Lapses In Consciousness

What I've noticed, both in Waking Reality and Dream Reality, is that there are Lapses in Consciousness.
It is otherwise known as ''Dayly Trance'' during Waking Reality.

What I mean (Waking consciousness) is for example: Being in a Car, driving somewhere, while being on the way. Let's say this is a 30 Minute Drive. Then, Suddenly after what SEEMS 10 minutes; You're allready there!
This is because during the roadtrip you were only about 10 minutes Consciously aware of that you were driving there. The other 20 Minutes you were in Deep thought, a State of Trance (Dayly Trance) with your awareness/Attention Focussed somewhere else Completely: Your Family, Your Friends, Your work, School...etc
This is why sometimes you only CONSCIOUSLY experience 10 minutes of a 30 minute period of time.

Now in DREAMS these lapses in Consciousness are MUCH more pronounced and overly present all the time: You're here, suddenly you're there without knowing how you got there....etc. This is Because Dreams are experienced in a Deep state of Sleeping Trance where Consciousness is rather serverely distorted. Only the moments in Dreams where your Awareness/Consciousness peaks up again are the moments best remembered the following morning, leaving you with ''big Black Holes'' in your Memory of what happened in between and how.

Pretty much the same as how you couldn't seem to remember having driven 30 minutes, but only 10 minutes instead during waking Consciousness Trance states.


I became more aware of this Waking Trance phenomenon, of which I had read before, as I would light a Cigarette and then, as I experienced it, SUDDENLY, about 30 seconds later, I had finished my cigarette without experiencing and knowing it fully if at all.

What if you could Train yourself to Become more and more aware of these Trance states during the day? Just like I did. And When you do do a Reality Check immediately.

Often times in Dreams perhaps, you will find these huge Lapses in Consciousness and, If trained enough to recognise these Lapses in Consciousness, learn to immediately do an RC and watch it prove that you are Dreaming.
If there's any time of our lives where our Consciousness is LEAST continuitive and Solid: it is in our Dreams

What do you people think about that?

Well I see how that could potentially work , its a great idea actually :D

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Originally Posted by slothming

Well I see how that could potentially work , its a great idea actually :D
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Well allright. For now this was just the Innitial Idea of a Potential technique.
Wanna help me with turning this Concept into a rather precise, ILD Guide-like Written method with Clear Instructions? If you have any ideas to add to this: I'm open to suggestions.

I would like to stick to the Idea of becomming overall more aware of these Lapses in Consciousness during Waking Life and Doing Reality Checks uppon finding yourself having Just had such a Consciousness Lapse.
Perhaps it would also be a good Idea to Continue this in the zone where you're in bed, eyes closed and REALLY near to falling asleep. This is also when Waking Consciousness is more and more Frequently lapsed and distorted. However doing an RC when being so close to sleep would only serve to wake you up again. So maybe, during this stage, it might be better to ask yourself where you are.
If you find yourself tended to answer a Place any other than In your Bed it is a sign that you're REALLY REALLY close to entering a DreamState. If you actually have an solid Answer to that Question that is NOT ''In your Bed'' You obviously are Dreaming.
These are mere theoretical suggestions, but help me out if you have better or more ideas to add to this.

However what you NEED to become aware of these Lapses in Consciousness is SOME way to determine the ACTUAL time passed between 2 events to be able to COMPAIR it to the time that you EXPERIENCED has passed.
If you are a smoker than that should be an easy one: The time between lighting a Cigarette and Finishing it: The time you KNOW actually passes between those 2 events Compaired to the time you EXPERIENCED having passed between those 2 events.

That is just 1 good way to find out the Difference of the Actual Time having passed and your Experience of it, leading to you becomming AWARE of the Lapse of Consciousness you just had. But since not all people smoke and I am also interrested in other ways of finding out Please help me List more ways to CATCH yourself having had a Lapse in Consciousness. Ones that Registers (pretty) accurately the ACTUAL Time passed and during which you often Experience these Lapses in Consciousness by being Distracted by Thoughts, Activities and/or Attention-demanding tasks:

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- The time between Lighting and Finishing a Cigarette. (I timered the Actual time of 4 Minutes & 13 Seconds bewteen ligthing & finishing a Cig smoking easily while watching a Movie)

-The time between Leaving and Arriving at a certain place when traveling. ( Given that you know about the Actual Time it takes Traveling one specific Distance. Example; From home to School/Work, From home to a Friend's house..etc)

-The time between Starting your Workshift/School's first Class and the end of your Workshift/School's last Class.

