A theory on lucidity (both waking and dreaming)

I have always wondered why we can become lucid in a dream, but not in waking life, and I think I finally discovered the answer.

In a nutshell, whilst dreaming we are usually not very consciously aware and being directed around by our subconscious. In comparison to waking life it's quite the opposite, we are way more consciously active and barely able to tap into the subconscious in daily life. To become lucid in a dream, we have to become conscious, but to become lucid in waking life we have to become subconscious. Let me explain in more detail..

The general idea behind all this relates back to the 7 hermetic principles, notably the first (mentalism - all is mind) and the principle regarding polarity (we live in duality, everything has an opposite). When you consider that we are conscious in waking life, and unconscious in dreaming (or rather subconscious) the polarity here is obvious. So too then, is it's lucid counterpart - lucidity in dreaming is achieved by becoming more aware, and lucidity in waking life by becoming more unaware. When we are dreaming, our subconscious is guiding the plot, it's all around us, and so too it's all around us in waking life (whether we realize it or not). I'm not suggesting solipsism here, more like a collective solipsism that sometimes overlaps like many individual minds inside the mind of all. So, in waking life we need to rely more on the subconscious at play in the world around us, become 'blissfully unaware' as it were, the more we allow our subconscious to play a vital role in our daily life, the more benefit can be gained by it. In dreaming, it's the opposite we have to overcome the subconscious at play in the world around us by becoming more aware.

There's definitely a difference here between consciousness and awareness, they are not one and the same. Think about it, you can be conscious and completely unaware of what is going on behind you, or around the corner. It's also possible to be aware whilst in unconscious dreamless sleep (difficult, but not impossible). If everything has an opposite then the opposite of awareness is un-awareness. The more unaware you are, the more subconsciously driven you are and vice versa the more aware you are, the more conscious you become. They are like two sliding scales linked with each other.

The other part of the equation is that there seems to be a force at work, trying to keep us going along with the plot, trying to keep us non-lucid. I think this is just a mechanism of the subconscious, as it's major function is to provide story and a role that you play. So as much as we have to wrestle with our subconscious for control, it's also about letting go of control and allowing the subconscious to have more control during the day and less at night. The subconscious is the deepest part of our own selves, it's your own best friend and perfect lover that knows your deepest darkest secrets and still loves you. It knows intimately what you think and feel, it knows everything about you and only wants what's best for you. The more you allow it to have control in waking life in the world around you, the better your story will get.

For too long, we have been sleeping in waking life and it's time to become lucid now my friends.

I don't quite subscribe to your theory, but the whole area is very interesting. It seems as if we (our subconscious?) are trying with all means available to maintain a coherent story for our daily lives. But when we sleep, this rigorous control is dropped, and incoherence becomes normal.

This begs at least two questions: why is it considered so important to maintain coherence some of the time, but not all of the time. And how do we relax the coherency?

Interesting idea Eonnn, to give more importance to subconscious processes (I define the subconscious as all mental processes not held in consciousness at any given moment, for example, how a particular thought might arise spontaneously or how a memory is found when you try to remember). During our Dreamviews bookclub, we read "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa, a book about meditation. As he describes it, in meditation, there is the conscious skill of concentration. But there is also a subconscious skill. To maintain attention on the object of meditation, you must set the intention to notice once you've strayed away from the object and to go back to it. Whether you notice you are no longer focused on your breathing but on a memory or not is not a conscious skill, but a subconscious one. Or in any case, that's how he describes it and I am willing to accept it.

So in this way, my meditation practice relies on being aware that meditation is not all conscious. The subconscious is involved and I am aware of it. There is a relationship, not in the sense that my subconscious is an individual entity that I have a friendship with but rather that I send out intentions and respect that it's not a role for my conscious mind.

The application to lucid dreaming is clear: becoming lucid is a subconscious process. The subconscious mind must notice your dreaming state and bring it to your attention.

The Tibetans in their Dream Yoga practice (which I study and follow as my primary practice these days) have a slightly different take: they maintain the sleeping mind and the waking mind are fundamentally the same, and that the reason that we are not lucid in dreams is that we are not lucid in waking life, either: that our (sub-/un- not sure which one) conscious conditioning causes us to react to the objects of experience out of habit, not out of conscious awareness/mindfulness. We are distracted from the truth of the present moment experience by the stories told in the mind, that most people unknowingly follow all day long (and thus all night long in dreams). This ties in to what Occipitalred wrote about the "prodding" that the subconscious gives to the meditator to notice when focus on the object has been lost.

