Meditation

[NarutoUzumaki]

How beneficial do you think it would be for my awareness to meditate for 20 minutes every hour every single day lol? The type of meditation I do is basically focusing on my senses. If I lose awareness of them, I gently bring it back. I'm doing this because I've been practicing ADA throughout the day. I figured that since a habit takes time to form and I often times forget to do ADA, I could make up my daily practice by doing 20 minutes ada meditation every hour until I got to bed. Do you think this will benefit my awareness and dream recall and stuff?

[Dreamwalkwr]

I think you're going to wear youself out and leave no space for real time. You just need to be relaxed, meditate before bed for your 20 mins and maybe read something about what you're trying to do just to keep that idea fresh and easy to grasp again when your sleeping brain brings it up for proccessing. Boom, you have your trigger.

[Pornocrates]

If you want to build a strong habit it requires time, dedication, willpower. If you have a hard time with ADA, the best thing would to be to go step by step. Meditating before going to bed is a great idea. As far as I'm concerned, conscious breathing is a great way to begin your journey into meditation and mindfulness. Don't hesitate to use guided meditations, it helps a lot!

[gTimeJohnny]

I think you're going to wear youself out and leave no space for real time. You just need to be relaxed, meditate before bed for your 20 mins and maybe read something about what you're trying to do just to keep that idea fresh and easy to grasp again when your sleeping brain brings it up for proccessing. Boom, you have your trigger. This was the case with me. When I first started meditating I'd just walk into a dark room, sit Down, then proceed to meditate for three hours straight. This burned me out before a week had passed lol. I think the best would be to start out with 15 mins before bed, then increase it with a minute a day or so.

[Valis1]

Meditation reinforces and complexifies the neural systems associated with awareness and working memory, when clusters of neurons are activated together they build novel synapses between each other and this is what you are doing to these awareness and memory systems when you stimulate them through meditation. The altered state which is brought about through the meditation practice over time causes definite and measurable long term alterations in the physical structure of the brain, the self generated state if done frequently enough, turns into a ingrained and long term characteristic of your brain and thus your mind. It becomes habitual, automatic, and easily accessible at any time. For more information google "contemplative neuroscience" or "meditation and neuroplasticity". Since Lucid dreaming is in my estimation the dream state, which consists of a specific constellation of neural regions locked into a self reinforcing feedback loop, plus awareness and access to short and long term memory, I do think it is only logical to conclude that this will have a positive effect on lucid dreaming. lucid dreaming is a emergent property of regular dreaming, plus the two main factors 'awareness' and 'memory' linked into the original loop. So i think it would be helpful done any time of the day, meditating right before sleep would have the added benefit of having the strongest effects of the state being mainly present while sleeping or dreaming. Even tho it causes durable long term changes, the strongest effects will obviously be during and right after practice.

[FryingMan]

Andrew Holecek writes in his recent book "Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep", in his chapter on mindfulness meditation (this chapter in particular is a must read for any LD practitioner, whether or not you'reninterested in Eastern-oriented approaches to dreaming): "So you want to be lucid at night? Meditate during the day." In particular, mindfulness meditation. Classical ADA in the LD context is not mindfulness, ADA is sort of mindfulness's opposite in fact: [IMO] ADA is distraction, in the guise of awareness. Mindfulness is the opposite of distraction. ADA is kind of like the "gaze of the dog": running after the stick thrown in front of it Mindfulness is like the "gaze of the lion", ignoring the stick, and focusing instead on its source, the thrower

[moSh]

In particular, mindfulness meditation. Classical ADA in the LD context is not mindfulness, ADA is sort of mindfulness's opposite in fact: [IMO] ADA is distraction, in the guise of awareness. Mindfulness is the opposite of distraction. ADA is kind of like the "gaze of the dog": running after the stick thrown in front of it Mindfulness is like the "gaze of the lion", ignoring the stick, and focusing instead on its source, the thrower Would you mind elaborating on this? I have been practising mindfulness for a good number of years now; I understand that ADA lacks the 'seeing what is really there' of mindfulness, but I'm struggling to see how ADA is necessarily the opposite. Of course, I could see how ADA could be mere distraction, observing a sensation in an almost novelty manner, but sure ADA done properly is close to mindfulness?

