Thread: ADA: Right or Wrong for Lucidity?

Originally Posted by JoannaB

Examples of similar phenomenon to dream "feeling":

Some mothers can tell by their baby's cry whether it is hungry or wet or whatever. They may not be able to describe the difference to you, and may not know what they notice, but they do.

Experienced fishkeepers can watch an aquarium, and can tell that there may be a water quality issue. If asked to describe it to you, they may be able to say a few things like that the fish were not acting like they usually do, but they might not be able to describe it well because it is more about the overall observation of the tank where after watching the tank carefully for many years, they just can tell. What they observe may include fish moving about more or less, less frisky, fish being a different shade of color / less shiny, aquatic plants not looking healthy, fish breathing more heavily, etc., but they may not be able to tell you each of those things they observed, but rather might say that the aquarium looked like it does when the water quality is wrong.

Sometimes you can tell someone else is lying, but might be hard pressed to tell why, but some people are good at this. They of course must be observing things like maybe hesitancy in the other's voice, maybe sweating, maybe fidgeting, maybe not making eye contact, but they may or may not be able to enumerate these observations to you, but instead will say they just knew he was lying.

sounds like intuition to me, maybe someone who's more intuitive by nature is more adept at LD'ing, picks it up quicker with less effort?

I am not sure that intuition is right. It's got more to do with careful observation and noticing details on a not entirely conscious level which someone else would have missed but the experienced observer does not. And that's why ADA and dream feeling go hand in hand because when one trains oneself to be an experienced observer, one learns to notice stuff others would have missed. And the things one notices may be stuff like that gravity is not exactly the same or that you passed the same person three times. And I am not suggesting here that in dreams we do not render stuff perfectly because we can, but sometimes we might not. And I think an experienced ADA practitioner will train him- or herself to notice things so that if anything is off in a way that might be due to dream, then some part of their mind notices it. And it may be something different every time that they notice, and it most likely will be a combination of stuff. And while one's mind is capable of flawlessly reproducing reality in dreams, but sometimes it does not, or it will reproduce some details but not others. And the trained observer's mind will recognize that, and while you could say it will recognize these things off "intuitively" but I don't think there is any sixth sense involved and I do believe with ADA anyone can learn to do this though it would require a lot of effort.

Edit: the sad thing is that I think I used to have this ability. At least I remember recognizing dreams as dreams by this kind of "feeling" twenty years ago. Why oh why did I give this up? I want to regain this. I need to concentrate more on ADA.

I think JoannaB and King Yoshi have this pegged, but I had an additional thought:

Originally Posted by tofur

see but what I don't get is, what is that "you" that hasn't added it all up yet, the "you" that is noticing stuff? I feel like were talking about two different aspects of consciousness here, the part that is witnessing everything, and the other part that wakes up because of the witnessing. So maybe what were doing with the awareness training is stabilizing ourselves more and more as that witness, the observer rather than the doer.

That may be exactly my problem with "natural" awareness training, because driving you to become just a witness may be an unintended and unwanted side-effect of awareness-only training.

Yes, becoming only that witness makes the dream world more stable, but it also makes it more real, and your dream less lucid. As King Yoshi said, you must remember that the observer part of you and the witness part of you (and the dreaming mind part of you, for that matter) are all you, and must be smoothly combined into one self-aware "You." If you only witness, then you sacrifice the union of all aspects of "You," and risk lapsing back into a NLD or waking up.

However:

sounds like intuition to me, maybe someone who's more intuitive by nature is more adept at LD'ing, picks it up quicker with less effort?

I think of it less natural intuition than a "sense" built into your consciousness that can sort of put it all together, at least at a very low, almost subliminal level. This sense need not be natural; indeed, I have a feeling that, except in children, this sense is far more often artificially infused through training than it is natural.

Perhaps that is the real value of ADA, as it both teaches you to have a special sense of your surroundings while, thanks to the constant practice with LD'ing in mind, building powerful expectations of having LD's. So, come dreamtime, your unconscious is already hard at work fulfilling your expectations while your ADA "habit" has got your DC "you" paying slightly elevated attention. Then, once the "feeling" is in place, your self-awareness and memory kick in and Bam!, you're lucid.

Hmm... Did I just turn back on myself to accidentally summarize the real value of ADA as LD'ing tool? Seems to all make sense...or am I just babbling?

