Experiments with memory and awareness
I was doing a lot of thinking about awareness techniques - particularly ADA, and the Omnilucidity non-blinking technique - and I was also doing a lot of learning (I'd always wanted to learn all the countries of the world and their capitals, just to kick off a broader knowledge of the geography of the world I live in, and so I can look really clever when TV quiz shows are on ;) ) and was using the Method Of Loci. The Method Of Loci is also known by other names, such as Memory Palace and Roman Room. If you don't know, it's a memory system where you associate information you want to learn with a place (location), the idea being to make memorising the information and recalling it easier. Example: You want to remember to buy beans and a dog whistle when you go shopping later. So, to apply Method of Loci you look at something in your room - the mirror, say - and choose a a part of the mirror - say the frame. You want to remember the baked beans first. So you then make a ridiculous image in your head, such as the the frame of the mirror being made of baked beans instead of wood, and you visualise all the beans trickling down the wall, making an awful mess. To remember the dog whistle, you can make a ridiculous image based on the actual mirror - the reflecting part: You imagine yourself looking in the mirror and instead of having a head for a head you have big dog whistle for a head. And to add a bit more, you try to scream but instead of a scream coming out, the high shriek of a dog whistle comes out. Later, when you're out shopping, you only have to remember your frame and the mirror to remember you need baked beans and a dog whistle. If you can remember something - such as the route you walk to work - you can memorise thousands of items using Method of Loci (and I have!)
The idea popped into my head of using my body parts as "locations" to remember information. The idea being to try and combine my memorising with an awareness technique - so I'd be doing stuff that made me aware of my body, but I was also doing something that was equally as constructive - learning information. I made a list of body parts and associated information with each part. For example, for my big toe I wanted to memorise the first country alphabetically (Afghanistan), so I visualised an Afghan hound biting my big toe. I remembered about 50 items, using different body parts. Another example would be that I imagined an Eiffel Tower springing out of my nose (for France, obviously) I took the idea a bit further and imagined I was in a box (the best way to imagine this is to visualise that I was in a coffin) and formed associations around the box, the idea being to bring my awareness towards myself, my body, my immediate environment, in dreams. The dream I had that night was the most clear (I want to avoid using the term "lucid" to avoid confusion :biggrin:) I'd had for a while.
I decided to try to refine things a bit. So I just used my glasses for the locations. I listed the parts of my glasses and associated information with the various parts. Hundreds of them. Similarly, the idea here was to spend a lot of time during the day paying attention to my glasses - memorising and recalling the information - in the hope that my attention would go to my glasses in my dreams, I'd remember the exercise and BINGO!, I'd be lucid. I continued the exercise for about 21 days. On not one occasion did my attention go towards my glasses in my dreams - or that area of my face. There were interesting similarities with the exercise, though. There were an awful lot of windows popping up in my dreams. So much so that windows (and peering through them) could've been considered a new dreamsign for me. The top of my glasses frame featured a lot in dreams, though not close up. For example, in one dream I was looking at a wall and there was a clear black line across the middle of the wall and animals were balancing on the top of this line! In another dream I scrutinised a fence in the distance and followed it from left to right and right to left. Obviously the line on the wall and the fence were the dreams' depictions of the top frame of my glasses. Close, no cigar. And no lucidity.
I moved on to using an object placed across the room - a clear cube, about the size of two fists put together. I moved on from Method of Loci a little, a treated the box as not an object with lots of locations to be used as hooks, but rather as a kind of "3D screen". I would visualise remembered information as happening in the box. 3 items on the far side of the box, 3 items on the base, 3 items on the near side, and 3 items on the top. The box didn't feature in dreams at all, though dream clarity and recall took a big leap up when I had done the exercise before going to bed. (You may notice that this is similar to the well known hand technique, where you study your hand for half an hour or so before bed and tell yourself "When I dream I will dream of my hand and realise I'm dreaming". I'm not willing to sit in bed for half an hour staring at my hand like a muppet, but I am willing to stare at something for half an hour when I'm achieving something constructive - learning - in addition to my quest to become lucid (equally as worthwhile, but a lot more frustrating).)
I moved on to staring at the cube while reviewing the "movie" inside the cube. The idea here was that the staring at the cube in waking life would happen in dreams (You probably know that if you stare at something in dream the thing will distort) and I'd see the distortions and think "Aha! Dreaming" Same results as before though - an increase in dream clarity and recall, but no lucidity. No staring as such in a "eyes locked" kind of way, but there was an increase in the amount of scrutinising I did, and also, interestingly, that kind of "white haze" you get when you stare at an object for a long time put in an appearance in a dream. (Still thinking about if there could be a way to use that.)
The next idea was to use a dreamsign. I often dream of my credit card (like most dreamsigns, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why that pops up in dreams more than other oft-used items). I held my credit card at arm's length (opposed to close to my face (in the glasses case) or across the room (in the case of the cube)). I treated the two sides of the credit card as being like two separate 3D viewing screens. I introduced a bit of magic for the first time too: On the side of the credit card facing me I would visualise/view items normally, but on the far side (not visible) I would treat it as though I had X-ray vision, and was viewing the items with magic X-ray vision, through the credit card. This carried over to dreams on the first night. In the dream I was in a theatre. To the left of me was a grey wall (the left side of the front of my credit card is grey) and to the right of me was a red curtain (the right side of the front of my credit card is red). The X-ray vision thing carried over to the dream too...sort of. A person in the theatre opened up the whole of the back wall of the theatre to reveal I was in a railway station, and I could see the lines disappearing into the distance. (NB: It's interesting here how the colour and layout of the card appeared in a dream, but not in the same size, and the distance from me was "wrong".)