[FryingMan]

In classical ADA one is supposed to immerse all one's senses into the environment, diving in to tiny details: the shadow on the hairs of the leg of the fly as I like to say. It is hyper-observation, the environmental awareness of a prey animal, like a mouse, not that of a reflective, self-aware being. I consider ADA to be like, "Lookit that, lookit that, now lookit that, lookit THAT!

[madmagus]

sorry. system error

[madmagus]

Is this your interpretation of ADA, Flyingman, or is it so stated somewhere? I didn't see it stated that way in King Yoshi's tutorial, nor even implied. If you have other sources where ADA is taught and they define it as a mindless practice of reptilian-brain-level observation, I'd love to have you share them. I won't restate my entire thread on the topic of awareness/self-awareness that I wrote yesterday, as ADA/mindfulness were discussed. But to put it briefly, I'm not a mouse mindlessly staring at things and saying, "ooo, ooo. I see something; should I freeze or should I run or should I fight." As humans, we don't normally function from our reptilian brain, except in severe stress. We have that magical frontal lobe. It allows for self-awareness. A human being can not practice true ADA and not be self-aware. I don't think that mindfulness practice and ADA are perfect synonyms, certainly, but they are relatively decent correlatives. And most certainly they are not on opposite ends of the awareness spectrum. Using the mouse metaphor is a false flag, a misdirection, because you can't use a mouse's awareness as even a half-decent metaphor for a human's. Except at the reptilian (or mammalian I suppose) brain level of function, they can not be compared. Just my take, to give a little balance to the thread's responses.

[FryingMan]

ADA's emphasis is clearly squarely on external sense input, and if you read anything on mindfulness, you'll see that it's emphasis is almost entirely internal. They are not close analogs. Books on mindfulness or Tibetan Dream Yoga look nothing like ADA practice. Compared to mindfulness, ADA is indeed much closer to the awareness of a mouse. Of course there is "awareness" in ADA, but in terms of the quality of the awareness, of the direction of its focus, and the sort of "effort" involved, then they are indeed on opposite ends of that spectrum. Another way in which this opposite applies: ADA practitioners frequently note that it is exhausting. Mindfulness on the other hand, while also in the beginning there is effort required, is best described as a relaxation. ADA is "noisy," mindfulness is quiet. Quotes from KingYoshi's tutorial, emphasis mine These are just a few of the millions of small details that the average person takes for granted or doesn't even bother to notice. At first, you will have to force yourself to be completely aware of your surroundings. The idea, is to try and become aware of absolutely EVERYTHING around you. His two examples of practice Lets take for instance, you are walking your dog down the street. Be aware of everything around you. Hear your footsteps against the pavement, feel the cushion in the sole of your shoes contract with each step. Feel the muscles working in your legs as you stroll along, see your eyelids blinking, hear the sound of your breathing, feel your lungs expanding and your chest moving as you breath in and out. Smell the air as you travel through the neighborhood. Does it change? Does every breeze smell the exact same? Feel your tongue as it casually rests on the bottom of your mouth. Every structure around you has a shadow...do you notice them? Hear the pitter patter of the dogs feet, do you hear him panting? Most people hold the leash and walk down the sidewalk completely lost in their thoughts. Most don't even notice the control they are using to power their own legs. You are sitting at the computer doing math homework. Feel the keys below your fingertips, notice how effortlessly your fingers fly from one key to the next without even having to think about the upcoming letter/keystroke. While you were reading the previous two sentences, did you take for granted the blinking process. What all sounds have you heard while you have been reading this tutorial? What does the air smell like? You shouldn't have to smell right now to answer the question. Have you noticed the shadows of everything around you? How about your lungs? Have you noticed them expanding and your chest moving. Have you noticed the air traveling up through your windpipe, across your tongue and passed your lips? This is exactly the "look, look, listen, feel, hear, hear, listen, see, look!" that I was talking about in my first message. KingYoshi says nothing other than notice them. Notice more and more and more. While one is not distracted with thoughts while doing this, one is also not functioning as a self-aware human while doing so. If you add in human self-awareness, which from your other thread I see looks like is so, you're creating a new, hybrid approach that is not classical ADA. p.s. Sageous writes about this in the opening post to ADA: Right or Wrong for Lucidity?