Originally Posted by Sageous

I think JoannaB's and King Yoshi have this pegged, but I had an additional thought:



That may be exactly my problem with "natural" awareness training, because driving you to become just a witness may be an unintended and unwanted side-effect of awareness-only training.

Yes, becoming only that witness makes the dream world more stable, but it also makes it more real, and your dream less lucid. As King Yoshi said, you must remember that the observer part of you and the witness part of you (and the dreaming mind part of you, for that matter) are all you, and must be smoothly combined into one self-aware "You." If you only witness, then you sacrifice the union of all aspects of "You," and risk lapsing back into a NLD or waking up.

However:



I think of it less natural intuition than a "sense" built into your consciousness that can sort of put it all together, at least at a very low, almost subliminal level. This sense need not be natural; indeed, I have a feeling that, except in children, this sense is far more often artificially infused through training than it is natural.

Perhaps that is the real value of ADA, as it both teaches you to have a special sense of your surroundings while, thanks to the constant practice with LD'ing in mind, building powerful expectations of having LD's. So, come dreamtime, your unconscious is already hard at work fulfilling your expectations while your ADA "habit" has got your DC "you" paying slightly elevated attention. Then, once the "feeling" is in place, your self-awareness and memory kick in and Bam!, you're lucid.

Hmm... Did I just turn back on myself to accidentally summarize the real value of ADA as LD'ing tool? Seems to all make sense...or am I just babbling?

I know how, but I don't understand why the argument got escalated in the first place because its not like we are THAT far off from looking at this the same way. This sounds like you are getting it and made valid statements. As for the "more real" part you mentioned, that doesn't mean you have to be less lucid. I don't get into BD, but I simply pretend as if the dream state is another reality (to an extent). By using the dream world to my advantage, I'm able to accomplish my goals and hold on to my lucidity no matter how real it seems. The ADA helps you know its a dream and hold on to your lucidity even if you aren't actively trying to remember this fact. I'm not saying its a magical cure for every dream problem, but it helps out and boosts in a ridiculous amount of areas. These days, it is the only technique I use for lucid dreaming besides DJing. Not counting DEILD chains, of course. I'm not saying its for everyone, but there is no way it can be detrimental to lucid dreaming.

^^ The evidence is definitely leaning, for me, in the "undetrimental" direction. But I'm still of the mind that there is a hazard to having ADA be the only tool in your belt ... Keep in mind, King Yoshi, that given your experience, you already very likely have a whole beltful of tools on hand (ie, that "feeling" we were all just discussing).

In other words, I'm coming to the conclusion that ADA can be a powerful tool for LD'ing but, like all powerful tools it needs to be handled well and plugged into something... which I think you just said.

Holy crap, are we in some sort of agreement here? Were we always in some sort of agreement? Communication is a helluva thing, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ The evidence is definitely leaning, for me, in the "undetrimental" direction. But I'm still of the mind that there is a hazard to having ADA be the only tool in your belt ... Keep in mind, King Yoshi, that given your experience, you already very likely have a whole beltful of tools on hand (ie, that "feeling" we were all just discussing).

In other words, I'm coming to the conclusion that ADA can be a powerful tool for LD'ing but, like all powerful tools it needs to be handled well and plugged into something... which I think you just said.

Holy crap, are we in some sort of agreement here? Were we always in some sort of agreement? Communication is a helluva thing, isn't it?

Well, I can agree about the numerous tools. I tell newbies all the time to soak up as much quality information as possible and never be afraid to experiment with other's techniques and mold them to fit their own mind. That feeling though, came from ADA practice. I didn't really have it regularly before, I suppose as much as any other LDer who get spontaneously lucid. The feeling comes from ADA practice and grows with your experience with the technique. I'm also able to WILD very well amongst other things, so my mind has gotten used to lucidity much more than the average user on this site (though still less than some, of course). I'm not saying it should be your only technique, but I'll always recommend it as the foundation for lucid practice.

We were always in some sort of agreement, not from the beginning, but after the first misunderstanding anyway. Some became distracted by perceived arrogance and lost sight of the matter at hand. While another probably milked it a bit after noticing that frustration to clear some of their own frustrations. It happens. There is a saying my buddies and I always had growing up, "I'm not cocky, just confident." Of course, it was said in a jokingly misleading manner, but the statement was always true.

