Thread: OPEN BETA - Open beta TWOTLD - Day 3

Here we go...

Chapter 3 - True False Awakenings

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” - Edgar Allan Poe

Any study of lucid dreaming or lucid dreaming outliers will inevitably come across the false awakening phenomenon. False awakenings, as the name implies, occur when you “wake up” in a dream, realizing you had been dreaming everything previous. Upon awakening, you get out of bed to go about the day, but after a few moments, you again “wake up” and realize you had only dreamed that you had woken up. You just had a dream about waking up from a dream. These dreams nested within dreams nested within dreams can sometimes go on and on. I once went through a series of false awakenings five times, each time getting out of bed, realizing I had been dreaming, and proceeding to make my way to the bathroom and into the shower. In the dreams, each time the shower water hit me, I “woke up”. After the final occurrence, when the water didn’t wake me up and I was allowed to proceed with my day, a certain mistrust arose within me. I showered cautiously, suspicious that the whole process of waking up from a dream could continue at any moment.

While some lucid dreamers experience false awakenings as frustrating, others consider them to be quite thrilling. In each “waking up” event, there’s a delicious unknowing. You feel awake, rested, and ready to get on with your day, but then delight to find out you were in fact still dreaming. The dream fooled you. It lured you in, hoodwinked you, and sent you back to the beginning. “You don’t know up from down,” the dream says with a smile.

Many lucid dreaming texts mention the false awakening in passing, a side-effect of pursuing the dreaming art, but having begun the process of searching for secrets, our eyes trained to scan unfamiliar terrains in search of incongruities, we stumble across this phenomenon and it gives us pause. We’ve begun to look at the dream with new eyes. The anomalies of dreaming we normally brush aside have instead become areas of interest. We have begun to consider that programmed within our own minds, within our own dreams, are the clues we need to achieve mastery in lucidity. Instead of a foe to be controlled and overcome, the dream begins to take on aspects of a patient teacher, teaching us the same lessons over and over until we take heed. When we take this approach with false awakenings, we immediately realize that this occasional phenomenon holds many clues to help us along our path.

Typically, false awakenings are studied from the outside. A scientist or oneironaught will have either experienced or read about the occurrence, and then from her normal mode of consciousness speculate on possible explanations or bioprocesses that give some sort of reasonable rationale to this dreaming curiosity. Ourselves, however, we have read books and studies, and sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree with whatever premise or argument is being made. We nod our heads one way or the other, but at the end of it all, nothing has been gained. We now know that we’re after a different kind of knowledge and different kinds of explanations. Instead of more data on dreaming, we seek something that transforms. We seek experience and the wisdom and intuition that inevitably follow. And so, rather than studying false awakenings from the outside looking in, we continue our journey and dive straight into this baffling realm.

Using the example of waking up, getting out of bed, stumbling up the stairs and into the bathroom, turning on the shower, stripping down, and stepping in, followed by contact with the hot water and an immediate “waking up”, there seems to be little value in this dream sequence that repeated itself five times. So again we must apply our secret-revealing trick, our compass that always points to the profound, and look to the outliers while chucking the rest.

The outliers in this sequence are at the beginning and the end: the moments of (false) awakening. What happens in-between doesn’t ultimately matter. I could have jumped rope, rode an elephant, or swallowed fire. The details that tie two remarkable occurrences together simply alter the way the story is told while providing a backdrop upon which our lessons are revealed. The latter outlier, the dawning realization that this had all been a dream, should be a familiar experience to a lucid dreamer. This is the quintessential experience that we seek out night after night, and here we find it, experienced over and over, but never quite leading to true lucidity. We wake up from one dream, only to find ourselves unwittingly in another. “Wake up, wake up!” the dream shouts at us again. And again, we awaken from a dream, but we’re right back where we started.

So what is the dream telling us? Are we trapped? Do we not know up from down? At the end of my experience, I was left in a state of not knowing. I approached the shower with a certain amount of trepidation. I looked at all of reality with an ever-increasing suspicion, waiting for it all to come crashing down while sending me back to the beginning. The “real world” had once again become mysterious. I knocked on walls to test their solidity. I pinched myself to reassure my mind that I was awake (not a fool-proof reality check, but a common one). After a certain amount of time, when my suspicions were assuaged, I resumed the routine of my day and the whole experience just became another vague memory.