When one has set the goal to be lucid in waking life as much as possible, to become lucid in response to experience and one's reactions to experience (behavior), and when one works on this regularly and consistently, over time this prodding comes more and more frequently, until one is more or less continuously lucid and freed of conditioned responses, and able to see the truth of the present moment from moment to moment, including whether one is in the waking or dreaming state.

So to the Tibetans, it's simple: we train to be lucid in dreams by being lucid when awake. Waking lucidity will eventually manifest in dreams.

I just thought of another way to become lucid in waking life but it's a little different...

Basically just imagine you already are..

Ponder it daily, visualise and imagine, wonder what it would be like if you were lucid throughout the day. Assume that you are lucid, basically fake it till you make it.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

that our (sub-/un- not sure which one) conscious conditioning causes us to react to the objects of experience out of habit, not out of conscious awareness/mindfulness.

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This reminds me of being reactive instead of proactive. We often are just the victim to circumstance instead of the other way around - creating circumstances. When lucid, we are proactively participating in what happens, choosing what happens. In waking life, it's usually just reacting to situations and making the best of what happens when really we should be consciously creating positive experiences for ourselves.

I'm feeling like discussing this further:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

the reason that we are not lucid in dreams is that we are not lucid in waking life

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What does it really mean to be lucid in waking life?

Lucidity in sleep means awareness that we are asleep rather than awake. I would argue "awareness that we are awake rather than asleep" is not a particularly valuable awareness for anyone that's awake.

If lucidity is seen as a clarity of mind, it seems unnatural to me that someone who nurtures a clear waking mind would put much emphasis on whether they are actually asleep when there are so many more relevant things for a waking mind to be aware of: subtle environmental cues, reading between the lines of oral and written communication, emotional state and behaviour patterns, consequences, planning, etc... (and I think this is the major obstacle to creating a habbit of RC and such)

But you do go on to define the opposite of waking lucidity:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

either: that our (sub-/un- not sure which one) conscious conditioning causes us to react to the objects of experience out of habit, not out of conscious awareness/mindfulness.

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and yet:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

When one has set the goal to be lucid in waking life as much as possible, to become lucid in response to experience and one's reactions to experience (behavior), and when one works on this regularly and consistently, over time this prodding comes more and more frequently, until one is more or less continuously lucid and freed of conditioned responses, and able to see the truth of the present moment from moment to moment, including whether one is in the waking or dreaming state.

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Is it fair to say you are describing a new habit? It seems we are not nurturing lucidity but creating a new pattern of reacting to the objects of experience.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

So to the Tibetans, it's simple: we train to be lucid in dreams by being lucid when awake. Waking lucidity will eventually manifest in dreams.

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I am being a devil's advocate here just to hear you go more in depth. But I also feel like the real reason we are not lucid in dreams is not because we are not lucid in waking life but simply because sleep numbs the mind, hence the need for a strong habit rather than simply being mindful. This seems especially relevant: simply deciding to be mindful is not sufficient to becoming lucid (without the strong habit or a naturally clearer mind throughout sleep).

Maybe, I just don't really believe that someone who notices they are dreaming and goes on to fly or meditate really has demonstrated a greater level of "lucidity" than someone who notices they have free time and goes on to bike or meditate.

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I'm feeling like discussing this further:

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My main resource for my ideas on lucidity and dreaming is the Tibetan dream yoga literature:

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The Tibetan Yogas of Dream & Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (TWR)
Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep by Andrew Holecek

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These provide extensive and thorough backgrounds and descriptions, and the reasoning and goals behind the practice. If you want the full picture, I refer you to these resources. I'm sure that I can only do an approximate and poor representation of these ideas by picking and choosing excerpts. In particular, TWR's beautiful wording conveys so many critical and powerful ideas, each sentence is a gem IMO. Dream yoga is not seen as an entertainment vehicle, but instead as a tool to aid in reaching enlightenment (freedom from suffering for oneself and all sentient beings), and for enhancing both one's waking and dreaming life (and there are some other more esoteric goals for the serious Buddhists in the crowd).

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

What does it really mean to be lucid in waking life?

Lucidity in sleep means awareness that we are asleep rather than awake. I would argue "awareness that we are awake rather than asleep" is not a particularly valuable awareness for anyone that's awake.