After reading through all the posts, I cannot shake the feeling that some people are making too many assumptions without evaluating them carefully. For example, the assumption that one gains lucidty by spotting oddities in dreams. As I mentioned in my previous post, it appears that LDs triggered in this fashion are actually relatively rare. Moreover, in dreams we don't often possess the full memories, reasoning skills, and even personalities as in waking state. In fact it is not unusual for us to act like another person in dreams. This is actually not surprising because dreams are the language of the unconscious. Often than not the dream ego itself gets assigned symbolic meanings and act according to some predetermined plots. In this case, to the dream ego, there are no oddities in the dreams, just like how our waking ego perceive the so-called real world. Granted there are times our dream ego become detached from dream plots and act independently similar to the awakened state, but that's not the majority.

That is but one of the many examples which led me to question the validity of some of the theories we take for granted. Again I'm not drawing conclusions but I'm kinda hoping this thread will provoke people to think outside of the boxes. Lucid dreams are triggered/improved by awareness, and since some technique improves awareness it ought to work for lucid dreams -- we have heard this line way too many times and it is not even worth repeating or defending anymore IMHO.

Originally Posted by CosmicIron

After reading through all the posts, I cannot shake the feeling that some people are making too many assumptions without evaluating them carefully. For example, the assumption that one gains lucidty by spotting oddities in dreams. As I mentioned in my previous post, it appears that LDs triggered in this fashion are actually relatively rare.

I agree with this. ADA isn't about spotting oddities at all. Its about creating the awareness to distinguish between the waking state and the dream state, simply because they are not the same as each other. Its about building up a mental "feeling" that causes you to realize you are dreaming simply because you are not awake. I can't think of a better word to describe it because you don't physically feel it, but you kind of get washed over with lucidity. Still not a good way to describe it. Its very hard to put into words for someone who hasn't experienced it before to understand. The best thing I can tell you is to try ADA, specifically for lucid dreaming, so you can experience it for yourself. I do seem to just randomly become lucid, but its a constant thing and I find myself looking at a completely normal environment and thinking to myself, "This is a dream. This feels like a dream." Even if nothing out of the ordinary has happened the entire time. Its not just a sporadic event either, this is how I become lucid 15-20 times per month, on average (a complete guesstimation). It started happening more and more frequently after I started practicing ADA.

I'm not sure you were referring to me with the assumptions thing, but I thought you might be, so figured I'd say this. I don't say these things because I have heard them, I say them because I have experienced them and have helped countless others experience them.

I've had uncounted DILD's over the last 4 decades, and I can safely say that I never became lucid thanks to a dream-sign, RC, or other technique related shortcut. It used to drive me nuts when people would say, "This is all you gotta do," when I knew, in my experience at least, you needed something else. I call it self-awareness, King Yoshi calls it a feeling, CosmicIron calls it awareness, but regardless it is a conscous state of "more," and one technique alone just won't cut it.

I blame all this on Stephen LaBerge, BTW, who accidentally popularlized shortcuts like dreamsigns, spotting oddities, and RC's when he published his MILD technique.... but they were only part of a fairly elaborate technique that included much daytime work. Now that I think of it, though LaBerge was desperate for that shortcut, that one step to lucidity, he still hasn't found it... but oh, the trail of debris he has left in his path!

I'm not making any sense -- too tired tonight -- suffice it to say, CosmicIron, that I do agree that any single tool is not the answer, and I also agree that the popular view has come so firmly to believe that a single tool is all you need for lucidity -- just pick one, and you're there. I fear, King Yoshi, that ADA -- through no fault of your own -- has joined the ranks of those perceived single-tool answers.

Originally Posted by KingYoshi

I agree with this. ADA isn't about spotting oddities at all. Its about creating the awareness to distinguish between the waking state and the dream state, simply because they are not the same as each other. Its about building up a mental "feeling" that causes you to realize you are dreaming simply because you are not awake. I can't think of a better word to describe it because you don't physically feel it, but you kind of get washed over with lucidity. Still not a good way to describe it. Its very hard to put into words for someone who hasn't experienced it before to understand. The best thing I can tell you is to try ADA, specifically for lucid dreaming, so you can experience it for yourself. I do seem to just randomly become lucid, but its a constant thing and I find myself looking at a completely normal environment and thinking to myself, "This is a dream. This feels like a dream." Even if nothing out of the ordinary has happened the entire time. Its not just a sporadic event either, this is how I become lucid 15-20 times per month, on average (a complete guesstimation). It started happening more and more frequently after I started practicing ADA.

