Quote Originally Posted by VagalTone View Post
Don´t forget that woman had a neurotic habit. But yes, any neurotic habit will probably help with lucidity. And that´s probably why trait anxiety is associated with lucidity, as you are scanning the environment, always hypervigilant. But i can´t promise you won´t deplete your willpower resources and give up on LDing altogether. And believe me, that´s something too much common. Sorry for this too pessimistic outlook

We should use our begginer enthusiasm about LDing to discover what is common to all experiences, therefore attaining 24 hour lucidity
The one to blame here is the power to know, awareness itself, which is untainted by whatever the experience, and indivisible from it. When you are sad, it doesn´t become sad, when you are happy, it doesn´t become happy. When you are in deep sleep, it remains ( harder to recognize of course) and when you are dreaming it´s just the same thing as waking life - it shines through and as every perception. If you create the habit to find the light of your mind while awake then you will also recognize while asleep.
You're right, it's not exactly normal to be paranoid throughout the day. Awareness itself? From that description it sounds to me like you're talking about the silent watcher that's "inside everyone's head". You mean that? Because I've been at that level of awareness before and good god, it is ridiculously difficult to stay there.

Quote Originally Posted by OneUp View Post
I've actually read this exact article before, and I even mentioned it in one of my past threads about Self Awareness, and I have to say man, every bit of it is true! As I have told many, when I was at my peak with Self Awareness, I was getting lucid at least once a night and semi-lucid in most of my REM dreams of the night. I discovered one thing with that technique/mindset though, it was mentally tiring to keep up. I could keep it up with no problem, but because of school and all of the work and stress attributed with it, I began going downhill with my self awareness. Every day because of school I would find myself exhausted and completely done with everything.
I was so tired everyday that I would come home and take a 2 and a half hour nap. This was leaving me half dead though still, everyday because I kept on changing my sleep schedule. I didn't have a choice though considering the hours of homework that my teachers give every night. In the end, I gave up my best efforts with Self Awareness.
I decided to try something out, since I didn't have time for the techniques associated with lucid dreaming, I went ahead and tried out nothing. By nothing I mean everynight I would go to bed and just have the intention to have a lucid dream. I wouldn't think about it really, or worry, I would just go to bed. I was surprised by the results this brought. Lets just say I still use this "nothing" technique now, and it gives about 1 LD a night. You haven't seen my LD count jump yet, but thats merely because I don't usually journal all of my LDs considering I don't remember a good amount of each one of them. However, I am planning to go back to dedicated dream journaling very soon, so that will change.
My point in all of this is: there is great potential in the right mindset. The reason those "natural" lucid dreamers have LDs every night without any effort is because they thought it was normal, and that everyone did it. The kind of mindset helps so much, and I can verify it with some personal experience, but only time will tell how much power is in the mindset, and if natural lucid dreamers really are special in that sense. I have a feeling lucid dreaming is no where near as hard as we make it. After all, its just a mental activity, and just like any other mental activity we can achieve it instantly without problems.
So, in the end, my two cents would be that, yes it is possible to become an "Ultra-frequent" lucid dreamer just by doing what one of the lucid dreamers mentioned in the article did- nothing. I know for a fact that I am going to get alot of negative feedback towards my response, because most oneironauts feel that what I have proposed is impossible and utterly stupid. If that were the fact that I would not have the progress I have today.
Interesting. So self awareness is that draining huh? Not really surprising, I started taking it rather very seriously since yesterday, I have to kinda force myself to remain mindful because it's so easy to get distracted. Yesterday I was mindful about 75-80% of the day and damn, was it tiresome. Fortunately my sleep schedule is stable and I have a good amount of free time and minimal stress so I hope it won't be as bad as it was for you, and hopefully it gets easier after a while.
As for the intention thing, I don't think it's impossible or stupid, the thing is, I think it has some prerequisites, specifically, good (self) awareness and (prospective?) memory. Maybe the reason why the intention worked so well for you is because you had already trained your awareness so much before?