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I wouldn't disagree with you on the narrow usefulness of state awareness to the waking state, but that is not what I or the above authors mean by "lucid" or "lucid awareness." The LD community's use of the term to mean "state awareness in the dream state" (knowing that you're dreaming while dreaming) is very specific and narrow. It is a convenient shorthand to describe the experience we're working towards, but it's not a complete definition of the term. When one is lucid, awareness of one's state is certainly included. It's a bit of a slippery thing to define with words, but lucid awareness is a sort of holistic state that combines the phenomena of: presence, clarity, awareness (including awareness of state, and outer and inner experience).

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

If lucidity is seen as a clarity of mind, it seems unnatural to me that someone who nurtures a clear waking mind would put much emphasis on whether they are actually asleep when there are so many more relevant things for a waking mind to be aware of: subtle environmental cues, reading between the lines of oral and written communication, emotional state and behaviour patterns, consequences, planning, etc... (and I think this is the major obstacle to creating a habbit of RC and such)

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Dream yoga, as I mentioned above, is a practice aimed at cultivating lucidity in the dream state (and in the waking state!) in order to perform further practices in dream that aid on the path to enlightenment. The point of this lucidity is to free oneself from the unconscious conditioning (habitual, mindless reactivity) that leads to suffering in oneself, and others -- to be able to skillfully respond to any situation with compassion, kindness, respect, generosity, and so on. Just as our waking life behavior can affect how we dream, our dream behavior can affect how we live when awake.

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Is it fair to say you are describing a new habit? It seems we are not nurturing lucidity but creating a new pattern of reacting to the objects of experience.

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Emphatic yes and no! TYoDaS says this specifically: "you are creating a new habit of mind...", but VIA lucid awareness. We are able to establish a new relationship with the objects of experience and reactions to experience BY cultivating lucidity. "Habit" here doesn't mean "mindless unconscious reaction," though, it means "what one normally/typically does."

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I am being a devil's advocate here just to hear you go more in depth. But I also feel like the real reason we are not lucid in dreams is not because we are not lucid in waking life but simply because sleep numbs the mind, hence the need for a strong habit rather than simply being mindful. This seems especially relevant: simply deciding to be mindful is not sufficient to becoming lucid (without the strong habit or a naturally clearer mind throughout sleep).

Maybe, I just don't really believe that someone who notices they are dreaming and goes on to fly or meditate really has demonstrated a greater level of "lucidity" than someone who notices they have free time and goes on to bike or meditate.

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I refer you to TYoDaS. One small portion:

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Originally Posted by TYoDaS

Dreams in sleep arise from the same conditioning that governs our waking experience. If we are too distracted to penetrate the fantasies and delusions of the moving mind during the day, we will likely be bound by the same limitations in dream. Dream phenomena will evoke in us the same emotions and reactions in which we are lost when awake, even if we are lucid in the dream, making it difficult to develop the lucidity and engage in further practices.
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Dream yoga practice cultivates the stability in awareness needed to free yourself of conditioning and reactivity. Develop stability in lucidity during the day, and you will increasingly develop stability in awareness at night. Your dreams will change in extraordinary ways.
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The daily life of the mind determines the quality of our lives and the quality of our dreams. Change the way you experience your waking life and you change the experience of dream; the "you" that lives the dreams of waking life is the same "you" that lives the dreams of sleep
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If you are present and lucid when awake, you will eventually find that lucidity in dreams. It works the other way, too; change the way you are in dreams and you change your waking life.
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Note the terms "increasingly" and "eventually". The physical limitations you refer to in the dream state, the fogginess of mind and the impairment of access to memory, are why these waking changes do not instantly manifest in dream (along with a long life of highly reinforced unconscious conditioning....this takes time, maybe a lot of time, to unravel). The practice of daytime lucidity to reach lucidity in the dream state takes time, maybe even a long time. Part of dream yoga practice is generating very strong intent, that intent is also needed to penetrate the limitations in the dream state.

I hope this clarifies things a bit...

edit: BTW, both TWR and Holecek recommend doing "fun" things in dream as part of the practice. It's not stodgy seriousness. In fact, TWR warns against too much seriousness as a hindrance to lucidity. The point is to cultivate openness, spaciousness, lightness, resting in vivid awareness.

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I'm feeling like discussing this further:



What does it really mean to be lucid in waking life?

