Awareness during waking life. I remember so much from today!

[CherryBomb]

So I tried the All Day Awareness thing today and holy hell I remember so much details! Usually I'm a heavy daydreamer who doesn't pay any attention to waking life at all - like sleep walking. So I tried it out, I paid attention to my surroundings using my senses, I kept in the "now" and I hardly daydreamed at all (although the day was pretty long without the daydreams). I'm only starting to try this out because I've heard that not only does it help toward lucidity, it also helps people recall dreams. Is this true? Will it get my dreams more vivid to the point that it feels like real life? Recently my dream recall went from a couple of dreams to nothing at all. I've noticed this only happened because my daydreaming was getting more intense with me using it often to escape reality. So does it help with vividness and recall? I'm about to go to sleep so I guess I'll find out in WBTB.

[Laurelindo]

So I tried the All Day Awareness thing today and holy hell I remember so much details! Usually I'm a heavy daydreamer who doesn't pay any attention to waking life at all - like sleep walking. So I tried it out, I paid attention to my surroundings using my senses, I kept in the "now" and I hardly daydreamed at all (although the day was pretty long without the daydreams). I'm only starting to try this out because I've heard that not only does it help toward lucidity, it also helps people recall dreams. Is this true? Will it get my dreams more vivid to the point that it feels like real life? Recently my dream recall went from a couple of dreams to nothing at all. I've noticed this only happened because my daydreaming was getting more intense with me using it often to escape reality. So does it help with vividness and recall? I'm about to go to sleep so I guess I'll find out in WBTB. Hello. Yes, Lucid Living will certainly help a lot with your dream recall, since you practice your ability to pay attention to details. Also, one very fascinating fact that you can incorporate into you Lucid Living lifestyle is that what you perceive as reality is in fact just as "illusory" as dreams. You don't really see reality itself, you only see your brain's interpretation of it. Think about hallucinations, for example - if you experienced the real world the way it actually is then you would not be able to hallucinate at all, since if you did that then it would mean that real life itself could create hallucinations that everyone could observe; but this cannot happen. This means that your experience of reality is very internal, and is all in your mind. Of course your waking life experiences are based on actual physically existing objects, but it's still your brain's interpretations that you actually experience. When you realize this, then waking life will seem that much more dreamlike.

[CherryBomb]

Aww hell, didn't remember anything at all. I have no idea why my recall was at nothing last night, even in wbtb. If I do remember dreams, I only remember them like ten minutes after I get up and they're usually fragments. None of my dreams seem real anymore. They used to be ingrained in my memory like waking life as soon as I wake up, but not anymore. I even had the intention to remember my dreams but nothing happened... Laurelindo, thank you for the input. pretty interesting how it would be illusionary.

[Laurelindo]

Aww hell, didn't remember anything at all. I have no idea why my recall was at nothing last night, even in wbtb. If I do remember dreams, I only remember them like ten minutes after I get up and they're usually fragments. None of my dreams seem real anymore. They used to be ingrained in my memory like waking life as soon as I wake up, but not anymore. I even had the intention to remember my dreams but nothing happened... Laurelindo, thank you for the input. pretty interesting how it would be illusionary. You're welcome. Dream recall can fluctuate, sometimes your dream recall is great and sometimes it's worse than normal. This can depend on many factors, like when you go to sleep, how long you sleep, how relaxed you feel when you wake up, if you wake up during a REM stage (the stage associated with dreaming, when dreams are at their highest intensity) or not, how stressed you are at the moment etc. Try planning your sleep schedule so that you can wake up naturally in the mornings, and then try to remember the dream as much as you can - but don't rush it, let the memories come back at their own pace. Yes, it's quite true that waking life is a form of illusion in a sense, because your brain creates a model of the world just the same way it does when you are dreaming. The only real difference is that dreams are based on something internal, like your thoughts and concerns, while waking life is based on external input. Your brain essentially guesses what everything looks like and sends all perceptions as signals to your brain and creates a picture of it, and this is the exactly same kind of constructive process as the one that happens during dreaming. In fact, dreams are so realistic to your brain that you physically and mentally react to everything that happens in dreams as if it happened for real. That's why you are paralyzed while you dream - it keeps you from running around and imitating your movements from the dream.