How anyone can be a ‘natural’ lucid dreamer – Neuronal Plasticity

This is an elaboration on my previous thread Intent in Lucid Dreaming. Read this first and then read the earlier thread. Let me know if you feel I've wasted your time :P (Sorry about all the neuroanatomy)
In short ‘Neuronal Plasticity’ is the ability of the circuitry (neurons) to mould and remould themselves over time (plasticity). With the advent of neuroscience it was thought that key organs in the brain carried out particular functions, such as the limbic region mediating emotional responses and the hippocampus being connected with long term memory, and that was that, it has been observed in brain damaged patients as areas of the brain take up the slack on vital functions not usually associated with that area to make up for damaged, or even missing, components of the brain. One specific example is the way in which the remaining senses of blind people are augmented to compensate with loss of sight.

This is all very nice, but how does it relate to lucid dream, how can it help you?

Basically your brain is a seething grey mass of latent capabilities and boundless potential waiting for you engineer it for your purposes, here, lucid dreaming. Your brain is a computer, and you’ve got access to the coding, hell, the hardware. By changing your attitude your brain will begin to work according to your new beliefs.
The brain rewires itself to more efficiently deal with things it does on a day-to-day basis, for instance, when you learn to drive your brain rewires the areas to do with movement to more effectively deal with the complex business of turning the wheel, pedals and gear changes. It also works with mental states. People with depression don’t simply have faulty thinking or a chemical imbalance, their brains physically change to accommodate new thinking, faulty circuitry becomes rewired and maladaptive links form and are reinforced over time in a vicious circle, the more depressed a person is, the stronger the circuit, the stronger the circuit, the worse they feel, ad infinitum. In people with OCD a ‘worry circuit’ forms linking the Caudeate Nucleus and the Orbital frontal cortex so that when source of anxiety is encountered it forms a loop of obsession.

Here’s the interesting part

I believe that the very same process occurs in the natural lucid dreamers, you know the annoying ‘every night’ lucid dreamers who have done it since they were kids and had no idea it was out of the ordinary to know you’re dreaming, many of whom found lucid dreaming as a way to escape nightmares. Naturals become so preoccupied with the question of whether they are dreaming that a circuit forms whereby they are constantly vigilant of whether they are dreaming or not, when the anterior pons triggers dream formation, the reticular activating (attention centre) alerts the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (self awareness centre) that the dreamer is dreaming.

This isn’t bullshit new age thinking or pseudo science like the pineal gland producing DMT, there has been research showing that long term meditation changes the structure of the brain. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness

You can change the wiring of your brain (non lucid dreamer to lucid dreamer) by changing your attitude. The word attitude comes from the latin ‘aptus’ meaning ‘ready to act’, by changing your attitude you can ready yourself to lucid dream. How you do this is quite simple.

Firstly get the fundamentals right. Recall, awareness, regular practice. You need to recall your dreams, you need a technique that raises awareness in some way, be it reality checks, all day awareness, meditation, even, and you need to practice it consistently, day in day out. The ‘great’ lucid dreamers of history chose one simple technique, and did it consistently every day for years until lucid dreaming came as naturally as breathing: Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys, Frederik van Eden, Carlos Casteneda, Paul Tholey, Stephen Laberge. Many of them didn’t have all the techniques we have today (or the internet), they were simply intensely interested in dream consciousness, and didn’t doubt for a second they would succeed. Even on this forum, the user Hukif consistently used one simple technique every day, gravity based RC, and never deviated from it. It took him eight years for his first lucid dream, and now he’s lucid every night.

Which brings us to the second point: belief. Make your attitude the attitude of a natural lucid dreamer, never doubt that you will succeed, because you will.

To get more of an idea on how to change your attitude for lucid dreaming read this thread by Silverbullet (and see his LD count) http://www.dreamviews.com/f12/silver...eaming-117015/