-The time between Starting Dinner and Finnishing Dinner ( It's nececairy using a Stopwatch-timer of some sort for this one )

-The time between Going to Sleep and Waking up; Time distortion is most likely now (Suggested you remember the time you went to Sleep and the time you Woke up next morning; Write it down to remember and figure out the Time in between )

-Random times when your Attention is focused or distracted by other activities; A game of Sports, a Night out, Playing a Videogame, Watching a Movie, Reading a Book, having a Jamsession with fellow musicians or by yourself, while Meditating, while Drawing, Fotographing or Taking a Shower...etc. Just write down/Remember the time you start any of these activities and check the time again after being done with these activities. DO NOT CHECK THE TIME IN BETWEEN THESE MOMENTS!. The trick is to Try to REMEMBER how much Time you experienced having passed, not KNOWING. Then you can compair the Actual time having passed, from the time notations, with your EXPERIENCE of how much time you remember has passed. The difference between those 2 should represent the time your Attention is Completely drawn away from your sense of time; either in deep thought or in deep constant concentration(meditation) of your current Activities which are continiously very Awareness/Attention-demanding.

- .....etc.[/b]

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Help me out with more ways.

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Originally Posted by SKA

Well allright. For now this was just the Innitial Idea of a Potential technique.
Wanna help me with turning this Concept into a rather precise, ILD Guide-like Written method with Clear Instructions? If you have any ideas to add to this: I'm open to suggestions.

I would like to stick to the Idea of becomming overall more aware of these Lapses in Consciousness during Waking Life and Doing Reality Checks uppon finding yourself having Just had such a Consciousness Lapse.
Perhaps it would also be a good Idea to Continue this in the zone where you're in bed, eyes closed and REALLY near to falling asleep. This is also when Waking Consciousness is more and more Frequently lapsed and distorted. However doing an RC when being so close to sleep would only serve to wake you up again. So maybe, during this stage, it might be better to ask yourself where you are.
If you find yourself tended to answer a Place any other than In your Bed it is a sign that you're REALLY REALLY close to entering a DreamState. If you actually have an solid Answer to that Question that is NOT ''In your Bed'' You obviously are Dreaming.
These are mere theoretical suggestions, but help me out if you have better or more ideas to add to this.

However what you NEED to become aware of these Lapses in Consciousness is SOME way to determine the ACTUAL time passed between 2 events to be able to COMPAIR it to the time that you EXPERIENCED has passed.
If you are a smoker than that should be an easy one: The time between lighting a Cigarette and Finishing it: The time you KNOW actually passes between those 2 events Compaired to the time you EXPERIENCED having passed between those 2 events.

That is just 1 good way to find out the Difference of the Actual Time having passed and your Experience of it, leading to you becomming AWARE of the Lapse of Consciousness you just had. But since not all people smoke and I am also interrested in other ways of finding out Please help me List more ways to CATCH yourself having had a Lapse in Consciousness. Ones that Registers (pretty) accurately the ACTUAL Time passed and during which you often Experience these Lapses in Consciousness by being Distracted by Thoughts, Activities and/or Attention-demanding tasks:

Help me out with more ways.[/b]

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I know exactly what you are talking about because I'm always constantly day dreaming and then I'll snap out of it and several minutes will have passed without my being aware of it. I'll be driving down the road and imagining something so hard that after it's done I'll wonder how I even made it from point a to point b without wrecking seeing as how I had no recollection of even watching the road. That's a good idea. That means I'll be doing a bunch of RCs since I'm constantly spacing out anyways.

Just imagine, all those hours we waste daydreaming everyday, could be spent on doing something productive. I know I could be. Haha :P

Hmm that does really sound like a good idea, maybe you should create a detailed guide, the concept seems easy enough by noticing the lapses of awareness, i do get that sometimes when at times when i smoke and im chatting to one of my mates, from the moment i light my cig and when i finish it, it seems like the cigarette i smoked was either too short or maybe time flys so quickly when you are busy doing something i guess. :content:

Looks like a great way to RC. I've read about this phenomenon, too. Very interesting. I'd count it as a DILD, because you'd still realize you're dreaming while already in the dream. But you could still make an awesome RC tutorial out of this.

Uh, I never experience this. I'm always aware of the time passing if I'm doing something robotic and repetitive I've done before. I may remark time flew by if I'm having fun or something, but that's about it.

Weird, but cool thought.

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Originally Posted by The

Uh, I never experience this. I'm always aware of the time passing if I'm doing something robotic and repetitive I've done before. I may remark time flew by if I'm having fun or something, but that's about it.

Weird, but cool thought.[/b]

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You mean you have never been on a 30 minute drive somewhere, got there and felt that only about 20 minutes have passed in your experience? That is so common. Don't you ever zone out staring into nohting spending time in deep though? Either Consciously or not; this is human nature. You cannot be aware of every second cuz that would have to mean you have practically NO thoughts and internal dialogues. Everyone has deep thoughts so are you still gunna tell me you are aware every waking second of your Life?

