ADA vs. Self Awareness [Internal vs. External]

As I am sure many of you have read, one of the most common methods for helping with LD's is awareness. It seems like there are 2 main types or "techniques". The first of which is ADA or "All-Day-Awareness. This means being aware of your environment and everything around you. Smells, tastes, colors, shapes, etc... (very general view of it)... Some people vouch that this is THE method to use, just look at all the tutorials and threads. The idea of this is to trigger lucidity when you notice something odd in the dream world. The other "type" of awareness is Self Awareness which is more internal. This can include knowing your place in the universe, knowing that you play a role and everything is effected by everything including you. It can mean being aware of how you feel, or being aware of the fact that you were just day-dreaming (whereas in ADA the focus is to try to stay outside of your mind). The idea of this one is to induce lucidity because in a dream the concept that "everything affects everything" and other similar ideas will mean something totally different, where YOU actually are the CAUSE and EFFECT of everything. Many LD'ers will also vouch that THIS is the method to use.

With that out of the way... I have a thought. Does one not induce the other when TRULY being aware? I started with ADA, then focused more on Self-Awareness the past couple of weeks... and in the past few days I have noticed... When I focus on the environment I also am aware of my place in it and how I feel about it as well as everything that is happening within it. Or... when I focus on myself or do reflection I also become MORE AWARE of my surroundings. See... I believe the idea is much more simple then EXTERNAL awareness and INTERNAL awareness. What do the 2 have in common? Awareness.

So I am starting to believe that essentially they are the same thing because in both you stop and you critically examine the universe in one way or another. You become aware.

So DREAMVIEWS... What method have you been using and what are the results? Have you considered doing both at the same time? Can you prove there is a difference? Has ADA mentally drained you? Has spontaneous awareness yielded results? Anything you have to say or contribute to awareness would be greatly appreciated, for the sake of bettering the art of lucid dreaming and truly being an Oneironaut.

My short answer is I prefer the internal awareness. All day external awareness just feels like a bunch of flat reality checks. But if I sporadically, throughout the day, practice an "internal awareness" check, then I can almost feel like I do that moment I realize I'm dreaming in a DILD. Hard to explain, but that way is more effective for me than maintaining an awareness of my 5 senses all day long.

Hope that answered your questions.

My first ever lucid came as a result of doing vipassana meditation 40 mins every day for a couple weeks. It's basically a cultivation of awareness and presence, both internal and external. I was just doing the internal stuff, like observing my mind's mental talk, images, emotions. Lucid dreaming wasn't on my radar at that point, so I wasn't "tainted" by other techniques or intentions about dreaming. This makes me think that awareness cultivation is a pretty basic aide to lucid dreaming.

Everyone needs to find what works best for them. Full ADA is not necessary in my opinion: what's important is the heightened awareness, not what you're aware of. I try to keep a pearl of awareness going about myself in my location, and periodically ask myself "is this a waking location" and memory checks like "where was I before / what was I doing?" and the Sageous RRC (reflect a moment on the wonder of being sentient, examine some recent memories, etc.)

This is a common misconception (but starting to think it's one that is going to last a looong time....)

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Can you prove there is a difference?

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Awareness is one thing. It requires things like attention, perception of things like objects, sensory information, and events (either internal or external to the subject). There are basic types of awareness, and (part of) ADA refers to this awareness that even dogs can do. Now, the point here is that if you tell a person to be aware of their surroundings, paying attention to the present, you're telling them to practice mindfulness: loads of studies analyze the benefits of mindfulness and it's positive impact on the brain, but no studies report increase on lucid dreaming. What makes you lucid with ADA is not the fact that you're "absorbing your surroundings", it's the awareness COMBINED with the intent of lucidity. Lucidity cannot function without self-awareness, and you can see this in the brain, because self-awareness, contrary to basic awareness, requires cortical signaling, and you end up using more brain function than you would for simple " being completely aware of your surroundings".