I'm not sure you were referring to me with the assumptions thing, but I thought you might be, so figured I'd say this. I don't say these things because I have heard them, I say them because I have experienced them and have helped countless others experience them.

No I wasn't referring to you at all, Sageous. As for the sudden feeling that one is in a dream and thus become lucid, I suspect it has more to do with psychology than awareness. I can't provide evidence yet and it is difficult to describe for me in English which is my second language. Speaking from personal experience though I honestly do not see awareness playing a key role in gaining lucidity. If awareness is the flame, then lucidity is the spark. The point of dream yoga is not to build awareness so one can achieve lucidity, but rather, to use lucidity as a path to reach awareness at a totally different level. I have not practiced ADA per se but I have experimented with similar techniques so I can at least speak from personal experience without being totally ignorant or prejudiced. In past two decades I have had tens of thousands of lucid dreams and OBE experiences, large and small. They have enabled me to spot the subtle differences among the many states, and even much higher states of consciousness and awareness. Things like ADA, I fear, as you wrote in the very begining, are actually exercising the wrong kind of awareness for both lucid dreaming and spirituality.

Ok, it has occurred to me that a flaw with my explanation is that is is a justification: I am assuming that this "feeling" is due to a culmination of little observations of things not right combined together, but I do not actually know that for sure. Heck, maybe it is intuition or a sixth sense. However, logically I don't think so, and because of the waking life examples that I gave which I know are just based on experience of careful observation over time also, I know that this dream feeling is not a uniquely dream related phenomenon. All I really know though is that once you learn to be a trained observer in waking life, it does teach you to recognize the dream state in a way where you won't be able to pinpoint what exactly caused you to be lucid. My assumption that it is due to a combination of observes details that add up to it being a dream is an assumption. I do however firmly believe that even if it is "intuitition" it is something anyone can build up, it's an acquireable skill, which takes a lot of effort of observation practice/experience. I got to get seriously started on this effort again. I had been slacking. This thread has pretty much reminded me even more of what I used to have and forgot that I even had it and why I lost it, but it has motivated me some more to strive to regain this.

CosmicIron:

A couple of quick clarifications/questions:

Originally Posted by CosmicIron

No I wasn't referring to you at all, Sageous.

I assume you meant to write "King Yoshi" there, or was there a Freudian Slip involved?

As for the sudden feeling that one is in a dream and thus become lucid, I suspect it has more to do with psychology than awareness. I can't provide evidence yet and it is difficult to describe for me in English which is my second language. Speaking from personal experience though I honestly do not see awareness playing a key role in gaining lucidity. If awareness is the flame, then lucidity is the spark. The point of dream yoga is not to build awareness so one can achieve lucidity, but rather, to use lucidity as a path to reach awareness at a totally different level.

I'm not sure I'm clear on this. From what I understand, lucidity is awareness, being that a lucid dream is literally being aware that you are dreaming. Yes the dream and sleep yogis use the minor awareness of lucidity to build toward a higher awareness of enlightenment and the transcendent self-awareness necessary to navigate the bardo, but that minor awareness is still awareness.

So let's say I (and the dream and sleep yogis, and LaBerge & Co., and pretty much all of the people who write about lucidity) got it all wrong, and lucidity is not sourced in awareness/self-awareness: where then does it come from? I'm not being aggressive or sarcastic here, though my phrasing might sound so; if you are onto something, or sure of a thing none of us understand, thanks to your experience, it might be a something well worth knowing. I hope you can elaborate.

If I misunderstood, please forgive!

Things like ADA, I fear, as you wrote in the very beginning, are actually exercising the wrong kind of awareness for both lucid dreaming and spirituality.

Though I am beginning to doubt that ADA as a tool is harmful, I do still firmly believe that using ADA as your only tool for lucidity will likely not give you lucidity.

By way of circular definition: waking-life sentient consciousness, whether we call it self-awareness or a higher awareness, or that feeling, or intuition, or whatever, is necessary to have your waking-life sentient consciousness participate in a dream. The awareness powering ADA (meaning the simple physical awareness of our surroundings, no matter how thorough) is simply not enough on its own to achieve lucidity. ADA may offer some help, but it is not enough on its own. I think we all already agreed on that recently... didn't we?

Hello,

Noob lucid dreamer here(but motivated), just thought I'd throw in a thought and I hope it doesn't get in the way of this intense discussion, if so, just ignore me and move on.