If so then I really suggest you write a Tutorial on that, but I must say I think you misunderstood what I meant because maybe the word "trance"doesn't ring a bell and doesn't appeal to you. You never spend time staring into nothing while in very deep thoughts? yunno when your concentration is so focussed on your thoughts that your concentration is almost completely or sometimes completely away from your Physical enviroment? You gotta tell me you have that too.

Also what you mentioned: "Time flies by when you're having fun" is another manifestation of this same state of every day trance: When we're having fun, our feeling of joy rises so much that it is predominantly in the centre of our Attention. What I'm trying to explain is that whenever the attention is strongly focussed on one single thing people seem to experience "time-Lapses" like not remembering what you have just done, Not remembering why you have walked into one of the rooms of your house, Having a distorted perception of time (seeming to last longer or shorter)...etc Cuz sometimes during the day your Attention is so focussed at these internal, mental things like Joy, Thoughts, Concerns, Daydreams, Fantasies..etc that the rest of our world, our Physical enviroment, seems to disappear completely from our Awareness.

When we try to estimate how much time we THINK has passed, while having been in entrancement 20 minutes in an hour period of time we usually would say we FELT that we have experienced about 40 minutes having passed.
To be able to make sense of it in our Brains we reason by measuring the amount of time that we CONSCIOUSLY experienced an hour. Since we did not consciously experience 20 minutes of thhis our we reason by saying that in total we have experienced 40 minutes.

YOU are where your AWARENESS is.

Interesting idea.
Often happens to me when I'm driving - I think "Holy crap I have just been thinking about X for the past 10 miles, I hope there was part of me watching the road!" Is that the same thing?
I would love to be more aware, more of the time (although perhaps zoning-out has its benefits!) but i guess that I spend MOST of the time in trance. One way to check might be nto get a friend to ask, at random time intervals, how much time passed since the last check - I bet I would be wrong more often than not. (But if someone asked me the actual time I might do quite well.)

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Originally Posted by SKA

You mean you have never been on a 30 minute drive somewhere, got there and felt that only about 20 minutes have passed in your experience? That is so common. Don't you ever zone out staring into nohting spending time in deep though? Either Consciously or not; this is human nature. You cannot be aware of every second cuz that would have to mean you have practically NO thoughts and internal dialogues. Everyone has deep thoughts so are you still gunna tell me you are aware every waking second of your Life?

If so then I really suggest you write a Tutorial on that, but I must say I think you misunderstood what I meant because maybe the word "trance"doesn't ring a bell and doesn't appeal to you. You never spend time staring into nothing while in very deep thoughts? yunno when your concentration is so focussed on your thoughts that your concentration is almost completely or sometimes completely away from your Physical enviroment? You gotta tell me you have that too.

Also what you mentioned: "Time flies by when you're having fun" is another manifestation of this same state of every day trance: When we're having fun, our feeling of joy rises so much that it is predominantly in the centre of our Attention. What I'm trying to explain is that whenever the attention is strongly focussed on one single thing people seem to experience "time-Lapses" like not remembering what you have just done, Not remembering why you have walked into one of the rooms of your house, Having a distorted perception of time (seeming to last longer or shorter)...etc Cuz sometimes during the day your Attention is so focussed at these internal, mental things like Joy, Thoughts, Concerns, Daydreams, Fantasies..etc that the rest of our world, our Physical enviroment, seems to disappear completely from our Awareness.

When we try to estimate how much time we THINK has passed, while having been in entrancement 20 minutes in an hour period of time we usually would say we FELT that we have experienced about 40 minutes having passed.
To be able to make sense of it in our Brains we reason by measuring the amount of time that we CONSCIOUSLY experienced an hour. Since we did not consciously experience 20 minutes of thhis our we reason by saying that in total we have experienced 40 minutes.

YOU are where your AWARENESS is.[/b]

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Well sure, but that's just because humans can't tell time accurately. You mentioned you smoked a cigarette and thought it had been 30 seconds. A cigarette usually takes about seven minutes, so no, I have NEVER felt that (except on drugs :)). I know exactly what you're saying, and I do "zone out" and go "into a trance", but it never feels like time flew by hella fast. It feels like it dragged on and on and I'm just glad it's over.

That sounds like a great idea. I know that it happens to me often as well, and when I realize it, I'm just thinking "how in the world did get here" or "when'd I work on this?" If you just add reality checks to it when you reocngize it and do this for a while, I'm sure that it'll carr yover to when you're asleep too.