The Automatization Technique

Here's a Post from LD4All by a poster named OsakaWilson. I've been tryng to do it with doorways, but I haven't dreamed of too many doorways lately. Along with an intent to remember doorways on the first night of this, I was more aware than usual of the fact that there were no doorways. Last night my sleep wasn't very good, although I remember going from outdoors to indoors. I think it's going to take a long time to make doorway RCs automatic, but I think the potential is there once they are. I've done martial arts before, and once you've wired in a technique, it just flies out when you're attacked. So I imagine the same thing will start to happen when I dream of doorways, i.e. automatic RCs.

The Automatization Technique

This is a lucid dream induction technique that is working for me and some other people who are using it. The more diligently you do the preparation the better it works. I describe the background behind it below and a step-by-step description is at the bottom. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

Automatized behavior is something that you do automatically without thinking. It becomes natural to do it when a cue occurs. This technique involves learning to do reality checks whenever a cue that you choose occurs. That doesn't mean that you mindlessly go through the reality check--it means that you don't have to consciously remind yourself to do the reality check and no longer have to set an intention to do it.

Automatized behavior remains automatized in dreams, so this approach can create more consistent results than setting prospective memory intentions.

To understand automatization, its helpful to understand prospective memory tasks which are used in the MILD technique to help induce lucid dreams. A prospective memory task is simply making a note to yourself to do something in the future. Prospective memory tasks are used generally for activities that are not done so regularly that the task and the environment or conditions in which they are performed are automatically associated together. For example, you drive by lots of convenience stores, but only occasionally want to stop in for milk. You set a prospective memory task when you want to stop in for milk.

A behavior is automatized when it becomes so associated with some condition that it becomes second nature. If stopping at the convenience store for milk were automatized, you'd have to continually stop yourself from pulling into the convenience store whenever you passed. This is the degree of conditioning that you'll want to achieve for this technique.

The Automatization Technique

1. Pick a recurring activity or theme in your dreams that also consistently occurs in your daily life. This will be your cue to do a reality check. For me, the number-one theme of this type is driving. Another person does reality checks whenever he looks at his shoes. You'll want it to be something that you do or see several times a day.

2. Whenever this theme occurs throughout the day, do a reality check. Continue doing this until you do a reality check EVERY TIME the theme occurs. It took me about a week to automatize reality checks without fail whenever I am driving. The important point is to do the reality check until it is an automatic reaction to the cue.

3. Once you've automatized one item, you can continue to add more to your list of automatized reality checks, being sure to work on them until you do reality checks every single time each theme occurs. Don't add more cues unless the previous ones are 100% automatized.

4. Then just wait until your theme occurs in the dream and you will do your reality check. Also doing the MILD technique will probably increase your success. The reality checks I do are exactly as Stephen Laberge and Paul Tholey describe.