Thread: Fed up with semi-lucidity

Update:

Recently, I've been feeling really low, unhappy with both my life and my LD progress. And I was completely stuck. Nothing worked, my sleep patterns have been bad and different every night. What worked before stopped working completely. But I still had a very good recall and some semi-lucid dreams.
I oven ordered some B6 a 5-HTP, not only for dreaming but also hoping that it could help with my mental health and sleep. I haven't tried it yet.

I adopted the new routine anyway - memory triggers for reality checks:
- when my cat jumps on my lap - quick RC
- when my mother messages me online or any other communication with my family, including FB posts - thorough RC
- when I see a dog outside - RRC
And also anything unusual or dreamy or sometimes when I go from A to B, as this is common in dreams.
I've been doing well with the memory triggers, some of them are now completely habituated, so I maybe change some or add some more. But the differences between the RCs disappeared, I just look around for dreamsign, think about what I am doing, think about the situation and do an RC.

Then, I guess, something clicked, because yesterday, I got lucid in a completely normal situation, just asking myself "could this be a dream". This is the first time ever I got lucid in this way, without any dreamsign and without any nighttime technique.
And today, the same thing again (plus a prelucid, where I got tricked).
I still need to add these to my dream journal here.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Just the way IndigoRose defined "true lucidity" is indicative of the collective understanding: "True lucidity is awareness of this awareness." IndigoRose has gone through your course and left with this understanding. And I personally, have come out of your course multiple time with a different understanding of what "self-awareness" might specifically refer to. And I've for sure sometimes thought it might be like what IndigoRose said. This is not a comment on your course but on the general confusion of what it means to practice self-awareness regarding "true" lucid dreaming.

Secondly, I was surprised when you claimed that cognition in lucid dreams could be the same as waking. Not because I have never felt that way in lucid dreams, and not because I don't trust my memory of that feeling but because I just don't trust that my impression while dreaming was necessarily accurate (or grounded in a stable/long enough scenario to really test the extent of my cognition).

I read Sageous's threads and class but my concept of awareness of the awareness isn't from there, I think. Honestly, I still don't understand the concept of self-awareness well. From one point of view, it should be easy. But if it is the definition of the difference between the lucid state of mind and non-lucid state of mind, it stops making sense to me. Because I have non-lucid dreams in which I feel present while they are happening, thinking in them, making some decisions, having access to some memories. There is obviously some metacognition in these dreams, it's just the understanding of the context that is wrong. I also think the difference between lucids and non-lucids isn't just self-awareness and memory, it is in cognitive abilities too. My non-lucidity isn't about thinking wrongly or not remembering that blue dogs with horns don't exist, it is about not thinking at all, because thinking is hard and there are other interesting things to do, distractions, basically.
I also think my dream schema is very often on, subconsciously. Like when you watch a movie, your movie schema is on and you don't think why there are fantastical beings fighting, these things just happen in movies. A semi-lucid dream maybe happens when this comes out, over the subconscious-conscious barrier, for a moment, but not really triggering any form of higher awareness or cognition.

Thank you for taking the time and making the threads about the scientific progress in the field of dreaming, I'll read them later, looking very much forward to it.

EDIT: I think your science review thread answers a lot of my questions. Thank you!