Who or what should we blame for the lack of lucidity ?

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Originally Posted by StephL

Found a short BBC feature on conciousness - with this mirror-recognition test Darkmatters mentioned - they show, that basic self-awareness sets in between 18 and 24 month of age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b59KgcEoJT4

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If self-awareness was the only prerequisite to lucid dream, then kids could therefore start lucid dreaming at the age of 18-24 months. However, I have some questions about this mirror-recognition test:

1. What if the kids under a certain age and the animals that don't pass this test is only because they don't care about having a spot on their cheek?

2. If an animal can identify other animals in their environment such as prey, family, and predators, why would it not recognize itself? Maybe they can recognize their own arm, just not identify with an arm that's in front of them because that makes no sense for someone that doesn't believe in mirrors.

3. Just being able to recognize yourself in a mirror is something that even a robot could do. Therefore the mirror-recognition test does not correspond to the same type of self-awareness we are talking about. Self-Awareness is more of a mystical (as in hard to explain) experience where you are aware of your own awareness, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, how they affect the world around you, how they are affected by the world and in what context-space-time you're in. Maybe I added more to the self-awareness definition, but this is more what I think about when I think about self-awareness. I think this definition corresponds more to what a child needs to be able to experience to have a conscious dream than being able to know they're looking at themselves in a mirror.

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4. I find it hard to be self-aware when looking into the big mirror in my bathroom because it feels like me is the person in the mirror that's looking right into my eyes.

5. Also, I feel like the mirror thing depends on an understanding of what a mirror is to some degree. Why would a horse say "Hey this is me, it makes total sense that I am here but I see myself in front of me. They're more likely to think. Hey, this other horse is copying me. I am self-aware so I know I'm here and not there."

P.S: I love the idea of kidnapping Sageous and FMRIing him.
Don't worry, Sageous, we'll drug you so you can sleep:lol:

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

Don't worry, Sageous, we'll drug you so you can sleep:lol:

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The sleeping pills might affect his ability to lucid dream. I think that if we simply attach him to the FMRI machine for a long period of time (2 days), he will eventually fall asleep. We'll feed him with a straw and sing him lullabies from far away lands.

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

The sleeping pills might affect his ability to lucid dream. I think that if we simply attach him to the FMRI machine for a long period of time (2 days), he will eventually fall asleep. We'll feed him with a straw and sing him lullabies from far away lands.

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I'm preparing an armed team as we speak, then I will rent a heli. Meet me at the destination(I'll PM it to you).:chuckle:

quick responses here...

I agree with Steph especially in regards to children's interaction with the world around them. I think that most of us lose some kind of connection that takes great effort to get back and/or surpass. I would guess that most people who live on auto-pilot don't remember this connection. I think that there are some lesser known educational philosophies that attempt to maintain some of those connections while developing the more traditional ones through the elementary school years. The study linked further back seems to show that children are indeed lucid dreaming, even if it may not be at the level that Occipitalred seems to be striving for (which I applaud).

Since the idea of a true lucid has become a significant part of this thread, I had to express an opinion here. I feel that the best approach to bringing up the idea of an inferior lucid is to only name it as such to intermediate or advanced LDers. For beginners, after they have had their first assumed LD that doesn't sound like Meskhetyw's or Steph's early examples involving high levels (of self-awareness, correct?), it is perhaps more helpful to say something like "great start, now practice adding this...you will be amazed at the new heights that you can attain over time." You can let them know that it is a work in progress, so that they strive further. Depending on their personality type, the idea that the wonderful experience that they had might be labeled as inferior or as merely dreaming that they were lucid could chase them away. Heck, I went back and recalled the sequence of events in my last few LDs just to double check that I wasn't dreaming of being lucid. That initial doubt, no matter how small, is scary. Again, I think it can be approached more head on with intermediates and above. This goes along with Sageous' baby steps comment above and with Sageous' approach of proving the lucid to yourself, which I agree with at my current stage of lucid dreaming development.