But could that be the very point! When we look at the first outlier and consider everything that happens in that very first moment, what do we find? We wake up realizing we had been dreaming, and immediately continue about our day like nothing had happened. In effect, we wake up and go right back to sleep! This is a common frustration for lucid dreamers that can happen at any time. We’ll be wandering through an ordinary dream, oblivious, but then someone makes a comment or we see a flying giraffe or we decide to do a reality check, and we ask ourselves, “Am I dreaming?” And our half-hearted response is, “Yes, I guess I am.” But instead of embracing lucidity, we get on with whatever was going on in the dream. We have a flickering moment of lucidity, then it is extinguished by whatever story or routine we are caught up in.

In the false awakenings, we are seeing a reflection of our waking lives. Some cold water shock briefly wakes us up, but instead of becoming lucid and freeing ourselves from whatever story we’re caught up in, we say, “Oh, I was dreaming” but then go right back to sleep.

For most people, the morning routine is pretty automatic. It requires no will, no decisions, no effort, no lucidity. It’s just a story, an inevitable sequence of events. We’re completely on automatic, doing the next thing we’ve programmed ourselves to do. I wake up. I stretch. I wander to the bathroom, etc. My morning routine eventually flows into my work routine which eventually flows into my post-work routine, dinner routine, and bedtime routine. Moments of brilliant lucidity are almost completely absent. Viewed from a higher perspective, moments of deliberate choice are almost completely absent. It’s as if we’re caught up in some great routine we call Life. What then, would it feel like to awaken?

To find out, let’s first flip this thing on its head. Instead of repeatedly waking up in a dream, let’s repeatedly fall “asleep” in the real world and see what happens…

Exercise 3a: Reverse False Awakenings

Relax and become aware of your state of mind. Notice your mood, any tensions or concerns that may be present, and any other sensations that are showing up in consciousness. Then, experience a Reverse False Awakening. Discover that you’re suddenly in a lucid dream, and having woken up in a lucid dream, go do something. Make it something simple and nearby, and be aware of your lucidity as you go about your task. Your lucidity will likely peak during the RFA, then slowly taper down over the next few moments. When you find yourself approaching normal consciousness, undergo another RFA.

Rediscover that you have woken up in a lucid dream, and in that state, continue doing whatever you’re doing. Go through the RFA process at least 10 times.

Exercise 3b: True False Awakenings

With eyes closed, review your day in detail. From getting out of bed until now, go through everything that has happened. Let the review take as long as it needs to in order to bring in as much detail as possible. When the review reaches the present moment, open your eyes, “wake up”, and become as lucid as you can. Realize the whole day has just been a dream, and you can now decide to do whatever you want to do. Hold on to your state of lucidity as long as possible. See if you can notice when it slips away. If it does slip away, let yourself “wake up” again.

The goal of lucid dreaming is to wake up in a dream. With normal false awakenings, it almost seems like our minds are figuring out how to use the “waking up” muscle or mechanism. We’re becoming accustomed to the feel of waking up in a dream. The more we can exercise and stretch this muscle during the day, the stronger it becomes, and the more accustomed we’ll be to spontaneously waking up in the dream. In both 3a and 3b, after each awakening moment, we want to maintain the feel of waking up for as long as possible. We want to keep that muscle working so that using it in the dream becomes inevitable, rather than a constant struggle.

End of Chapter 3. All text (c) C.A. von der Mehden, 2014.

Interesting. Reverse false awakenings are something I do daily, but not the second one. My mindset was more of this:
"If I am lucid and am constantly becoming lucid throughout the day, then I will constantly be lucid throughout the night"
My mantra is "I'm dreaming." Not "I'm going to be dreaming." Not "when I open my eyes I am dreaming" it is simply to get the day residue of lucidity and the thought of dream in my head as much as possible, because I realized early on that the reason that lots didn't become lucid was that even though they hit high levels of awareness in dreams, the idea of a dream did not cross their mind. It happens backwards as well, dream crosses their mind, but not enough awareness to do anything about it. This is why I noted two types of awareness "general dream awareness" and "state awareness".

I'll tell you how I do tomorrow.

Its me or exercises 1 2 and 3 are all about being "lucid" while being awake?
Its sounds that all exercises are like all Day awareness method.
However im enjoying the reading and doing the exercises as well.

Interesting awareness exercises. The framing lends them more credence and power than they'd otherwise have--context is important for developing the necessary schematic associations required to make such tech effective, as you're probably aware.

But my lingering question: How do you propose someone who has never experienced lucidity, false awakenings, or similar events flex a muscle they've never once flexed?