[madmagus]

Thank you for your response. If you are seeing my interpretation of ADA as a hybrid of King Yoshi's, due to my emphasis on the self part of self-awareness, then I can see your point as you are viewing it. Perhaps I do give more credit to ADA then I should by injecting what I believe ADA should be or should mean or should represent rather than what it actually does. So I appreciate hearing your perspective. But I also believe that our words are gross metaphors, and quite often we fail to use them in a manner that properly describes what we are feeling or experiencing. I think that, despite a very good effort on King Yoshi's part, that he simply failed to describe the underlying process. Or he simply didn't recognize that there was one. But that doesn't mean that it isn't there. And one of the points for having a forum in the first place is to engage in conversation that provides enlightenment on our topic of lucid dreaming. I do not believe that ADA, or any other specific practice as described on Dream Views or anywhere else, is sacrosanct, that it is inviolable. It is, actually, our job to interrogate the process of all techniques, etc., to better understand them, and practically speaking to make better use of them. I can not claim to fully understand awareness in any other context than how it applies through personal self-awareness and my personal self-awareness practices. With that said, and this is re King Yoshi's self-evaluation of the practice, the practice appears to penetrate consciousness to a great enough extent that it brings about a higher degree of self-awareness, lucidity, at least in regard to becoming lucid in dreams. Anecdotal, yes, but what else do we have in this subjective field? Nearly everything on the forum is anecdotal. What I am trying to say here is that there may be something else at play that the overt description of ADA does not address directly, or that we simple do not recognize as an overt actor on lucidity. It is that very hidden actor that I feel underpins ADA. Obviously, that is my personal interpretation. And that may be why I come across the way I do about ADA and how it is beneficial to the lucid process. I believe that on an underlying level every practice (mostly, lol) that we discuss on this forum or elsewhere has that hidden element of becoming self-aware in the moment as the precursive, hidden piece that brings success at varying levels. This is why I believe that ADA can be effective. More to the point, I actually don't believe that being aware of every single thing going on around you is at all necessary. I defend ADA practice, to the level that I do, partly because I know that people attempting to practice it will not achieve the stated goal, but with practice they should achieve positive results nonetheless. You don't have to magically become aware of the millions of pieces of data streaming into your sub/unconscious mind to achieve awareness of the moment. The brain functions the way it does for a reason. We require our filter system or we would be insane. Or enlightened, I suppose. I take a catch as catch can approach. I monitor my breathing. I monitor my tactile sensations (i.e. experience non-verbally what my body comes in contact with throughout the day), and I add or subtract other elements as I see fit, or as they come up in conversations in forums such as this one, and sound interesting. On your hybrid point, I suppose you could call my perspective 'Piecemeal ADA'. Just the other day, the idea of recognizing your eyelids blinking sounded an interesting element to add to see its benefit, to see if it could be implemented in a seamless fashion. I believe this to be ADA at its heart. So I have used the term recently in posts, and I defend the base practice "as I see it" and still call it ADA. And despite my agreement with you on many points, I still believe that the 'self' part of self-awareness is what gets trained, even in ADA, whether we recognize the 'how' or not. My dogma, if you will, is that awareness (me the mouse) is intrinsic to existence. I have to do nothing for it to exist. Self-awareness is something that comes in a variety of flavors. Each of our practices, whether ADA, mindfulness, or otherwise work at enhancing or focusing our intellect on that realization. Because we are rational, functioning humans, our frontal lobe automatically engages when we engage cognitive exercises or activities. The fact that it does so engage when we perform ADA, or a hybrid, automatically brings in the element of 'self', as in self-awareness, into the process. I don't believe that it is volitional. It just is. As human beings, we can not avoid this other than through, I suppose, the ingestion of drugs or other inhibitors. Whether hybrid or classical as you call it, ADA must activate a process of heightening the awareness of self. The observer, me, I, must be activated to do the observing. Otherwise, we are indeed the mouse. Without other inhibiting (or perhaps enhancing, who knows) factors, that is not possible for a human being. That activation is the activation of self, or self-awareness. Again, many levels, many different flavors, but it is there nonetheless. Meaning, that as humans not only do we naturally possess awareness but also self-awareness. Otherwise, you are not human. You are (level-of-consciousness speaking) a lesser creature. All awareness exercises are exercises for attaining higher levels of self-awareness, not awareness in and of itself, not even self-awareness in and of itself. Maybe I was clearer about my opinion here. Maybe it doesn't matter. We each have a place to be intellectually, emotionally, etc. at any given moment. Our filters are in place to keep things out that we are not ready to understand. (this is directed at everyone of us) That is why I go back and reread posts on forums six months, a year, later to see what I missed the first time through, what I was not ready enough or open enough to engage with. Attitudes change with more knowledge/wisdom, assumptions change, dogmas shift. Sageous broke one of my assumptions the other day, in fact. Yay. Thanks again for your response. It helped me get a better understanding of where you are coming from, and I can appreciate it to a greater extent. Whether anyone believes it or not, I appreciate contrary opinions being voiced. You grow not at all by someone agreeing with your perspective. You have at least the potential, the chance to grow when someone disagrees and thus makes you think, whether you want to or not, whether you change or not. Yikes, this came out way too long. I hope this extended discussion doesn't come across as a hijacking. It was not intended to be. I believe the discussion is still relevant to the OP. Or I hope so any way. Feel free to chastise me if I am wrong. good dreaming