I think everything does filter down to the idea that there probably are no real shortcuts, even though I also keep an eye out for shortcuts while putting in the work needed on the fundamentals to continue to advance in lucid dreaming. Sageous has mentioned elsewhere that one of the primary things missing or switched off while dreaming is memory and we can aid switching memory back on through self awareness. Since self awareness is useful IWL and in dreaming, I plan to keep striving to improve it.

So many questions!

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

I want to ask Sageous something:
Do we really need self-awareness if we can use prospective memory to detect that DS?( you may think that the below questioon for Zoth is the same, but I need you to also tell us how frequently does self awareness occur in NLD after we train it, and how powerful).

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Yes. Sure, you can detect a dreamsign (I assume that's what DS stands for) with prospective memory, but you still need to summon some self-awareness to remember what that DS means, to assure yourself that this is a dream with perhaps some other double-checks (like an RC, or remembering where your sleeping body is), and of course to actually begin the LD. Keep in mind that the presence of some waking-life self-awareness is what makes your dream lucid, so self-awareness is necessary eventually. Also keep in mind that it is very easy to wind up dreaming that you saw a DS, and dreaming that you became lucid, and the presence of self-awareness is what negates this sort of NLD.

So yes, prospective memory is enough to prompt the LD, but self-awareness must emerge eventually to enable the LD.

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But beware, the main question is:
Are we able to feel that "feeling" constantly in our NLDs if we memorize it , and heighten self awareness if needed?

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I don't think it's a feeling that can be memorized, per se. I think this is where Zoth's "habit" thesis comes into play (and RRC's as well): If you are regularly practicing some sort of self-awareness, regularly taking a moment to "establish" your position in your immediate reality and your relationship with that reality, you might just bring that routine into the dream with you and then voila! there is the "feeling." In other words, I don't think you can use prospective memory to create a constant, say, subsonic hum of self-awareness.... memory just doesn't work that way

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Also, Sageous, you are right that a high-level LD is much more important than 10 low lucid dreams, because, I think, the better we feel the dream "feeling", the easier it is to induce LDs(Also, I think it is not like a normal feeling, more like a hunch, right?)

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No, I think the high-level dream transcends that "hum" that quietly reminds you that you're in a dream. The reason a high-level dream has value is because it becomes an experience you really want to repeat, and your focus and intention have something to target, something to desire... If you know what you are looking for, it becomes much easier to find.

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

also, another question for Sageous:
Do you feel the dream because you got used to it?(bcz you had a huge amount of LDs)

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Yes and no. Since my original LD's, as far as I remember them, happened spontaneously, I can't honestly say that it is my long time spent LD'ing that got me used to noticing that "feeling," or having that "hunch," that this is a dream. That said, I think a lot of my current "feel" for the dreaming has as much to do with experience as anything else. How's that for a non-answer answer?!

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Do you use it as a DS?

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Not really. The awareness that I'm dreaming is always slightly there these days, so as a DS it would sort of be a little too common a feeling to stand out. Also, see my note just above about the "feeling" being a bit too steady and subtle to jump out as a proper DS.

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Do you need self-awareness to help you detect that feeling?(feeling or hunch or whatever)

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I feel like I'm at a legal inquiry, being asked the same question over and over ;) ... Yes, because the feeling, or hunch, or subtle understanding, or whatever, that this is a dream is couched in self-awareness, you would necessarily need self-awareness to detect, and ultimately amplify, that feeling. Now if there were something to nudge that self-awareness into action, here is where it would come into play:

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I don't know why you don't think NovaDreamer is helpful for improving your LDing skills. Using it with MILD and self-awareness will help you get more good LDs and to get a hang of that dream hunch. Isn't it that dream hunch that all expert LDers rely on completly?

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I never said the NovaDreamer isn't helpful for improving your LD'ing skills. What I did say was that it cannot replace LD'ing skills, or the fundamentals for LD'ing. The NovaDreamer just sends a stimulus to you when it detects REM. It does not tell you what that stimulus means in the dream, and it certainly does not trigger you to suddenly become lucid.

What it does do, and this can be quite helpful, is give you an opportunity to recognize the stimulus for what it is -- a flash of light from the waking world, and a reminder that you are dreaming. That recognition is done with self-awareness. Also, spotting the stimulus in the first place tends to happen more through waking-life work -- like building expectation and setting intentions, than it does simply turning the machine on and going to sleep.