But I do believe that self awareness is important in dreams because sometimes you worry or feel weird when something is really wrong in your dreams making you remember it more and only increases awareness

For instance I had a dream once that me and a friend I take the train to school with were at the station shooting people(I'm not a bad person ) and the cops showed up and I fear being taking away with the cops so I got so worried and hid in the dream, this was nonlucid since I new-ish and getting better. similar dreams are that you are late to work, having kids, forgot something important.

For this reason I feel self-awareness is important in achieving lucidity, but must be practiced a bit for the less extreme dreams you have I suppose. As for Yoshi's ADA, I feel as if it may only enhance the self-awareness technique.

Just my opinion, might be flat out stupid or obvious so again feel free to rule it out

Originally Posted by Sageous

CosmicIron:
I assume you meant to write "King Yoshi" there, or was there a Freudian Slip involved?

It could well be the later, LOL.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I'm not being aggressive or sarcastic here, though my phrasing might sound so;

No worry, I can tell the difference between healthy discussion and hostile arguments. Let me try to elaborate a little bit on the point I was trying to make. First on the subject of minor awareness sparking lucidity. Assuming this is true, and assuming such minor awareness can be gained upon the very earliest dreams in our sleep cycles, then we should be seeing much more frequent DILDs during the early part of sleep. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for experienced dreamers.

Let's modify our second assumption -- maybe we do not gain such *minor* awareness until we reach the later stages of our sleeps. For this to be true, we have to also assume that we have little to nil awareness during the early part of our sleeps. However that is clearly not the case! That brings us to another hypothesis -- maybe there is some fundamental difference between the awareness that powers our early dreams and the awareness that's gained during the later stage? If this is the case, then for ADA and similar techs to work they have to exercise the later kind of awareness, not the former.

Now what kind of awareness is this, exactly? One naive theory is that it's the kind of awareness we posses during the day. It assumes that we become lucid by becoming aware of the surroundings and somehow able to distinguish it from reality. Now we are back to square one because the ability to be aware of the surroundings certain existed during the early sleep stages as well. Another possibility is that we are talking about self-awareness. Basically that means we should know exactly who we are, where we were, and so on. This essentially means we replace our dream egos with the day-time ones, or, the "real" ones. (In Buddhism this is seen as a form of attachment, rather than enlightenment... just as a side note). Experienced WILDers or practitioners of astral projections know that upon entering a dream, no matter how conscious you are at the moment, that consciousness quickly diminishes and it takes great will power to maintain it. This is not surprising because just like everything else in the dream, our dream-self takes part in the dream plot and gets assigned certain symbolic meanings. It simply cannot be equal to our waking egos in order for dreams to function properly. The point I'm trying to make through this is that it takes a great deal for this type of detachment to occur, and even greater amount of effort is required to maintain it. As such, regardless of what it is -- awareness or not, there is nothing "minor" about it.

This kind of detachment do occur sometimes spontaneously though, and I suspect that's all part of the dream plot. A common scenario is that during intense nightmares people tend to either wake up, become lucid, take on a third-person perspective, or the dream itself turn into narrative form. My suspicion is that lucidity, in its more primitive form, is nothing but a built-in mechanism of our dreams, sort of like a safe switch. Sometimes it's for protection, and sometimes it's needed by the unconscious as part of the dream plot in order to tell its "stories". And this is what I meant by saying lucidity may have more to do with psychology than things such as "awareness". Granted there are exceptions, as demonstrated by our survey -- approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.

Originally Posted by CosmicIron

approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.

I would argue with that statistic. I would say that all you can say is that less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence and knowing consciously in hindsight that that is what caused them to become lucid. My argument has been that I think that a very likely explanation for the "feeling" that it is a dream is that a trained observer has recognized a pattern of incoherent details subconsciously or not quite consciously, and does not know which incoherences triggered the lucidity and actually does not quite know whether or not it was incoherences, but I think given that this is more likely to occur after successfully practicing ADA, noticing incoherences is a valid theory for what causes this dream feeling, but statistics of what people report caused lucidity would not represent this because in those cases the dreamer does not know consciously that this is what caused the feeling of dream. Also such noticing incoherences would require one to become a very experienced observer in waking life, and thus a lot of effort, something most would be lucid dreamers would not be up to, and I think it is more likely to occur with more advance lucid dreamers who practice ADA and or ther self awareness techniques during the day. I still think that doing ADA right one needs to put self awareness into it. However, given how this dream feeling would only be something that some lucid dreamers get, and even those who get it will likely not be able to report whether of not the dream feeling was caused by observed inconsistencies, so the proportion of those who responded to the survey who experienced this and identified it as due to inconsistencies observed would be small, but that would not mean that inconsistencies observed could not be the underlying reason for this dream feeling, and that becoming an experienced observer is not a good way of reaching lucidity.

