Thread: ADA: Right or Wrong for Lucidity?

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?

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.

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?