Oh wait. Now that I read this through, I suppose that it is somewhat true: in a sense I do not think that the Novadreamer is helpful for improving LD'ing skills. It is helpful for sparking lucidity, which is a good thing, but for me the actual skills are developed both after that spark and in waking life, not during the spark.

In other words, the Novadreamer doesn't create that hunch, you do. It only makes it a little easier to remember to have the hunch.

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

I'm preparing an armed team as we speak, then I will rent a heli. Meet me at the destination(I'll PM it to you).:chuckle:

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Uh - oh!

Man, this thread is moving so fast - can't keep up!! :panic:

I just skimmed a few lines of the last flurry of posts, and a couple things I want to say..

Steph, I agree that children have a much stronger awareness of their surroundings than adults do. This actually is what Don Juan talks about - being taught to see the world in a certain way, and as a consequence forgetting the world in its real form, which as a child you were aware of. It's the Tonal and the Nagual. Tonal being the totally conscious way to see the world, and Nagual being a very unconscious way of experiencing it. It's known that a young child sees itself not so much as an independent agent, but as a part of its environment, or as a part of the mother. This isn't self awareness, it's just awareness of surroundings, with a very marked absence of self.

Being able to recognize that the image in the mirror moves when you do and then 'getting' that it's your own reflection is also not the same as self awareness. I think Occipital Red covered this already.

I would say that oodles of "oh I'm dreaming" and immediately waking up would be more demotivating than anything. All this hard work for just a moment? No, thanks. The thing that keeps me going are the LDs where I have self-awareness and memory to choose actions, and observe the consequences, and are long enough to do that several times while exploring the dreamscape.

However, I will say though that perhaps I think length is more important to me right now, since I seem to have pretty good self-awareness in lucids now that are more than an instant. So really for me, 1) getting in the dream, and 2) staying in the dream, are priorities, slightly ahead of 3) being "me." Because achieving frequent #1 and #2 motivates me to reach for #3.

So, expectation/intention and self-awareness are key to "detecting that feeling". So, with practice, your self-awareness increases and lets you know you are dreaming better and better with more practice. And, we need expectation/intention to plant that self-awareness, and the activated memory is needed to remember that this phenomena is a dream, or that what all this is is dream components(info needed to analyze the current state). Ok, it is not a feeling, but self-awareness. So, it is not enough to use MILD with Novadreamer to get a bunch of LDs, then assume you have become an expert at detecting when you are dreaming.
It is all about the fundamentals. But you never mentioned in your class how to use a LD to develop the skills(I think). If you can, then that extra bunch of LDs caused by the Novadreamer could be handy.
Sorry for the long questions, but the answers where very helpful, thank you.
So, I should stop trying to figure it out now. I will truly understand only when I become a proficient LDer.

I believe that the fact that children are more curious of their environment could very likely stimulate lucid dreaming.
You have probably experienced the same kind of excitement during vacations, when you visit a completely different culture and suddenly feel that everything is interesting, and pay attention to everything.
That's what small children feel like a lot of the time, and this is probably also why they laugh and seem so jolly over everything.

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Originally Posted by Laurelindo

I believe that the fact that children are more curious of their environment could very likely stimulate lucid dreaming.
You have probably experienced the same kind of excitement during vacations, when you visit a completely different culture and suddenly feel that everything is interesting, and pay attention to everything.
That's what small children feel like a lot of the time, and this is probably also why they laugh and seem so jolly over everything.

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Like natural ADA?

Warning: zoth is writing while he's thinking, so the long chain of thought ahead which might sound confusing :P

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Quantity, especially in this department, does not necessarily guarantee eventual quality. I've known plenty of dreamers who have had many dozens of low-level LD's, and have never really gotten to the point where they could truly explore their dreams as themselves. Why? Because they were not interested in diving into the deep end of their dreaming pool -- the fact of induction was enough for them, so working on things like self-awareness and memory did not matter. Many of those people, BTW, eventually got bored with LD'ing; I wonder why?