If I do not make enough sense, please forgive me, I just experienced major brain fry activity at work, so I may be less coherent right now, but I hope I am coherent enough.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I would argue with that statistic. I would say that all you can say is that less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence and knowing consciously in hindsight that that is what caused them to become lucid. My argument has been that I think that a very likely explanation for the "feeling" that it is a dream is that a trained observer has recognized a pattern of incoherent details subconsciously or not quite consciously, and does not know which incoherences triggered the lucidity and actually does not quite know whether or not it was incoherences, but I think given that this is more likely to occur after successfully practicing ADA, noticing incoherences is a valid theory for what causes this dream feeling, but statistics of what people report caused lucidity would not represent this because in those cases the dreamer does not know consciously that this is what caused the feeling of dream. Also such noticing incoherences would require one to become a very experienced observer in waking life, and thus a lot of effort, something most would be lucid dreamers would not be up to, and I think it is more likely to occur with more advance lucid dreamers who practice ADA and or ther self awareness techniques during the day. I still think that doing ADA right one needs to put self awareness into it. However, given how this dream feeling would only be something that some lucid dreamers get, and even those who get it will likely not be able to report whether of not the dream feeling was caused by observed inconsistencies, so the proportion of those who responded to the survey who experienced this and identified it as due to inconsistencies observed would be small, but that would not mean that inconsistencies observed could not be the underlying reason for this dream feeling, and that becoming an experienced observer is not a good way of reaching lucidity.

If I do not make enough sense, please forgive me, I just experienced major brain fry activity at work, so I may be less coherent right now, but I hope I am coherent enough.

The survey actually included people of all levels of proficiencies... But then again anything is possible, and I'm not drawing conclusions.

I agree with you, Sageous. In fact when I first read KingYoshi's ADA tutorial, it didn't make sense to me as a lucid dreaming tool until MindGames chimed in with his take on it:

I think that if you were to be constantly aware of your environment in the context of whether or not aspects are dreamlike, it would be more effective in producing nightly lucid dreams. This would train your mind to focus primarily on dream-related aspects in your environment, thus increasing the effectiveness of your awareness. This would allow you to effectively be constantly performing a reality check, in the sense that your mind is constantly questioning if your environment is a dream, rather than just primarily paying attention to your environment.

Originally Posted by CosmicIron

Let me try to elaborate a little bit on the point I was trying to make. First on the subject of minor awareness sparking lucidity. Assuming this is true, and assuming such minor awareness can be gained upon the very earliest dreams in our sleep cycles, then we should be seeing much more frequent DILDs during the early part of sleep. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for experienced dreamers.

Let's modify our second assumption -- maybe we do not gain such *minor* awareness until we reach the later stages of our sleeps. For this to be true, we have to also assume that we have little to nil awareness during the early part of our sleeps. However that is clearly not the case! That brings us to another hypothesis -- maybe there is some fundamental difference between the awareness that powers our early dreams and the awareness that's gained during the later stage? If this is the case, then for ADA and similar techs to work they have to exercise the later kind of awareness, not the former.

I agree, if we're talking about the natural awareness as espoused in ADA (which, once more to be clear, I feel will not help much in firing that initial spark of lucidity anyway) . I hadn't given much thought to limited DILD's early on, but don't doubt it's a fact. But couldn't that be the case for other reasons as well? Perhaps there's some primitive switch that holds us in sleep, awareness-be-damned, for the first couple of hours, since back in the tree-hanging days we may have only had those hours for the restorative part of dreams. Also, since REM periods are shorter and more separated earlier in the night, it makes sense statistically that there would be fewer DILD's then. But yes, some basic natural awareness must be present in all dreams, or the dreams literally would not exist, so that is an interesting point.

The point I'm trying to make through this is that it takes a great deal for this type of detachment to occur, and even greater amount of effort is required to maintain it. As such, regardless of what it is -- awareness or not, there is nothing "minor" about it.