Lucidity in sleep means awareness that we are asleep rather than awake. I would argue "awareness that we are awake rather than asleep" is not a particularly valuable awareness for anyone that's awake.

If lucidity is seen as a clarity of mind, it seems unnatural to me that someone who nurtures a clear waking mind would put much emphasis on whether they are actually asleep when there are so many more relevant things for a waking mind to be aware of: subtle environmental cues, reading between the lines of oral and written communication, emotional state and behaviour patterns, consequences, planning, etc... (and I think this is the major obstacle to creating a habbit of RC and such)

But you do go on to define the opposite of waking lucidity:


and yet:



Is it fair to say you are describing a new habit? It seems we are not nurturing lucidity but creating a new pattern of reacting to the objects of experience.



I am being a devil's advocate here just to hear you go more in depth. But I also feel like the real reason we are not lucid in dreams is not because we are not lucid in waking life but simply because sleep numbs the mind, hence the need for a strong habit rather than simply being mindful. This seems especially relevant: simply deciding to be mindful is not sufficient to becoming lucid (without the strong habit or a naturally clearer mind throughout sleep).

Maybe, I just don't really believe that someone who notices they are dreaming and goes on to fly or meditate really has demonstrated a greater level of "lucidity" than someone who notices they have free time and goes on to bike or meditate.

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Thank you, this is my point exactly.

In sleep, we need to wake up whilst still keeping body asleep. In wakefulness we need to fall asleep whilst still keeping body awake.

Mindfulness increases your level of awareness, you get clarity, peacefulness, etc. But the dreaming mind is the dreaming mind. How can you expect to fly in real life with crystal clear logic and perception, but no creative imaginative dreamstate going on?

I would argue the ancient dream yoga techniques were all about merging the boundaries of waking and dreaming, living life as though you are still dreaming in an attempt to blur the lines.

Either way, if we become lucid in sleep by being aware we are asleep, then how is that going to work if we are already awake? It's not. We have to do the opposite. Instead of mind awake body asleep, it's mind asleep, body awake.

I’ve been watching this interesting thread

I have a few questions for anyone wishing to answer

How does one make a conscious action to allow something uncontrollable and unreachable (the sun conscious) to take control? This seems like a contradiction in terms?

Are sub conscious actions the same as mindless habitual patterns? Does not attending to events/stimulus mean we are acting from parts of the mind typically considered hidden from our cognitive reach /reasoning/logic?


“we need to wake up while keeping our body asleep.” - wake up to what, from what? Do you consciously keep your body asleep? Is the body asleep?

1) if mindfulness increases “awareness” and boosts clarity ( assuming we mean clarity and awareness of our immediate situation, our intentions, mood, our environment, our thoughts,smell, touch senses and what we are seeing/ hearing and living to our ideals) why would this not help with becoming aware while dreaming?

2) why and how are the ancient dream yogas blurring the line between waking and dream state?

3) - how will mind being asleep and body being awake help us be lucid in our waking life help us to be lucid in our dreams?
- What does this look like in practice?
-In what way is the body awake?
- in what way is the mind asleep?

Occipiptalred said “ Lucidity in sleep means awareness that we are asleep rather than awake. I would argue "awareness that we are awake rather than asleep" is not a particularly valuable awareness for anyone that's awake. “

- is there any value in checking our state during the day? If no why not if yes what gives its value and why?

What is it specifically that indicates that you are asleep when asleep?
Is it not the same brain that’s interpreting external stimulus during waking life that’s also interpreting internal stimulus during sleep? Sure biology is at play hence the state of mind may be different during dreaming but the state of mind also fluctuates during the day so how can we differentiate between external stimulus and internal stimulus?

Those are some great questions Ant, I especially like the question about "what is it specifically that indicates you are asleep when asleep?". The more questions we ask ourselves, the closer we come to discovering the answers. This type of questioning is self enquiry which opens many doors to greater understanding.

For me, I often become lucid within the dreamstate because I notice something unusual, something that is inconsistent in comparison to normal life. It's like pattern recognition, for example recognising that it doesn't normally take that long to pee in the toilet, or that all your teeth falling out isn't a normal thing that happens.

As for your other questions, I don't have time to answer them right now sorry, but I'm sure you will find the answers if you truly desire to know them, or perhaps you already do. Where there is a will, there is a way, we only need to look long and hard enough and we discover it sooner or later.