Simple but effective awareness exercise
Hey there DV,
most of you will know how important meditation (conscious awareness) is for lucid dreaming,
in case you don't know;
I answered this to someone who was confused about meditation and awareness
Quote:
There's no definite technique involving thinking that will guarantee you to become lucid, Iriba.
Since you seem to be confused why to meditate I'll try to explain it logically.
So, whether it is the dreaming or waking state, the mental block to lucid dreaming usually originates from a dull awareness.
This undertrained awareness is the result of people being caught up in their head all day. They rotate from one thought chain to the other and are barely ever present in the moment, which is the only reality.
Think about it, what is reality (real-ity) for you at this moment?
It's not what happened 3 days ago, it's not what will happen tomorrow, it is what is happening at this moment.
I notice you trying to rationalise everything with your mind, but if you're in your thoughts you're not experiencing THIS moment.
Meditation is all about finding the off button in your mind so you stop getting caught up in your head and rather start experiencing the only reality, the present. Now, what do you think is the one thing that keeps people from becoming lucid?
It's the lack of awareness of the present in the dream. You're always caught up in your mind, making it unable to become aware of the true nature of your environment. It's not even about critical thinking or reality checking. Most of the time when I come to my senses in a dream (due to habit of.. you guessed it.. meditating) I already know it's a dream.
EVEN from there you HAVE to stay present while lucid because if you get caught up in the bad habit of excessive thinking again you'll lose your lucidity because you get caught up in the dream again.
The whole point of dream yoga (which is actually just regular meditation with lucid dreaming as a specific goal) is to stop thinking and start feeling the present. If you do this daily, the habit will eventually pass on to the dreaming state where you suddenly snap out of your thoughts into the present moment and you'll magically realize you're not in the waking state.
Now, for you it's time to stop asking questions because the point is to shut your mind down and start perceiving without judging.
So to get back to the subject,
I meditate a lot myself and I often think of ways to test and train my awareness in a practical and effective way and I've managed to create a nice little technique.
Sometimes when I eat certain candy I want to keep it in my mouth as long as possible but I often catch myself biting the candy and eating it before I even realise.
This gave me an idea! If you take, for example, a piece of chewing gum and put it in your mouth without biting it while doing something like watching television or browsing the internet.
The goal is to consciously keep yourself from chewing or biting it. This requires your awareness because if you drift off into auto pilot chances are high you chew on it as a conditioned reflex.
The reason I suggest doing something else at the same time is because in a dream you also have to maintain the awareness of the fact that you're dreaming while you get involved in the dream scenery.
I don't know if this works for others but I've definitely benefited from it so I thought it was worth sharing it.. :)