True. Perhaps "minor" was the wrong word. You need a strong push of self-awareness to become lucid at all, and that push may need to increase in order to maintain awareness and control or explore the dream. Not so minor, really (and again, even then you need that something "more" I mentioned above). I guess what I was trying to say was that there is an initial moment during the NLD where you come to realize that "you" are in a dream. That initial moment might be little more than a niggling sense, or, as I think you mention, and emotional response to stimuli in the dream, like a nightmare. After that feeling occurs comes a more solid sense of self-awareness and the LD ensues, hopefully with self-awareness increasing steadily. So, relative to the subsequent LD, this initial moment would indeed be minor; but no, relative to the normal non-existence of self-awareness in a NLD, this initial moment would be huge. I hope that clarified my thought, because we do agree on this. Now to the non-agreement part:

This kind of detachment do occur sometimes spontaneously though, and I suspect that's all part of the dream plot. A common scenario is that during intense nightmares people tend to either wake up, become lucid, take on a third-person perspective, or the dream itself turn into narrative form. My suspicion is that lucidity, in its more primitive form, is nothing but a built-in mechanism of our dreams, sort of like a safe switch. Sometimes it's for protection, and sometimes it's needed by the unconscious as part of the dream plot in order to tell its "stories". And this is what I meant by saying lucidity may have more to do with psychology than things such as "awareness".

Interesting idea, but it's one that runs completely anathema to my own view of the nature of lucidity.

My opinion is that there is no such thing as primitive lucidity. Lucidity, for me, is a side-effect of sentience, and it could not exist until we were able to take a moment and say "I am here." Indeed, it must have been disconcerting indeed for the first sentient cavemen to notice their presence in dreams (the source of much mythology and nascent religious tenet, I would imagine). I also believe, though in no way can prove or even qualify, that nature (as in evolution) never intended for us to be sentient; self-awareness was an accident of the extreme evolutionary development of our brains.

So it doesn't make sense to me that we would have had a pre-sentient mechanism that triggered lucidity, since lucidity could not exist yet. Also, it wouldn't be much of a defense mechanism, because if something bad were happening, wouldn't it be better for that primitive sleeper to just wake up, via the reticular system? I suppose that since then we may have developed a mechanism that smooths the flow of communication between the conscious and unconscious mind during dreams by unconscious triggering of self-awareness to make sure some dream message is understood... but I also believe that in the extremely extensive psychological work done in the last century that a process that obvious would have been discovered quite quickly and become a standard for therapy -- yet it has not.

No, for me lucidity cannot be sourced in the natural functions of the brain and dreaming; indeed, LD'ing is a fundamentally unnatural act (which is why it can be so hard to do). I could be wrong, and I have no expectation for you to agree with me, but I figured I'd share, even if we may need to maintain friendly disagreement on this.

Granted there are exceptions, as demonstrated by our survey -- approximately less than 5% of LDs are triggered by people recognizing incoherence within the dreams. I feel that ADA and similar techs probably can help in this case, but do not serve as determining factors.

Again, agreed. But I have to wonder how many of the ADA and similar tech users are noticing that incoherence because of the tech, or because all that tech work has prepared their minds -- fired up their self-awareness -- for the event. Perhaps the difference is irrelevant, as long as folks are getting to lucidity anyway?

Sageous:

"Again, agreed. But I have to wonder how many of the ADA and similar tech users are noticing that incoherence because of the tech, or because all that tech work has prepared their minds -- fired up their self-awareness -- for the event."

Well said. This is an important point for me (just too curious for my own good). Several of my lucid experiences came from observing a room, and then upon returning later, found a relatively small and usually unnoticed object had changed color. Success? Usually. I remember arguing with a DC for about 5 minutes about such an occurrence and he was able to convince me that I was mistaken. However, with the addition of self awareness practice, the DC no longer has any effect on me because I realize that he is dead, or that I am in a place I shouldn't be to begin with, or my feelings are not normal, etc.

On the other hand, those incidents are the minority; usually lucidity comes not from object observation for me, but from "rationalizing" that something is simply impossible or very unlikely as it relates to who I am.