[FryingMan]

And thanks also for your contribution. It helps keep one on one's toes. I wouldn't give too much credit though so easily to "human doings" as the Buddhists like to call them as having intrinsic self-awareness activated through the act of passive observation. The Buddhists contend, and I agree with them, that the vast, great majority of people are in fact sleepwalkers, much closer to mouse in nature than most would care to admit. Whether or not you agree with them about the fundamental nature of reality (and I'm pretty sure I don't), they get a lot right, including this I believe.

[madmagus]

I may indeed give us humans too much credit. Some Buddhist perspectives I give credence to. Others, not so much. But they certainly have their share if ideas worth considering. Alright, a final, quick stab at self-awareness. I think that what Buddhists call 'sleep-walking' humans is what I would call humans with low levels of self-awareness. I believe that the sliding scale is within 'self-awareness', that it is not an on/off switch between being self-aware and being a mouse. I don't take the (apparent) Buddhist perspective that self-awareness does not exist for the sleep walkers. This conversation, this forum, is directed at lucid dreamers, and one would hope that anyone taking the time to push their personal envelop and learn lucid dreaming, along with the practices such as ADA/Mindfulness, would not be considered a 'sleep walker', even if much of their day is spent that way out of habit. Otherwise, who would not fall into that category? Even a Buddhist monk isn't lucid all day. Perhaps the mouse metaphor would be more appropriate if we were on a forum directed at the general public, the masses of 'sleep walkers'. Perhaps even discussing mouse mentality in the context of lucid dreamers is rather....off base, implying that they are no better than the average sleep walker, despite their attempts at lucidity. Of course, I am speaking of those forum goers who actively engage lucid practices, not the hangers on who just hang out and read cool posts, lol. Hmmmmm. Should have thought of this at the start. Who is the target audience? There. Much briefer. Well, somewhat briefer. Dream well

[FryingMan]