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Yeah, just reminded myself of something I mentioned some posts ago: classical conditioning. Extinction is quick when the reward is regularly presented, and it's expressed in form of (for example) frustration. In this example, a more memorable experience with less frequency of reward would actually increase behavior, because extinction would be slower. You're right.
Still, there's one point to be made: we're assuming that you can't have medium to high level lucid dreams unless you practice self-awareness, but this doesn't have to necessarily be true. Also, there's still the issue of self-awareness practice being an habit or not. The deal is, after some thought, I realized that while you deny the self-awareness is an habit, you do have a point: self-awareness would also qualify for a personality trait - assuming (just for this particular thought) that self-awareness would relate to those 3 areas of brain activation during lucidity, some people could naturally be more self-aware than others (and this would actually be possible to test to some degree)....(slight pause to make sure with myself that I'm not intentionally trying to bash self-awareness....nope, I'm not, free to continue ^^). Also, self-awareness could also be perceived as mindfulness, and mindfulness relates a lot with meditation (if these 3 are not the same thing, they're at least inter-connected, but that's irrelevant for this). The fact is, meditation is not a "doing", it's a "being". Is this the aspect that you were trying to explain to me? That self-awareness is about "being" and not "doing"? Because if so, it couldn't possibly be an habit. This is hard to conceptualize: introspection "states", like meditation/mindfulness/self-awareness (not that I think about it, self-aware may as well be the primitive word, meditation and mindfulness being types/ways of reaching self-awareness), don't require any action: they require inaction. But the exercise of "meditating" can be an habit or not...no it can't, it's doesn't remotely qualify as the type of habit like a reality check: that' would be the same as saying that meditation is like the habit of touching your nose (you can't meditate without self-awareness, aka unconsciously, but the habit of touching your nose HAS to be unconscious to some degree to be qualified as an habit).
After 50 premisses, 1 conclusion: self-awareness cannot be an habit, at least not in the same way we consider reality checks an habit. This inevitably leads to (at least) one extra conclusion:

- Self-awareness regarding lucid dreaming induction is always a parallelism to any other "known" practice: whatever "technique" you practice, self-awareness would always be beneficial, especially because as an introspection event, it would affect your brain in both short/medium/long term. How do I know? Because if you assume self-awareness as an introspection event, you'd have to include (like mentioned above) concepts like meditation/mindfulness, and both of these have been scientifically demonstrated to affect your brain (in more than one way).

Self-awareness would also be above any other technique due a simple principle: whatever method you use to induce lucidity, it requires self-awareness (and by self-awareness, I'm talking about the functions performed by those 3 brain regions mentioned in the study), so *enter guessing mode* it's very likely that it would be way more worthy of your time/energy to devote it to self-awareness even if takes longer to produce results, then to actually engage in "short-term exercises" that still require you to develop self-awareness later.

PS: there seems to be activation of precuneus to certain types of meditation. Maybe self-awareness is an abstract concept, in the same way that certain "perspectives/exercises" used to develop self-awareness would not necessarily help you with lucid induction. This could explain why ADA doesn't work for everyone?

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In fact, converging evidence from recent functional imaging studies in healthy subjects indicate that the precuneus may play a role in the internal mentation processes of self-consciousness. Lou et al. (1999) found a medial parietal-prefrontal core in the enhanced consciousness state of yoga meditation, by measuring cerebral blood distribution with the PET technique in experienced yoga teachers.

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PS: I think I sympathize much more with your "attempts" of explaining self-awareness Sageous, it's complexity it's its beauty but at the same time its curse :P
Now I'm gonna sit in a chair and think about the implications of these conclusions ^^
PPS: pure old meditation might just be an example of something possibly way more boring but possibly way more effective than many lucid dreaming techniques...
PPPS:

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So maybe we are in a way on the same page here - would need to research further to come up with supporting data - but maybe there is a more intimate connection between mental health and LDing, than I thought.