My take on this. Any form of mental training is helpful. Mental training should evolve as the practioner grows, so many varying mental tools are eventually used. The brain creates new pathways from the training, and this advancment in neural processing is there while you sleep, as it is a physical improvement. ADA is a fine method of self-improvement and will lead to new neural development, but ideally will not be the only form of discipline practiced. (also, I have always considered ADA to refer to Yoshi's tutorial)

Awareness is so key to LDing that it is almost not up for debate. The idea of a spontaneous DILD involves two factors (IMHO), first the moment when you noticed an anomily may have been leading up to the lucid moment, and not be remembered because it occured pre-lucidity. Second, the development of the new neural connections that allow 'seemingly spontanious' DILD, are built during waking life by new levels of attention/ awareness in one thing or another.

Originally Posted by sivason

Awareness is so key to LDing that it is almost not up for debate. The idea of a spontaneous DILD involves two factors (IMHO), first the moment when you noticed an anomily may have been leading up to the lucid moment, and not be remembered because it occured pre-lucidity. Second, the development of the new neural connections that allow 'seemingly spontanious' DILD, are built during waking life by new levels of attention/ awareness in one thing or another.

I believe one can become lucid without sudden awareness of something "out-of-place" and that sometimes "it just happens."

That being said...this thread could easily be summed up with three simple phrases:

- Awareness of your surroundings and environment is a good thing to practice while awake.
- ADA can help you achieve lucidity.
- Awareness can be achieved without ADA.

How you get to a lucid dream isn't important. What matters, in every instance, is that you get there.

I agree with many of the points here and understand some of the argument against....some. Anyway, there seems to be a general misunderstanding with how ADA works amongst some. While ADA can help with recognizing incoherence, irregularities, things out of place, etc, that isn't what ADA should be practiced for. ADA makes spontaneous lucidity a regularity to the point that it isn't spontaneous anymore. ADA teaches your mind to become lucid because you are in a dream. Not because you can tell its a dream, but because you KNOW its a dream. You just know it and realize it without anything at all happening within said dream from one point to another. That is the "feeling" I'm talking about for lack of a better word. Its not a physical feeling, its a mental feeling. A feeling of presence and nothing more. The presence of the dream I suppose. It almost needs to be experienced to be understood. With ADA, your mind is being trained to naturally distinguish between reality and the dream state. If you get deep enough into ADA with regard to lucid dreaming and are able to always distinguish between reality and the dream state, you will be forever lucid.

You guys say it can't be the only tool for lucidity and I can agree with that. It CAN be your only induction technique if you wish. I practice ADA, dream journal, and that is it as far as boosters and techniques go. I get 15-25 "spontaneous" DILDs per month (average at 20 per). At some point, its not "spontaneous" anymore....right? There is no way I could ever agree with anything that states that ADA, if practiced correctly, does not significantly boost lucidity....significantly.

Originally Posted by KingYoshi

I agree with many of the points here and understand some of the argument against....some. Anyway, there seems to be a general misunderstanding with how ADA works amongst some. While ADA can help with recognizing incoherence, irregularities, things out of place, etc, that isn't what ADA should be practiced for. ADA makes spontaneous lucidity a regularity to the point that it isn't spontaneous anymore. ADA teaches your mind to become lucid because you are in a dream. Not because you can tell its a dream, but because you KNOW its a dream. You just know it and realize it without anything at all happening within said dream from one point to another. That is the "feeling" I'm talking about for lack of a better word. Its not a physical feeling, its a mental feeling. A feeling of presence and nothing more. The presence of the dream I suppose. It almost needs to be experienced to be understood. With ADA, your mind is being trained to naturally distinguish between reality and the dream state. If you get deep enough into ADA with regard to lucid dreaming and are able to always distinguish between reality and the dream state, you will be forever lucid.

You guys say it can't be the only tool for lucidity and I can agree with that. It CAN be your only induction technique if you wish. I practice ADA, dream journal, and that is it as far as boosters and techniques go. I get 15-25 "spontaneous" DILDs per month (average at 20 per). At some point, its not "spontaneous" anymore....right? There is no way I could ever agree with anything that states that ADA, if practiced correctly, does not significantly boost lucidity....significantly.

I think we all agree with what you have said.

No worries. It's all good.

ADA is important but it´s not enough. If you also practice critical questioning/ RC then it is a wonderful combo.

So ADA+critical questioning is a synergistic interaction. ADA will help you remember to test your state while awake, help with vividness and recall while asleep.

Also, ADA may build intentionality ( but that´s not a ADA specific mechanism ). So, to practice ADA alone is, IMO, mainly an intention technique, which will only be helpful if you think so.