The next day I did extensive visualisation using the credit card and did the visualisation for an hour before bed. That night was the first lucid experience. The dream was already very vivid (a "like I was in another life" type of dream). I was scrutinising a children's water park, which was on a hillside in the distance. On the left of the park was greyness, on the right side was an enormous red water slide. I twigged it was a dream. (Interesting again how the layout of the card - grey on the left, red on the right - occurred at the "wrong" distance.)
It's worth noting that the credit card itself has not featured in a dream.
I had another brainwave. If I was visualising things in front of my credit card - say, a Romanian was pointing up at Vladimir Putin (to remember the countries Romania and Russia) I could, essentially, treat it as though Putin was flying. So for all the visualisations I was doing I could tag any item above the ground as "flying". I have experimented with this and have had one flying dream - lucid - where I was in a plane, flying it with the power of my mind. (Need more time to test this one fully, though.)
The dreaming/not dreaming dichotomy.
So this is the dichotomy we know - we are either dreaming, or we're not dreaming. I am toying with the idea of having this dichotomy within a dream itself and building this idea into dreams. This is how this would tie into the credit card visualisation thing: The side nearest to me would be the dreaming side; the side away from me would be the not-dreaming side. Or put it another way, a lucid dream would be treated as a place in the dreamworld. So to become lucid in a dream, it wouldn't be a matter of realising we're dreaming in a dream, it would be a matter of going to a place in a dream - like we don't have the right to become lucid and enjoy lucidity until we go to that correct place. I'm guessing that's it's much easier for the sleeping, dreaming mind to grasp the concept of going somewhere to achieve something (lucidity and fun), than to grasp the - much more abstract - idea that we must be aware of our own mental state to achieve lucidity. Clear? Probably not. Will it work? Time will tell.
"Aim for the stars, reach the clouds".
What future - where technology is so advanced that virtually everything you can imagine is possible - would be akin to lucidity? If people could choose to alter their mental state in any way they choose, instantly? If someone could split instantaneously into several clones? If someone could instantly go to sleep and into a lucid dream? If simulators and virtual reality/ actual reality outdid lucidity? If you could put yourself into stasis for years? If everything - even objects - were sentient? Would it be possible to build this future world into the visualisations so that the events would occur in non-lucids and lead quickly to lucidity?
Other possible things to visualise. Variations, speculation etc.
Glasses problem
So when learning information by using the parts of my glasses as Method of Loci locations, the problem was that my awareness did not move to my glasses in dreams. What would happen if I put a stick in my mouth - a stick say, half a metre long - and created a range of Loci locations ranging from the far tip of the stick to the part inside my mouth? Would my awareness drift towards me and make me twig I'm dreaming? Speculation.
Eye movement while awake
If I used random points throughout the room I'm in as Loci locations so that my eyes have to dart about quickly to visualise them, would this carry over to dreams?
Hand focus
Could the hand and its components be used as Loci locations?
Other dreamsigns
What other dreamsigns could be used for Loci visualisations? Could action dreamsigns be used?
Cube variation
I could introduce a rule (when doing visualisation with a cube) that when I visualise things at the front of the cube, I always close my eyes.
The inside of the head
The inside of my head could be used for Loci locations and I could close my eyes while visualising. (I don't think this will work, based on my poor results with the glasses Loci experiments.)
A tube through the head
I could visualise items like there's a tube through my head: I would visualise items rushing towards me through the tube, into my head, and out of the other side.
Visualising only items behind me.
I could visualise only items behind me, to try to make events in dreams occur behind me, to play with my perception and increase my chances of becoming lucid.
The not-blinking approach (Omnilucidity)
Open eyes could be used to form Method of Loci associations. However, I doubt it will work (for me, anyway) - based on poor results with the glasses experiments.
Mirrors
I could use the reflection in a mirror for my Loci locations. Thus this could act as a reality check. (This is definitely on my "to try" list, but I'd need 10 lives and 10 bodies to try all the experiments I want to do.)
Everything's alive
I could treat all the items in my Loci visualisations as though they are alive. If this carried over to dreams it may increase the chances for lucidity - it would certainly make dreams interesting.
The simplest approach may work in the long term
The credit card approach - where I view memorised information on "3D screens" on the front side and the back side of the card may work in the long term without too much fussing about or fancy alterations to the technique. Here's my reasoning:
There need not be anything fancy about the question, "Am I dreaming?" One could use a foreign language, or you abbreviate the term to "AID?" and it would still function. You could even say the the question "Am I dreaming" could be represented by an action. Over time, perhaps the greyness - or the fact that I'm holding an object in my hand, or scrutinising any object, or whatever, would become the "Am I dreaming" for me and make me lucid. As long as I stay aware that I am doing my credit card exercise to become lucid in dreams it may work in the long term?
Going forward
I will continue with my Method of Loci split approach, and I will keep experimenting. The joy with this approach is that, even if the approaches don't give me lucids I can still do some constructive learning. I won't go back to the old ways of staying up at silly hours, chanting mantras ad nauseum and standing there holding my nose like a plonker and asking "Am I dreaming" every time something strange happens or someone says something silly.
