Thread: For lucidity: Internal or External?

There is really no need to add to Eamo's excellent post, but I will anyway, with one small thought for you to consider, Darksyntax:

There is a dirty little secret that you will rarely, if ever, come across on all those tutorials (including those presented by LaBerge):

When you are not lucid during a dream, there is nothing odd; ever.

The very nature of NLD's eliminates the ability to approach anything critically, because you have no memories from which to draw comparisons for your critique. For instance, when not lucid at all you cannot decide that four moons floating above you is weird or odd because you cannot remember that there is only supposed to be one moon.

This is why RC's don't make you lucid, but rather they confirm lucidity... you must already have some self-awareness present in order to get a proper result from your RC; if you don't, then your dreaming mind will simply offer up the answer you expect (usually that you are awake, but it might get frisky and have the RC show you are dreaming, resulting in a non-lucid dream about being lucid).

What all this means, Darksyntax, is that the instincts you reveal in your OP are correct: lucidity tends to "happen" in an apparently spontaneous manner, as an internal event. So you really never needed to post this thread, because you already knew the answer!

Now this doesn't mean that all that daywork with things like RC's, MILD, questioning the odd, and noting your dreamsigns is not worth doing. On the contrary; what those techniques provide is something to grab onto during those special moments when a wisp of waking-life self-awareness crosses your path during a dream. These wisps occur far more often than people might think, or remember, during their dreams; especially when you have built up strong expectation to be self-aware in a dream; or, with MILD, you have set a specific prospective memory to remind you to remember, to be self-aware. The better techniques don't so much induce lucidity as they do prepare your mind to be lucid on its own, and to reflect on that lucidity (noticing the odd is a means for that reflection).

So:

Originally Posted by DARKSYNTAX

As such, what should i pay attention to in my non-lucid-dreams? If lucidity springs because of a critical thought, then what is it that i should focus on in the first place? Noticing odd things in the environment? Focusing on myself? Trying to slip a self-awareness moment in the dream?

Don't worry about paying attention to anything in your NLD's, because it simply cannot be done. If you are paying attention, to anything, then you are already lucid, even if only just slightly; you have already slipped a self-awareness moment into your dream. Lucidity does not spring from critical thought, it initiates critical thought... get a good grasp of that difference, and it will be much, much, easier for you to become lucid during those brief moments of self-awareness that precede the "Ah-ha" moment of full lucidity onset.

tl;dr:

Is lucidity actually triggered because of an internal reason, or does it have something to do with the dream environment being weird?

Lucidity is triggered because a wisp of waking-life self-awareness has entered your dream, which then triggers the internal reason, which then triggers noticing the environment being weird. And that presence of self-awareness is certainly encouraged and amplified by the daywork you do with techniques like RC's, MILD, and noticing the odd, so be sure to do it all as much as possible.

I know I'm an outlier with all this, but I do believe it is true; I have often wondered why the primordial technique-inventors, like LaBerge, have failed to communicate this aspect of lucidity -- maybe it's just easier to convince students that their techniques work, which puts the students' expectations in the right place and also encourages a bit of placebo action? I don't know... it could be that the notion that we are all regularly slightly self-aware in dreams runs anathema to what they are preaching, making lucidity a bit more mundane than they would like.

I could write a book about this, and still not completely get my point across; hopefully the bit that I scribbled out here makes some sense, because I do believe the OP touches on something very important in the basic practice of LD'ing.