Thread: Prospective Memory and Lucid Dreaming 4

Thanks, I think this has a lot of good stuff in it.

The importance of importance: I think this is really important! It pretty much single-handedly explains the "competition effect." And I agree it is not stressed enough in LD material. I think it works for all intentions. I've stopped more or less noticing middle of the night wakings, I think because deep down inside I've started placing more importance on non-interrupted sleep through to morning. So that's something for me to work on, as alarms are really terrible for dreaming.

How to keep importance high, while not succumbing to anxiety or disappointment after repeated "failures," bears perhaps its own discussion. As Sensei points out, strong positive expectation won't guarantee LDs, but strong negative expectation can suppress them.

it also explains why on the days that I had a dozen or more waking PM targets I got lucid dreams at night -- the goal center was activated and left "turned on" probably.

On the subject of the wording, use of the word "will": I've read where "will" can produce a sense of "vague, possibly distant future" to the brain, while omitting the word "will" gives more of a sense of immediacy and "always".

In part B, if steps 3 and 4 are to be repeated, then perhaps substituting the particular dream sign instead of "a dream sign" would be more powerful? But this requires more mental effort to keep changing the mantra that could result in insomnia for some (probably me).

And in regards to the insomnia comment at the end of (part 3?): it is true, when I've done MILD with visualizations, I usually end up awake for long periods of time, which means missed dreaming. I think it's important not to skip the "relax" portion of the LaBerge MILD instructions, and more importantly, to *hold* the relaxation while doing the visualisations, to stave off insomnia.

My own version of MILD which I admittedly haven't done in a while, involved doing this:

+ Telling myself, one time, "The next time I'm dreaming, I remember to recognize..."

Then in a loop I visualize recent/past dreams scenes, and tell myself "I'm dreaming":

+ Visualize scene A, tell myself: "I'm dreaming"
+ Visualize scene B, tell myself: "I'm dreaming"
+ Visualize scene C, tell myself: "I'm dreaming"

in quick succession.

This gets a lot of "I'm dreaming"s close together, associating each one with a sign we want our brains to recognize. For me that seemed to work because in the past I almost always became lucid while speaking or thinking the words, "I'm dreaming".

edit: this is also how I do waking PM exercises: "The next time I see a yellow bus, I remember to recognise..."
+ (visualise yellow bus), "I'm dreaming"
+ (visualise yellow bus), "I'm dreaming"
+ (visualise yellow bus), "I'm dreaming"
...
and so on until I think the encoding has "established."

And I'm wondering, do you have a theory on bringing more awareness/vividness into dreams? Or does a high-importance encoding of PM targets induce awareness in your opinion?