Active Training for Dream Critical Awareness

[Memm]

So we've known for a while about all these different techniques and we have also discussed awareness and there have also been a lot of methods that you can do during the day that have been presented over the years. Something I have been thinking about is; if you want to build up your body and health you can exercise, if you want to get better at maths you can practice problems, if you want to fly a plane or drive a car you train to do that. So if you want to LD, you....? Yes we have things like reality checks and mnemonics and willpower, but if you want stronger arms you lift weights, if you want a stronger awareness you need to target that particular region of the brain with something. If you want to increase your chance of lucid dreaming tonight there should also be some form of training you can do before bedtime that your brain will remember while you sleep. Thus we need training for the brain to target the mindfulness / critical awareness, meditation is one such exercise but it's not easy, the progress can be slow and it targets awareness in a very generalised way. You also have to do it correctly and practice a lot before you realise what "correctly" is. This got me thinking; games are great for the brain. Even first person shooters and action games develop your hand-eye coordination and even your ability to think quickly. Puzzle adventure games train you to think more critically and question the things around you. There has to be a game that directly affects our critical awareness state and something we can do before bed time. A game is fun, it'll keep you active and you can work on LD skills at the same time! I came up with a list of things that the game needs to address, it has to involve: Questioning reality Looking at things critically Maintaining a state of awareness / curiosity At the moment, a game which seems to fit the bill is Spot the Difference! You can find more on Google. Of course, we can't just play any which way, just like how you exercise correctly if you don't want to break something, we also need to go about playing this in a certain way. So, looking at the above image: First, simply look at the picture, try to identify what is actually happening, be aware of what the picture is showing, what the situation is etc... Next, find an object or part of the picture that you want to concentrate on, identify as much as you can about what this part of the picture is, don't just take it for granted Finally look at the other image and see if it is the same, realise that while these two pictures depict similar scenes, they are not, they are two distinct realities Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you find as many differences as you can and play for however long you want, but do it before you go to bed so that it's the last brain exercise before you fall asleep. A few extra bits: Obviously don't use the crossing your eyes trick, it would defeat the purpose of the exercise Stay relaxed, the goal is to be aware of yourself and the two realities before you, try not to get caught up in solving the puzzle, remember we're doing this to exercise our LD abilities not for the game itself! Keep your mind on the goal of critical awareness, try to not just dart your eyes back and forth looking for the differences, be mindful of what you are actually looking at and perhaps how you feel about it If you start feeling frustrated or find yourself zoning out, go to bed I know you want to but really, try to study the part of the image first, really be aware of what you're looking at and then look at it on the other side to see if it's different, it's harder than it seems not to just dart your eyes back and forth! But good practice of awareness before decision. Study what it is you're looking at with curiosity Try doing this for a few nights and post here if it has or hasn't affected your dreams, also if you have ideas for other games or exercises. For example in the image above; I look at the left image and just take it in, get a sense of the scale, the colours, the different objects, buildings, people etc... just relax and let it sink in. Then I bring my attention to the orange building, don't think "building" or "orange" just notice it, what it looks like, you don't need to give it an "identity" you just need to be aware, study it for a bit like a scientist. I then look at the same spot on the right image, I see a sky, I notice that what I was looking at before is not there, you can count "1" if you want to keep track of the differences. I casually bring my attention to a new part of the image, on the side I'm currently at and repeat.