Obviously, the benefits of concerted awareness have been proven in the wild time and time again, but the approaches you've presented seem more viable for someone who has an initial frame of reference. One which a complete novice would lack. I don't know if there's an effective way to address this in the prose, but I worry these exercises have the potential to erode confidence. I may be completely off-base here, but as another user (Nailler) previously commented:

Originally Posted by Nailler

You have to decide who your proper audience is for the book.

Regardless, I'm always pleased to see new tech floating around. =)

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

But my lingering question: How do you propose someone who has never experienced lucidity, false awakenings, or similar events flex a muscle they've never once flexed?

That's one of the things I want to find out with the open beta test. In the local tests, everyone had had at least one lucid dream before, had remarkable experiences as we went along, but as you say, they had a frame of reference. Hopefully someone who hasn't had a LD yet will try these out and report on their experiences. Later on, we'll find out that lucidity isn't a prerequisite, but I do want to have non-lucid reports before we get there...

Been trying these a little bit today and it's been pretty interesting so far. I've worked with ADA practices over the past few weeks which I think helps but I like the idea of feeling like everything happening is actually just a vivid lucid dream and I think it will help to practice holding onto that feeling for as long as possible. I know I've had lucid dreams where I get distracted and end up forgetting I was lucid so it should help with that.

Originally Posted by cvdmehden

Later on, we'll find out that lucidity isn't a prerequisite, but I do want to have non-lucid reports before we get there...

That's my intuition as well. After all, the mechanisms already exist in each person, whether they're cognizant to that fact or not... As a whole, I think what you've presented thus far will be enough to get most anyone's gears turning.


Aside: most of the criticisms I've read focus on the tech itself, but the story and explanations that surround the exercises are what I find most valuable here. The tech is solid. Attempting to construct a proper frame of reference make them much more useful than if you'd simply thrown them into a vacuum (as is typically the norm). I do hope others on this site realize that and shift their focus accordingly.

I have had very few FAs over 7 months of my LD practicing (5? 6? Out of many many hundreds of non-lucid dreams). However, in my last LD streak I did have a significantly elevated occurence of lucida and a few non-lucids fading into FAs, so I'm hoping that I will continue to have more of them and catch them. 3b looks like an interesting way to do that. Practicing becoming lucid, and "waking up" and realizing you're lucid seem like good exercises.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

The framing lends them more credence and power than they'd otherwise have--context is important for developing the necessary schematic associations required to make such tech effective, as you're probably aware.

I had a similar thought.

I believe that the workability of most "new" LD technologies is dependent almost entirely upon the framing and back story. When it comes to LDing, I don't think it's possible to overestimate the power of expectations.

Memories of past events have the greatest effect on expectations. The greater one's history of having difficulty in their LD efforts, the greater the expectation that it will continue to be difficult. A "new" approach with a good back story can break or even reverse that cycle. So I would expect that some will find cvdmehden's exercises quite effective.

I'm not saying cvdmehden's exercises are bogus. Quite the opposite in fact. If a technique works, even if it's only because it raises expectations, it works.

I also believe that awareness exercises like the ones in cvdmehden's book effect brain chemistry, and that can effect ones success rate... but similar exercises have been around forever.

The true test is whether or not the approach produces consistent results in the long term.

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

Aside: most of the criticisms I've read focus on the tech itself, but the story and explanations that surround the exercises are what I find most valuable here. The tech is solid. Attempting to construct a proper frame reference make them much more useful than if you'd simply thrown them into a vacuum (as is typically the norm). I do hope others on this site realize that and shift their focus accordingly.

Good point.

Not gonna lie, this whole thing (whether it is going to provide "the answer" to LDing or not) has made me really excited to read every day and to see the responses by everyone.

Another exercise similar to what I already do, apart from 3b which I generally only do before falling asleep, sometimes I just play the day in my head and other times I write it down on a journal just as I would a dream. From this I can generally pick out the key pieces that occurred throughout the day just as I do with certain events in dreams that stand out from others.

As I mentioned before, these exercises of dreaming awake generally makes me feel more present where I can find life more enjoyable, as well as giving me a better sense of control of my actions.

Also as others have said I'm not too sure if someone who has never experienced a lucid dream would understand these. But I believe this is the right approach, so I'm looking forward to seeing what other people experience with this.

Hi everyone. I'm a little late to the party...just read the lessons so far and I will be putting them into use. I have never had a LD and general dream recollection is difficult for me, but I will post any results I experience. ☺

Day 4 is now live...

http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...r-day-4-a.html