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It's a bit more complex than that: we'd need to understand what exactly is making that change in the brain: emotional response towards the experience, the experience itself, or interference with the regular pattern of sleep? Because there is a study that correlates interference with REM (and we can assume dreams as well) and improvements of negative-dream content seen in people with depression. But I feel like this post is too big already. I do have loads of studies regarding sleep and mental health that we could find useful if you want to expand that particular discussion ^^

PPPPS (it's the last one I promise xD):

I'm surprised no one mentioned that study about children, there are many aspects of lucid dreaming mentioned there that go against general beliefs the majority of us possess, like "increase the number of hours you sleep will help you with lucidity" which doesn't seem to be true (which would make WBTB way more valuable for example, and WILD as well).

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Originally Posted by Zoth

Now I'm gonna sit in a chair and think about the implications of these conclusions ^^

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Me too^^

From what I read, it seems that the conclusion that is being reached by this thread is that techniques which increase average mindfulness are the techniques we should prioritize most when learning how to become lucid.

That answers the question: "What allows us to lucid dream?" However, what answers "Who or what should we blame for the lack of lucidity?" I think that was a very good question worth considering and I think what we have discussed so far could help us with it.

If our conclusion is that mindfulness/consciousness is what we need to lucid dream, then, why is it that we naturally lose this when sleeping? It is obviously a natural process since it happens to all of us and very rare are those who overcome this. Only LDers and Sleep Yogi do.


Why we sleep: To sleep, our body needs to be immobile so that the energy can be used in repair rather than action. Also, I suppose, the brain needs moments of rest where no reflection is happening that way, it can also use energy to repair. REM sleep is an exception, where repair is not the priority.
Thought Experiment: People do not lose consciousness during sleep
Implications: People are distracted by lack of comfort and move around. People use their moment of physical calmness to use their minds. They think about their plans, they create stories, they reflect about their past; their brain is not calm. Most importantly, they get bored and stop the process of sleeping. How many of us can meditate for 6-10 hours? I personally have a lot of trouble meditating just 1 hour. If we did not lose consciousness, every human would just terminate sleep too early and we would die.

I think that explains why we need to lose consciousness to fall asleep. The only way to overcome this, then, like the sleep yogi do, would be to train ourselves to not move despite lack of comfort, not think actively, and all of that for 6-10 hours (however much you sleep), all while keeping a sense of self-awareness.

This is probably very hard and few will even want to try this. Although, I am sure that if someone achieved this, they would not be bored because boredom is what stops us from being able to achieve this. Then, how is this relevant to everyone else? Perhaps, because it explains to us how to remain asleep during a lucid dream and therefore how to stabilize the lucid dream. Once we become lucid, we must not think too hard and.... Hmmm... Never mind. The REM cycle is an exception. I do think during normal dreams. I think everything I said is only helpful for non-rem lucidity. Rem sleep is different and we just must be able to allow stimuli to trigger a sense of mindfulness.

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

Like natural ADA?

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Well yeah, kind of like that.
The less familiar you are with your environments the more interesting (or threatening) you will find them, which makes you more aware.
So one good way to prompt lucidity could be to try having a sense of awareness of everything you experience in waking life.
One way to trigger that specific excitement is to pretend that waking life is a dream, just for fun.
This makes you feel "closer" to the dreamworld because you kind of get a foretaste of what it would be like to actually be in a real lucid dream, like "oh man, a lucid dream would actually be this vivid, and it would be so awesome if I was dreaming right now and could rush off and do whatever I wanted!".

Of course, this "dream feeling" would be extra powerful if you practice it during dreamlike situations, for example if you take a walk very early during a quiet, misty morning in a beautiful place.

This video might fit well in this thread.

I think the author shares Sageous' s idea that « knowing this is a dream » is just the beginning of lucidity. He says that this realization doesn´t mean one's logic becomes vastly improved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TVOLB8sTu4

Ah, Stephen Berlin, yeah he is pretty awesome. :content:
Too bad he doesn't have more videos on YouTube, he seems like a very likeable person.

