Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
reality is reality, unavoidably (sorry Tibetans!).
I got a chuckle out of that. I, too, have struggled with the basic concept of seeing waking life as a dream......even as I feel as though I have benefited from pondering the concept a lot. The more I ponder it, the more it makes sense on some levels.

I address this in my mind by thinking about how each of us is constantly creating our perception of that reality through our own personal cognitive reality. I think we all see things from a very personal perspective. I mean, if you and I, Sageous, were standing here in my office I think our perception of the surroundings would be different in subtle (or even not so subtle) ways. Its a bit like how two people standing and looking at a rainbow are each seeing a different rainbow due to the physics of the whole thing.

And speaking of physics, I also sometimes try to correlate this concept with the fact that in quantum physics it has been proven that measurement determines reality. That is, a particle does not exist in a certain state until it is observed in that state. Yeah....I guess that may be kind of a stretch, but its another interesting way to make sense of this question. Either way, I don't take the whole "everything is a dream" thing too literally. It really does help me, though, in my quest to establish that unbroken continuity of consciousness between awake and a'dream.

Quote Originally Posted by gbbr View Post
what is self awareness?
What is helping me of late is to equate self awareness to "body awareness". I feel as though when I am completely concentrating on my body; folding all of my senses inward if you will, I am tuning everything else completely out....so I am completely in that moment only. I do this during the day a lot and then at night as I prepare for sleep. Once again, if I can take the unbroken continuity of that awareness into the dream it helps me separate myself from the reality of the dream.

My dreams tend to be incredibly real. Sometimes when I am verging on true lucidity I stop and and gaze around in amazement at the reality of the scene and lucidity is left hanging out there in the balance. At times like these, my awareness of self connects me back to my body and lucidity once again blooms.

I have this mantra that I do a lot during the day:

The body connects to the moment
The moment connects to pure presence
Which is fueled by non-dual awareness
That's born from pure perception.

That is, of course, unabashedly ripped off from the Tibetan Dream Yoga stuff. My ADA protocol pretty much boils down to that these days and it is helping me a lot.

I have spent some time on this excellent thread....think I'll spend a bit more.