ADA understanding for everyone, let's solve this problem once and for all

Hello everyone,

I noticed an enormeous amount of threads being post about ADA. Many people seem to have problems with being aware the whole day through.
In fact the biggest problem people have is understanding how you should train this properly. I'm still new to this myself and I'm putting a lot of effort in my awareness every single day now.
But most important: I'm trying to understand how this whole thing works. I'm in my first year studying psychology at the university now and we have recently learned about this subject so I'll
gladly share my new understandingswith you guys.

May I ask more experienced lucid dreamers and people who have more knowledge about psychology to correct my theory and help us get rid of this problem once and for all. Since awareness is a key element to lucid dreaming and makes lucids worth the effort we all put in them this might be one step forward for a lot of people including myself.

I'll start off with what I could find in my book of psychology, then I'll quickly inform you about how I train awareness and combined the information coming from DV and the book used by my university, on to you to let me know if I'm doing it right, I'll try to keep this as short as possible. Btw English isn't my first language so my apologies for eventual mistakes:).

This is a rough scheme about how our memory works:

We have our sensory memory, a short time memory and a long term memory. Our awareness could be called the same as our short term memory. Everything within our direct consiousness are those things being progressed in our short term memory at that time. This STM gets his material from both our sensory memory and our long term memory.
Here is a simple image so you can visualize it properly:
Attachment 3851
Our sensory memory gets all the information from our environnement and can have 12 to 16 active items at the same time. Our short term mememory, consiousness or working memory as you can call it about 7 items and our long term memory is our storage room of information.

Now what you are aware of is a blend of items we get from our sensory memory and idea's and memories coming from our long term memory.
Using material that you take back out of your LTM is called daydreaming and is a very normal process.

The big problem whit our awareness is that we all use up way to much of our available items in our STM coming from our LTM, for example daydreaming, making plans for the weekend or deciding what we are going to eat. This way there isn't any room left in our consiousness for information we get from our sensory memory, meaning we are not aware of what is going on in our surroundings.

Let us make some things clear now,
there is no possible way to increase the amount of information we can put in our STM, neither is there a possible way to focuss on every item we get through from our senses that are put in our sensory memory.

So trying to focus on all those things at the same time, don't try it, it is not possible. What more experienced dreamers mean with noticing all those things at the same time is just using as much items of those 7 available for our material coming from our senses and cutting down on thoughts coming from our long term memory.

The goal is to get items only coming from our sensory memory and none of those coming from LTM in our consiousness.

What I do now, is focus one by one, first on touch then sound then sight then smell and sometimes taste too. Then, and this is very important: control your thoughts just like you are meditating and keeping those LTM items out of your awareness, don't daydream, live in the moment and sniff up the atmosphere. Doing this everytime you perform a RC is also not a bad thing. (Wearing an elastic band around your wrist and pulling it everytime you notice your thoughts go wandering is what I do too, try not to do this in public, it might seem like you are a bit crazy)

Don't try to focus on everything at once, this will only get you discouraged because it is impossible for every human on this planet. Just try to control the input of those items in your consiousness, in your thoughts/ awareness and keep this up all day long;).

I hope this wasn't totally wrong, if so just correct me. Also guidelines on how to perform the technique poperly would be absolutely great because knowing what to do and being able to do them are two different things and I am not at all able to keep those thoughts under control.

Thanks for reading! I hope this is the beginning of coming up whit a solid guide for ADA which everyone can understand. The more advice and adjustment I get from you guys the better.

Isidoor:)

I couldn't edit this post so I would like to add that In this book they make clear that we can only set our focus on one thing at the same time. So telling people to try focussing on every sense at once is going to be quiet discouraging and exhausting for that person. And I wrote whit everytime instead of with... noticed too late:).

Great guide, hope it clears up some peoples problems.

ADA is one of those techniques that pops up every now and then, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and because it is so vague everyone claims it works for them. In my opinion the entire concept sounds good, but in reality is completely unworkable for any amount of time by a normal person. What the technique is saying is that basically you have to achieve what Buddhist monks have been striving for since the dawn of Buddhism!!! It's probably not even possible for human beings to be aware constantly and it may even work against us! we may burn out our brains during the day and make our dreams even less aware while our minds try and recover!!

Of course being more aware is useful for lucid dreaming, but isn't that just the most basic principle of lucid dreaming anyway? isn't that what every single book and expert on the subject implies? it's kind of so obvious that the fact that we here on DV have made it into a technique in its own right is kind of embarrassing! It's like we're saying we're all too stupid to realise that lucid dreaming requires awareness and we need to be spoon fed such an obvious fact!

ADA is not a technique, it's just a basic fundamental principle of lucid dream training: being observant. I mean c'mon... the world "lucid" in lucid dreaming is used for its meaning as "aware".

If people need to be told this, if they need to have it spelt out to them as a technique, then something has really gone wrong in the basic education on lucid dreaming.

Sorry, I've been away from DV for a long time and i'm really shocked by how things have changed so sorry for my rant!

I am new to this, so I'm not the one to tell someone who is far more experienced than me how it's done.
If DV isn't what it used to be then I'm sorry to hear that, especially for those who are member from the beginning.
You are totally right about the fact that it is impossible to reach full awareness, not walking with your head in the clouds the whole day however is not such a bad tip(what I personally think). Especially for people who aren't present during the day I think it isn't a bad idea to keep this in mind, call it a tip or a technique doesn't matter.

Nonetheless you might be right, maybe we are overdoing it and this is a bit too much drama made about simple facts.
Conclusion, I am one of the many people who are only just beginning and didn't think about this basic rule that tells us to just live in the moment... guess we were too stupid to see that, how basic it may seem for some of you. You don't have to be mad about it though... everyone was a beginner at some point.

Isidoor