Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
I'm not sure how you came to this interpretation of my OP here.
I wrote the response in a hasty way. I wasn't meaning to contradict what you said. I did understand what you mean. I think my main idea here is that any of these techniques (self-awareness, environment awareness, mindfulness) come down to the very interpretation of the reader and they don't have to be mutually exclusive, and that each one of them can be practiced the wrong way if you end up excluding any part of your experience.

Quote Originally Posted by lenscaper View Post
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.
Self-awareness can be interpreted as being aware only of the framework of your body, excluding the environment. I have practiced this for a very long time (through Vipassana) and I'm not convinced it brought me any benefit other than potentially making me more aware of my reactions, which isn't necessarily bad. In theory it sounds good, but for me I found that less so in practice. My reasoning was similar to what you describe: since my feelings and sensations represent my nearest reaction to my environment, they are best connected to the present moment and are the absolute sum and result of it, thus, there is no need to pay attention to anything else. In a sense, it's believable and nice, but requires focusing on just one thing, while ignoring the rest, offering a very biased view.

Awareness (what is generally on this forum called ADA) can be interpreted as paying attention to only the environment, which is the opposite of the above and makes you neglect your own presence and exclude the most important part of it, YOU.

I think the truth, and what I plan to try out now, is a type of awareness which includes both and excludes none. I think this is what Sageous is pointing at. Technically, I made it a goal to experiment for two months with Sageous's version of being aware, and that is: simply knowing you are here, in the environment. I've done it before, for a very brief time and noticed incredible shifts in behaviour and perspective. As for how much it helps with lucid dreaming, we'll see. Thank you for your reply. This is a topic that interests me greatly and for a long time I thought that being aware means focusing on something (breath, sensations, body, etc), which made it incredibly difficult to maintain awareness when something else required focus (work, computer, conversation, etc). The way you put it: simply knowing, and not focusing on something, is very interesting and is something I want to play around with.

I am very interested in exploring this topic further and discovering together where misunderstandings lie in the guides, improving them based on our discoveries so that more people can better understand them and benefit from them. I will reply here by the end of the two months, or occasionally during them to update you on how maintaining this knowing of myself within my environment is affecting me and potentially my lucid dreaming. If you prefer I do it in another thread, let me know.