meditation, and unintentional lucid awakening.. my experiences i'd like to share

[woah]

hi everyone. I haven't been here for a while, and my interest in lucid dream kind of died down for a long time. but i'd like to share what i've been going through recently. My life has been riddled with anxiety and depression, and i took up meditation to cultivate my awareness. As i go through my daily life, I'd try to keep myself very aware of the present moment, of every sensation and emotion and of my 5 senses. I'd try to truly marvel at all my experiences, and analyze daily mundane objects and moments as if I've never experienced them before. I'd pretend i'm some kind of caveman who've never seen modern human society before. and two times now, maybe more since my dream recall sucks, i've had a lucid dream due to my dream self practicing awareness exercises.. the 1st time i was driving on a bridge, when i started analyzing my sensations and really looked around me at my surroundings. I started thinking "what if i'm dreaming? there's no way i'm dreaming, it feels so real." It was night time, and i started feeling afraid that there was some presence in the backseat. But i just kept thinking how this felt SO real, there's no way i'm dreaming. And then suddenly an old lady pressed her face against my side window and started screaming "EHHHHH HAHAH EHHHHH HAHAHA" and i thought "jesus fuck i'm dreaming fuck" and i woke up . The 2nd time somehow there was a girl in my bed. She was 13 years old. i kept rejecting her when she tries to sleep with me cause she's underaged. Then as her face got close to mine, her face began to distort and her mouth disappeared. But it didn't seem odd to me. I think what tipped me off was I don't actually get laid in real life haha, so i realized it was a dream and started my awareness exercise in the dream and noticed how real everything felt. So what bothers me is, I just can't distinguish the sensations i feel in a dream from the sensations i feel in reality. For all intents and purposes they are... the same. isn't that scary as hell? Any moment in my life, if i look at my surroundings out of context, the truth is, i could be dreaming at that moment and no matter how deep my awareness is, i just can't tell at first glance whether i'm dreaming or not without something bizzare happening like a scary old lady popping out of nowhere or a girl's face distorting. Does anyone else have anything more to add about the nature of our reality and perception? basically, i'm just kind of scared and confused but excited.

[Alyzarin]

I wouldn't really say scary so much as awesome lol. If you're worried about forgetting that you're awake one day and treating the world like a dream, don't be. You don't forget when you're awake, it just doesn't work that way. If I were you I'd start focusing more on making note of all your potential dream signs and things like that so you can have as many lucid cues as possible, and then when you've managed to be able to tell for sure easily that you're dreaming even when your perception is this real you'll just be having one totally badass lucid dream after another. Your awareness exercises work on pretty much the same principle as certain kinds of exercises to increase lucidity and vividness of dreams, so it makes perfect sense that you've reached this point with it. You're actually already much further down the road than most people get with this so I'd take it to the next level now, personally.

[woah]

you really think i'm ahead of most people? that'd be quite nice if true, but i'm not sure that's the case because my grasp on my awareness is still really clumsy and sporadic. i'll keep working on it though, not even for dreaming purposes but just because it helps me with my life issues. it's a nice side effect that it helps me lucid dream too i think.. it's just very bizzare when i'm practicing awareness in real life, and i think to myself "this very moment could be a dream and there's no way i could tell if it's reality or not" and how true that statement would be for me..

[Alyzarin]

That is a wonderful choice of words. Have you ever looked into the Sporadic Awareness Technique? (Click for a link to the guide.) I don't know exactly what your awareness techniques entail, but after that I would also look into All Day Awareness. I can't think of any better way to improve your situation than by trying to get something out of those guides or similar ones that you can apply to yourself. Believe me, most people here would KILL to have vividness like you have, it's a blessing even if you haven't realized it yet! What you should definitely start doing immediately is stop thinking things like that, though, that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Trust me, you're directly hurting your chances! You're using the common method of using mantras to increase your chances of knowing or getting lucid, but you're using them against you! The more you tell yourself that you can't tell the difference between a dream and reality, the more your brain will believe it when you're dreaming and you'll have no chance. What you should start doing is maybe start telling yourself you CAN tell the difference because you know your brain can get past its own illusions, which it can, and the more you believe it the more likely it'll be for you to break through. And it totally can, so what's not to believe? Try finding new ways to increase your awareness that don't involve just looking at your surroundings. For example, just off the top of my head, maybe you could try remembering how you woke up that day and everything you've done since then whenever you find yourself in doubt? Surely in an aware enough dream you could use logic to figure out if what you were or weren't capable of remembering made sense. Just a thought.

[woah]

I actually did read all those guides a while ago, and tried to do them for a while but gave up cause it's quite hard. They're pretty much the same as what i'm trying to do now though. All day awareness sounds almost exactly like mindfulness meditation. Right now i'm finding out how much sense it makes to meditate as a way to train my mind to be more in control as a way to keep my anxiety and depression in check. Hopefully if i keep doing that, maybe lucid dreams will naturally come along without more effort. my dream recall is total trash, and i think developing that is the hardest part. Who knows though, maybe when i get really good at mindfulness/awareness, i'll turn lucid more often, and turning lucid itself will improve dream recall and i won't even need to maintain any type of dream journal. I hate dream journals :x. my writing is really incoherent especially when it comes to my dreams, and it's frustrating to reread lol. anyway thanks for the tips. it's encouraging to hear that i'm ahead of most people in vividness.. but i think it's just a matter of knowing the right techniques. Basically, that guide about all day awareness? Do that, but in your dream. And then you'll be pretty vivid when you closely analyze every sensation in your dreams.. but who knows. maybe my brain is just different.

[Raen]

The 2nd time somehow there was a girl in my bed. She was 13 years old. i kept rejecting her when she tries to sleep with me cause she's underaged. Then as her face got close to mine, her face began to distort and her mouth disappeared. But it didn't seem odd to me. I think what tipped me off was I don't actually get laid in real life haha, so i realized it was a dream and started my awareness exercise in the dream and noticed how real everything felt. Nearly cried with laughter T_T Anyway, I know how you feel. I am generally very aware of my surroundings and consistently analyze reality. However, the problem occurs because I seem to lack the ability to recognize that something is out of place. Maybe if you start to familiarize yourself with things in the waking life by looking at them and thinking "This is what it would look like in real life" or if you're doing something just think to yourself "This is how it feels to do this in real life"