Self-awareness is present on every single lucid dream: self-awareness in a dream makes it a lucid dream, so saying self-awareness is "one way" to achieve lucidity is misunderstanding what it really is. You can achieve a LD without ADA, but you can't achieve a LD without self-awareness. Flies are said to process 8 times more information than humans, this having their basic awareness is greatly amplified, but they cannot induce lucidity because they don't possess that degree of self-awareness. Other animals, like chimps, possess some degree of self-awareness but (as far as we know) they don't understand the concept of a dream, so they can't induce a lucid dream (could be wrong here though).

Now, self-awareness requires this self-monitoring processes that allow you to understand you are in a dream. That neuroscience study shows that when lucidity is achieved, these parts of the brain responsible for self-monitoring light up. In the other way, in every single (non-lucid dream), basic awareness is present. This is not to say that ADA isn't effective, because it is, and the reason is because there's more to it than just basic " be completely aware of your surroundings". The author of the technique even encourages you to "Go ahead and perform some RCs during these ADA sessions as well." ADA is great because being mindfulness directed towards lucidity, (once again, like the author mentions) " The better your awareness, the more likely you will be able to recognize dream signs within the dream.", along with other advantages, one of them possibly (hard to know) being an increase of self-awareness. But you can become self-awareness in a dream for thousands of other reasons: reality check, MILD, WILD, tholey, dream signs, etc etc. All of them results in self-awareness just like ADA.

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Does one not induce the other when TRULY being aware?

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No. ADA can induce self-awareness, self-awareness cannot induce ADA. Self-awareness is, once again, what you're aiming to, what makes you lucid.
On a normal dream, aren't you aware? You see environment, objects, events, many times your body, etc etc. Zero lucidity. And you indeed pay attention to all that input: you interact with DCs, you observe scenes and events, you play with objects, all without a single clue you're dreaming.
When self-awareness kicks in, you are in a lucid dream: you are aware of your state (dreaming) and are able to differentiate the input from your own identity (I'm not me, I'm a projection of me, I'm dreaming).

Mindfulness (you can call the "scientific name" for "being aware and in the present") is a hot topic in nowadays neuroscience/psychology, and the fact that it has to many benefits is that it allows you to shut down your "Monkey mind", to analyze situations more calmy, respond less emotionally, and be more aware of details around you. This works great for lucid dreaming because it puts you in a "calm lake" to achieve self-awareness. But without self-awareness, ADA (or reality check, or MILD, or anything like that), you would never be able to become lucid. I personally think ADA (the mindfulness part) is one of the best ways to practice for lucid dreams, but it's only one part of the induction: a calm mind will achieve lucidity with self-monitoring (the processes that allow you to be self-aware), and this is why the technique itself advocates for the use of reality checking and dreamsigns. Certain types of meditation are also great for this, possibly even better if they include self-monitoring (of your thoughts, emotions, etc), something ADA itself doesn't mention (it's directed towards your surroundings), making meditation (once again, certain types) a possibly even better form of mindfulness.

It's important to practice awareness the right way, though.
If you simply practice being more aware of the environment then you might improve that specific aspect in dreams so you just observe the dream environment more actively, without actually questioning it;
kind of like treating the dream environment as a fascinating movie.

I have had several dreams where I have "known" I was awake, and those experiences have convinced me that there is always a possibility that you may be dreaming whenever you feel your mind wandering.
So nowadays I will always snap back to reality and ask myself "how do I know I am not dreaming right now?" whenever I find myself lost in thought or absent-minded, and especially if I get up in the morning or wake up from naps, because they could be False Awakenings!

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Originally Posted by Zoth

This is a common misconception (but starting to think it's one that is going to last a looong time....)
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.....a possibly even better form of mindfulness.

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I agree with everything you've said. Just the response I was looking for, thank you. I agree with you in that Self-Awareness is the key, but I think what I meant by one triggering the other is that when I perform one, I also think of the other, thus triggering it, as far the techniques go. But, like you said, you can be aware of everything around you but without the self awareness aspect of it, nothing may happen. I don't necessarily support the questions I proposed I was simply trying to invoke detailed responses from as many different people as I could. Thank you.

Though I guess I managed to miss this thread, I figured I might offer a couple of comments anyway, even though all the important poitns have already been made.

