morning?" (Just to make it clear - I'm talking about when they're used to make you realise you're dreaming, rather than as an RC after you've started suspecting you're dreaming). Surely if you're going to remember to ask yourself those questions in dreams you'd be better off remembering to ask "Am I dreaming" instead, which cuts straight to the chase.

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Originally Posted by Bobblehat

Yes, I was reading about that. Very interesting. It has me thinking about the interaction between ourselves and the environment. There's something about ADA and awareness techniques I just don't get though. I practise mindfulness at points in the day because I enjoy it and find it relaxing. Sometimes this behaviour carries over to dreams but it doesn't make me realise it's a dream. For example, the other night in a non-lucid I was in a friend's house and I stopped to look around the room. I looked at the furnishings, the texture of the wood, the wallpaper and the way the patterns in the wallpaper "danced". Didn't make me lucid though. So what's missing?

Another type of mindfulness/awareness technique I don't get is the one where you ask, "What was I just doing?" or "Do I remember how I got here?" or "Do I remember getting out of bed this morning?" (Just to make it clear - I'm talking about when they're used to make you realise you're dreaming, rather than as an RC after you've started suspecting you're dreaming). Surely if you're going to remember to ask yourself those questions in dreams you'd be better off remembering to ask "Am I dreaming" instead, which cuts straight to the chase.

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While being aware of your surroundings using ADA, it helps to look for things that don't belong. Things you remember to be different, things you never noticed before, etc. Consider that it could really be a dream while using ADA. That way, you dream awareness will be turned into lucidity.

Thinking about ADA generates more questions than answers for me. There are so many ways we can focus our perception but obviously there's a limit to our attention. For example, you could choose a kind of introspective ADA where you focus on your thinking and you could even focus on exquisitely fine details like the "volume" of your internal self-talk. Has anyone done any research into which kind of focuses lead to greater lucid rates?

Most of the LD stuff I've read deals with a kind of awake/dreaming dichotomy. But I think there is no such thing as a "100 percent dream" because dreams utilise actual memories from R/L and ways of thinking. Also I reckon there's no such thing as "100 percent awake" - but I'm not quite sure how this is; would it be because of misperceptions? Or is there something - maybe thinking, or a type of thinking - that is "neutral" and is equally present when we are awake and when in dreams?

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Originally Posted by Bobblehat

Thinking about ADA generates more questions than answers for me. There are so many ways we can focus our perception but obviously there's a limit to our attention. For example, you could choose a kind of introspective ADA where you focus on your thinking and you could even focus on exquisitely fine details like the "volume" of your internal self-talk. Has anyone done any research into which kind of focuses lead to greater lucid rates?

Most of the LD stuff I've read deals with a kind of awake/dreaming dichotomy. But I think there is no such thing as a "100 percent dream" because dreams utilise actual memories from R/L and ways of thinking. Also I reckon there's no such thing as "100 percent awake" - but I'm not quite sure how this is; would it be because of misperceptions? Or is there something - maybe thinking, or a type of thinking - that is "neutral" and is equally present when we are awake and when in dreams?

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I suppose different types of focus are differently effective for different people. Whether you are ever 100% awake depends on how you define being awake. Most of the time, the human brain filters out most of the information we are getting through are senses, and our senses do not pick up on everything that happens around us. Also, the subconcious part of our brain uses some brain capacity, both during sleep and waking life. Memories and relating to situations we have been in before (which we do all the time) also use a part of our capacity. Therefore, I would personally say that we are never fully awake.

Nice thread, Bobblehat!. Though I tend to agree with Zoth's note above, I think this idea of yours has some merit, in that it might make it easier to accept the non-duality of your dream and reinforce your sense that this dreaming place is your world, period. I doubt it'll help you become lucid more easily, but does that even matter?

A couple of quick responses:

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Originally Posted by Bobblehat

Yes, I was reading about that. Very interesting. It has me thinking about the interaction between ourselves and the environment. There's something about ADA and awareness techniques I just don't get though. I practise mindfulness at points in the day because I enjoy it and find it relaxing. Sometimes this behaviour carries over to dreams but it doesn't make me realise it's a dream. For example, the other night in a non-lucid I was in a friend's house and I stopped to look around the room. I looked at the furnishings, the texture of the wood, the wallpaper and the way the patterns in the wallpaper "danced". Didn't make me lucid though. So what's missing?