Another key factor may be rooted in neurophysiology. I have always likened human awareness to a circuit, or a loop of interconnected neurons, if you will - with a current that run around in a circle all day and processes and redirects the input from the senses. It runs at different rates of speed and power throughout the day, depending on how aware - or lucid, we are and is limited by physical factors such as the amount of sugar and oxygen available to it. And the amount of energy that is being consumed by the rest of the brain and body. E.g.: you can't be fully aware of the road when operating a smartphone and your primary awareness loop can't run at full capacity if you are contemplating advanced mathematics or theoretical physics.

Furthermore, the main neurons and neural connections wired into this circuitry need to rest. They need to re-absorb neurotransmitters and restore the myelin sheaths around the axons. And lucid dreaming is counter-productive to this process. You could go so far as to say that it defies it and too much of it might even cause mental health issues related to sleep deprivation.

There is, however, a solution. Just because the primary awareness loop needs to rest, doesn't mean the rest of the circuits in the brain need to rest at the same time. Hence dreaming. The secret it to install or develop a secondary awareness loop. I have talked about it here a few times before, but the gist of it is to start watching yourself. The primary loop watches the five senses, and "you" or this primary loop is simply the reaction to the outside world. But if you start watching yourself consistently, first with easy, monotonous and repetitive tasks, like sweeping the floor, then with more complex things like speaking and typing, you will begin to notice that you can watch yourself act and start relaxing parts of the primary awareness circuitry while awake. You can almost feel the "seat" of the new awareness loop located in a slightly different and, for me personally; slightly elevated, part of the brain.

A little trick is to learn to notice when you stop being aware of yourself, or when this secondary circuit flickers off, which in the beginning will tend happen all the time after just a few seconds until real connections can grow between the brain cells and they become hardwired. But noticing when it stops allows you to jump-start it for another few seconds so that it becomes over-strained and would hurt like a muscle the day after a heavy training session if you had feeling inside your brain. Luckily the brain knows what's up from the torn sheaths around the neural connections and will automatically nourish them the next time you don't notice that it went off and it gets a chance to rest.

I have always felt that enlightenment is not a state you reach once and then maintain forever. Even the Buddha slept. Enlightenment is something that can be glimpsed before one takes the first step on the path. But only briefly and partially until the secondary awareness circuit grows into a lush rain forest.

prospective memory relies on episodic memory, declarative memory, and retrospective memory. I assume they are active during sleep, since... Uhm... MILD. Well, if so, then why do we need self-awareness with MILD? Do we? We need self-awareness for everything else, but not MILD. But, one thing I found strange is that one of the mantras for MILD(coincidently the one that is mostly mentioned in EWOLD) is " next time I'm dreaming, I will remember I'm dreaming". Well, we surely aren't aware of the fact that we are dreaming while we are dreaming, so I assume self awareness is needed for the "next time i'm dreaming..." parts of MILD

wait. I think the "next time i'm dreaming I remember i'm dreaming" is a time based event, like wheyou want to watch a show at 8, and when it's 8, you remember, without having your consciousness even knowing the time.
Zoth!... Zoth!............Zoth!
MILD is your expertise, right? Plz, plz, pretty please explain! I'll buy you a luxurious BMW coupe sports car 2014! With free gas for a year! And a mantion in Sharam el Sheikh!

It would be pretty awesome if our internal clock could help to achieve lucidity, or ( ok ! ) to realize i'm dreaming, like « at 6 am i will be lucid » or « after 1 hour, i will know i am dreaming ». That would be prospective memory, but instead of an object it would be time perception, right ?

But mostly, for me at least, it works to wake me up :D..

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Originally Posted by VagalTone

It would be pretty awesome if our internal clock could help to achieve lucidity, or ( ok ! ) to realize i'm dreaming, like « at 6 am i will be lucid » or « after 1 hour, i will know i am dreaming ». That would be prospective memory, but instead of an object it would be time perception, right ?

But mostly, for me at least, it works to wake me up :D..

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Yes it is! prospective memory works for time-based events too(using the internal clock), but does it work when saying "next time I'm dreaming..."? does that correspond to a certain time according to our prospective memory?

The great thing is that you can train your prospective memory, so it becomes more powerful and LDing easier!:D

We need Zoth to explain. Come on...Zoth!Zoth!Zoth!