First, everyone should re-read Zoth's post, think about what he wrote, and then read it again. I've never read a clearer explanation of the difference between ADA's "normal" awareness and self-awareness, and also of the importance of self-awareness to lucid dreaming... it's one of those posts that I wish could be permanently pasted on the front page of the DV forum; thanks Zoth, for taking the time!

Next, keep in mind that awareness and self-awareness are not techniques. They are conditions or actions of consciousness; conditions that are not handy tools to be learned and wielded to "trigger" other things, like lucidity, but actual functions of our minds that would be there whether we honed our ability to access them or not. I hope that made sense, because I think it is important.

Also, I'd like to repeat something Zoth already said: Normal awareness -- that which is used for ADA -- is a natural function that pretty much every living thing possesses and practices every day. A mouse, for instance, is a master of ADA to a degree humans could not even understand, much less emulate -- but even the most aware mouse will never, ever have a lucid dream. Awareness does nothing to trigger lucidity -- indeed, a powerful sense of awareness might actually backfire, making a NLD more real and acceptable and quashing any chance of lucidity. Self-awareness, on the other hand, is a condition of consciousness enjoyed only by humans (and maybe one or two other species, but that is for another thread), it is sentience. But it is sentience that must be earned. Though all of our minds are capable of self-awareness, actually intentionally achieving it on a regular basis is not very easy, and happens more rarely than you might think... therefore, carefully practiced techniques or disciplines are necessary to nurture your sense of self-awareness. And, as Zoth already said, since the presence of self-awareness in a dream is literally the definition of lucid dreaming, it really must be present in order to be lucid (unlike normal awareness, as you can be totally lucid without ever seeing a thing around you).

So these things are not techniques meant to trigger anything. They are the result of techniques, sure, but not techniques themselves. Also, they are two very different activities, different states of consciousness, are are by no means the same thing. Assuming they are will make self-awareness more more difficult, I think, and lucidity more elusive. ADA is a fine practice, but it must be done in concert with self-awareness in order to achieve lucidity. But Zoth already said all that, didn't he?

For what it's worth

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Now, while practicing the path, all the outer and inner
perceptions arise from this quality of unceasing cognizance,
the natural display of the intangible empty essence of mind.
In other words, all the objects of the six senses-the outer
visible forms, sounds, scents, aromas, and textures-are
this cognizant quality without a single exception. The inner
visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, physical, and mental
sensations, and their corresponding attractions and aversions,
are also this cognizance, without any exception. Thus all
-outer and inner things, without a single omission, are exclusively
the manifestations of the cognizant quality of one's
own mind. That is called cognizance.

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Perfect Clarity: A Tibetan Buddhist Anthology of Mahamudra and Dzogchen

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Originally Posted by Sageous

Next, keep in mind that awareness and self-awareness are not techniques. They are conditions or actions of consciousness; conditions that are not handy tools to be learned and wielded to "trigger" other things, like lucidity, but actual functions of our minds that would be there whether we honed our ability to access them or not. I hope that made sense, because I think it is important.

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Yes that makes sense! Thank you. I may have been going about this all wrong because... I seem to have thought of Self-Awareness as a trigger to lucidity, probably because I confused this state of mind with a type of reality check. I just guess my personal trouble comes from trying to comprehend how exactly to reach this state of mind in a dream if it is not itself a trigger. I suppose this is because whenever I am Lucid, I have never really taken time to think about/contemplate the idea of self awareness but hopefully when I do, I will truly be able to understand what it means when applied to waking life. I appreciate your contribution, Sageous!

I would also like to add that everyone who has posted on this thread has given me a new perspective on awareness, and has made me learn something I didn't know before, which I am very grateful for.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

... therefore, carefully practiced techniques or disciplines are necessary to nurture your sense of self-awareness.

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Hi Sageous, could you elaborate on this key area, what 'carefully practiced techniques' can we all use on a day to day basis to improve our self awareness, for instance - im driving in my car (what can I do to increase self awareness) or im mowing the lawn etc. Do I pay attention to my thoughts or to the 'green' of the grass?

What does a typical day for you involve in terms of increasing / maintaining your level of self awareness?

Hope you can help, thanks