In the context of the Buddhist belief, being asleep means being asleep to the nature of reality. One could be "self-aware" according to the semantics we're using, but a Buddhist would still consider such a one as "asleep" if they consider the dualistic world (the world of our day to day experience) as solid, real, and existing unchanging separately on its own. Buddhist monks indeed strive to be lucid all day, and probably most of them come much closer to achieving it than any other part of the population. Buddhas are 100% lucid all the time. It's a rare accomplishment but they exist. Hang around longer, and you'll see a lot of people into LDing as basically just another form of entertainment, the ultimate "VR simulator." (I know I started this way!) It's interesting that the most of the ones who stick and accomplish a lot usually end up with holistic views regarding awareness, consciousness, etc. You sound like an introspective, self-aware person. You probably can't imagine being any other way. But I guarantee you, that the majority of the population doesn't have a true self-aware moment during the day at all. They feel, they think, they react, but they're not (self) aware.

[Sageous]

^^That. I think you may indeed be assigning a bit too much credit to the good people here, Madmagus, people who reflect the "masses of sleep walkers" more closely than you might think. Self-awareness wasn't discussed much, if at all, on these forums until just a few years ago, and even after that much time it is still something most people here don't seem to often think about, or at least don't talk about -- you can probably count the DV forum threads specifically about self-awareness with the fingers of one hand, and DV itself offers no official tutorials or information about it. The general attitude here, and probably everywhere, is that LD'ing is simply what happens after you do some technique just right -- a function of outside mechanisms rather than a function of self-awareness. I can't tell you how many hundreds of posts I've made trying to explain self-awareness, and to insist that self-awareness is not a technique. I'm also sad to say the the ears these words fall on are usually quite deaf: people want a technique that "makes" them lucid, as quickly and as mindlessly as possible (like turning on a video game) and are disinterested in realizing that nothing can make them lucid except their own state of mind. Yes, like FryingMan has said, self-awareness does eventually find its way into some dreamers' minds as they advance through the techniques and finally come to realize that lucidity is a result of their mindsets, and not the techniques. Some. So your audience here is likely the same as your audience anywhere, with the possible exception being that they are more amenable to the concept of self-awareness initially because it might make them lucid, and later because eventually -- if successful with lucidity -- they might realize that their lucidity is couched in their ability to become self-aware and not, say, moving their finger while falling asleep. I mean no disrespect to the DV members, BTW; there are some very bright, honest people here who really do try hard, and most are open to new concepts (which in itself lifts them above the masses), and there are certainly some who welcome self-awareness into their lives and lucidity practice. I'm just pointing out that self-awareness is about as popular a subject and as common a trait here as it is in the rest of the world. I think I should also offer a quick aside about the mouse comparison, because I think I'm the one that started it when talking about ADA and "regular" awareness: That comparison was literal, and not a metaphor or analogy. I was not calling people mice, or saying that humans' general awareness is mouse-like, just as I was not complimenting mice on their self-awareness. In fact, I was saying the opposite. ADA is all about being aware, to the most minute detail, of your surroundings at all times, and I was simply pointing out that a creature as humble as a mouse has a mastery of ADA that outpaces anything a human could ever achieve. So I was not saying people were like mice; just the opposite.

[madmagus]

Flyingman, Sageous, thanks to both of you. I have to say that you are probably right regarding the average Dream Views member; I need to take off the zoom and put on the wide angle lens and look not at my personal views and expectations as if others automatically shared them simply because they are here. I should give more credence to what has been evidenced by statements made by the overall forum audience. And I agree that I have read way too many posts here, and elsewhere of course, where the person is only looking for the red pill, the quick assist: what can you give me that will make me lucid 'tonight.' You've both been on Dream Views much longer than I, and I accept that you have a better feel for the mentality, or at least the interest, of the average member. I think I have run out of steam for the moment. Hopefully we get more and more members (such as yourselves) who take the long view and help stimulate conversations that stretch our understanding of lucid dreaming. thanks for both your input.