Can you trick your logical brain into waking up?

[Bobblehat]

Here's how I understand lucidity: your logical brain is asleep, then wakes up, thus you become lucid. If that premise is correct, would it be possible to "trick" the logical part of the brain into waking up by counting? The idea being that, in your DJ, you'd make a note of quantities and numbers within last night's non-lucid dreams. (You can often recall quantities without having been directly aware of them in a dream). Eventually, you become more and more aware of quantities in your dreams - and your desire to count - until you have conditioned yourself to be aware of quantities to such a a degree that you literally start counting within your dreams. At some point during the counting, your logical brain wakes and you realise you're dreaming. I've been experimenting with this lately and making a note of quantities in my DJ, the inclusion of numbers, and any time when any DC mentions quantities or numbers. Already I have noticed an increase in the number of DCs that are in my non-lucids. (Maybe a vast quantity of people could become a dream sign itself?) Is this a sound idea?

[Darkmatters]

That sounds like a DAMN good idea to me!! I give it a 9.5! No, but seriously, it does sound like a great idea! Let us know your progress on this.

[Tweek]

sounds like a good idea to me.

[Bobblehat]

I'm not entirely sure if you're being sarcastic or not DM, but if this is of interest to people I'd like it if others tried the experiment. There are a number of mental activities - all that, in my view, could wake up the brain's logic - that I'm also focusing on in my non-lucids. I'm slightly concerned that I'm "diluting" my efforts by trying to focus on too many different activities. Anyhow, if people are interested in these mental activities I'd be glad to post them up.

[Darkmatters]

Sorry, I couldn't resist the number joke, but I really do think it's a good idea.

[nina]

Well...this is basically one of the fundamentals we learn about lucid dreaming. This is why we bother to write dream journals, improve dream recall, and identify dream signs. So that you are able to recognize when something illogical occurs in your dream, thus making you lucid. I hate math and numbers. I'm much more likely to become lucid when I notice something visually illogical about my dream than I am from something like counting. ...but perhaps some people who like numbers might find this useful. It just seems like a very slight modification of normal techniques for lucid dreaming though. I mean, this is what we are all doing every time we LD, getting our logical brain to wake up. Also I do not think your logical brain is asleep and only wakes up once you become lucid as you describe it. If that were the case then you are likening logical reasoning with consciousness...which I'm not sure about. I think your logic makes you conscious in the dream, but your logic is not necessarily your consciousness.

[Bobblehat]

Also I do not think your logical brain is asleep and only wakes up once you become lucid as you describe it. I don't really believe that either; it was probably a bad choice of words but I was trying to describe it in a shorthand way, if that makes sense. I think I can see some logic in every dream we have. I'm guessing if there were no logic we'd just experience a random string of images and events? I envy you if you can become lucid from dreamsigns. The only thing that seems to be consistent in my dreams is inconsistency.

[nina]

I envy you if you can become lucid from dreamsigns. The only thing that seems to be consistent in my dreams is inconsistency. It really just takes practice. I used to only have WILDs all the time and never became lucid from recognizing dream signs when I first started. I just wasn't trained at it. Now after a few years, pretty much all my LDs are DILDs and come from recognizing a dream sign or something about the dream that doesn't make sense. Also some of my DCs have begun to tell me that I'm dreaming, which is pretty awesome. Regardless, I still have dreams that are incredibly bizarre and wake up wondering how I didn't manage to recognize that it was a dream. I'm sure that will never stop, and I probably wouldn't want it to. It makes the times I do recognize that something isn't right that much better. But just practice, you'll get there.

[Bobblehat]

Also some of my DCs have begun to tell me that I'm dreaming, which is pretty awesome. I read in ETWOLD how asking other people (DCs) if you're dreaming is a bad idea - they'll usually explain away the weirdness of the dream and you'll stay in a non-lucid. I'm wondering if that assumption should be challenged - or more broadly if we could look for ways to use our interaction with DCs to help achieve lucidity. Do you think there is some form of conditioning you could do in the day that would increase your chances of your discussions/interaction with DCs being about lucidity? For example (bad example, probably) when you're about to go to bed at night do you think you could recall an event from the day - such as your dog attacking another person's dog - and visualise the person saying something like, "Hey, this is really unreal. This could be a dream. Let's both do an RC."