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What's missing is self-awareness. ADA is a fine practice, but it only increases your awareness of your physical surroundings. Frogs do that. Because you don't include your self in ADA, it will do little more in a dream than maybe make it more vivid, or interesting. I suggest you take Spyguy's advice and do a little more with the ADA by looking for the "odd." Doing so might hep you spot the odd in a dream, and then, with an RC, you might be able to bring your waking self-awareness into the dream.

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Another type of mindfulness/awareness technique I don't get is the one where you ask, "What was I just doing?" or "Do I remember how I got here?" or "Do I remember getting out of bed this morning?" (Just to make it clear - I'm talking about when they're used to make you realise you're dreaming, rather than as an RC after you've started suspecting you're dreaming). Surely if you're going to remember to ask yourself those questions in dreams you'd be better off remembering to ask "Am I dreaming" instead, which cuts straight to the chase.

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You're absolutely right. Why? Because the exercise you describe above is meant to build your self-awareness and memory to a point where you are mentally prepared to understand and navigate your dreamworld (and waking world, for that matter) with waking self-awareness intact. It, like ADA, really isn't meant as a tool for LD induction; it's meant as a way to get more out of your LD's after you're there, having used whatever induction trick you choose (that part really doesn't matter). In other words, Reverse Reality Checks are not state tests like RC's, they're state generators. Both are a good thing, but not the same thing.

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Most of the LD stuff I've read deals with a kind of awake/dreaming dichotomy. But I think there is no such thing as a "100 percent dream" because dreams utilise actual memories from R/L and ways of thinking. Also I reckon there's no such thing as "100 percent awake" - but I'm not quite sure how this is; would it be because of misperceptions? Or is there something - maybe thinking, or a type of thinking - that is "neutral" and is equally present when we are awake and when in dreams?

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Yup, there's no such thing as 100% aware, in either state (dreaming or waking). We're just not wired for that; full-time 100% awareness probably isn't healthy. In fact, I think that most people, whose awareness rarely extends beyond their immediate physical and philosophic perimeter, are only more aware in waking life because the stuff around them holds still better than it does in dreaming life. Trouble is, they rarely take much stock in that stuff, or their relation to it.

Just to repeat my initial caveat: This is a good idea, Bobblehat, but be mindful that you might succeed in simply creating a new set of subroutines for your non-lucid dreams, where they are stocked with a new set of "explanations." These additions will do little for building or including a sense of self-awareness in your dreams.

So I think this plan of yours will help you during LD's, because it amplifies the non-dual nature of the dreaming world, and in doing so will make it easier for you to retain self-awareness and memory -- which in turn enriches the subsequent explorations. But you still gotta get there; I don't think it'll get you lucid in the first place.

Thanks for your lengthy response, Sageous. I plan to read your post a few times over the next few days and take my time to consider the new information.

Still absorbing your post, Sageous. Just a couple of thoughts on mindfulness/awareness that have been floating around my mind that may or may not be of consequence:

1) I can guarantee a more mindful approach to my activities by making my activities "in flux". That is, I can make subtle changes to the way I do things and can continue to make small - almost negligible - changes to the way I do tasks with the idea being to help retain my awareness. For example, if walking down the street I can choose to take shorter strides. Or I can consciously increase my walking speed to a very slight degree. Also, of course, there is attention. I can choose to direct my attention to any area: the sound the sole of my shoe makes when it touches the ground, or (more specific) the "scuffing" sound I occasionally make.

2) Why not apply these changes to asking, "Am I dreaming?" and doing RCs? So, if I'm regularly asking myself if I'm dreaming I can choose to increase the tone of the internal-voice that asks if I'm dreaming. I can choose to imagine the sound in someone else's voice. I can change the stress. If I regularly do the nose pinch RC I can start doing it with a different hand, or use different fingers to do the pinch, or apply a different degree of pressure, or use both hands etc.

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Originally Posted by Bobblehat

2) Why not apply these changes to asking, "Am I dreaming?" and doing RCs? So, if I'm regularly asking myself if I'm dreaming I can choose to increase the tone of the internal-voice that asks if I'm dreaming. I can choose to imagine the sound in someone else's voice. I can change the stress. If I regularly do the nose pinch RC I can start doing it with a different hand, or use different fingers to do the pinch, or apply a different degree of pressure, or use both hands etc.

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Sure, why not? As I said above, these activities I think can certainly help amplify your lucidity, which is always a good thing!