Yup, let´s call Zoth !!

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but does it work when saying "next time I'm dreaming..."? does that correspond to a certain time according to our prospective memory?

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LouaiB, maybe it is prospective memory working here..but i remember i had thought about this also ( even posted on Zoth's MILD thread ) and my idea is that the cue that activates prospective memory in this example ( when you use this specific autosuggestion ) is, as you suggested before, more dependent on self-awareness and some natural lucidity than time perception. When dreaming, when you got that rather vague and weak but natural feeling of the dream, you remember it is a dream.

I have suggested in Zoth's thread that MILD ( with that specific autosuggestion ) implies some degree of natural lucidity, which is then used as the cue to the full-blown prospective memory activation.

Just my thoughts, maybe wrong :)

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Originally Posted by VagalTone

Yup, let´s call Zoth !!



LouaiB, maybe it is prospective memory working here..but i remember i had thought about this also ( even posted on Zoth's MILD thread ) and my idea is that the cue that activates prospective memory in this example ( when you use this specific autosuggestion ) is, as you suggested before, more dependent on self-awareness and some natural lucidity than time perception. When dreaming, when you got that rather vague and weak but natural feeling of the dream, you remember it is a dream.

I have suggested in Zoth's thread that MILD ( with that specific autosuggestion ) implies some degree of natural lucidity, which is then used as the cue to the full-blown prospective memory activation.

Just my thoughts, maybe wrong :)

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Sounds very consistent with Sageous's fundamentals, I think. Makes sense!

Augh, plz, call me Louai! I have it under my name! LouaiB is just a formal name, just to be formal;)

Oh, but reading Laberge's MILD tutorial again..this quote from EWOLD seems to support more your idea that « next time i'm dreaming..» autosuggestion is based somewhat on time perception

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Once I knew that I was trying to remember to do something (that is, become lucid) at a later
time (that is, when next I’m dreaming), I was able to devise a tech-nique to help me accomplish
that. How can we manage to remember to do something in a dream? Perhaps we should start
with a simpler question: How do we remem-ber to do things in ordinary life?

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Edit: or maybe it´s only the definition of prospective memory :D

Yes, prospective memory based on-time also exists, but it's not so effective as the one based-on events. It can still work while you're sleeping, and this is because several regions of your brain are responsible for delayed-tasks, self-maintained intentions, along with attention. Also, it's important to realize that prospective memory may not necessarily what is happening when you wake yourself up, but instead, you're making use of your biological clocks which can also keep track of time and increase/decrease the production of certain substances which make you regain consciousness. This is particularly relevant and common on stressful morning events, like an exam, or your first day of work. Also, there are some factors that can greatly determine your performance, one of the most important one being cognitive-overload: we're not made to multi-task, and pressure during such intense activities can disrupt your performance on time-based prospective memory. Another relevant factor for this discussion is the role of motivation, but you probably already guessed this one out. It's also important to realize that any tasks LaBerge mentions in his MILD technique is not exactly unique: he's just removing the names of certain aspects of prospective memory and including the "lucid dream" talk into them. An example is the so-called "visualization" on MILD: it's simply the implementation intention strategy, but doing it for lucid dreams. LaBerge's MILD techique is incomplete (for the bad and for the good), because it has limited capability: we're still not sure about how certain processes of prospective memory work, whether they need to be hold on consciousness or it's more about spontaneous retrieval, and once more knowledge (which I'm sure has been layed out since MILD was published in his book), we will be able to use MILD more effectively (now that I think about it, DIPE has a fundamental error in it, must scrape the whole system xD).

Regarding any kind of DILD based on realizing you are dreaming, it's important to know that the cue is not always consciously perceived. For example, you might think that you're checking this thread because you decided too, but maybe you arrived home, looked at your fridge, which had a peach inside, which happened to resemble the color of your blanket, which reminded you still had to make your bed, which made you thought about the last time you were sleeping, which made you think about lucid dreaming, which made you remind of this thread.

PS: incase you're wondering, memory implementation is just a famous way to develop prospective memory, others being (as read in here):

-Use external memory aids such as the alerting calendar on cell phones
-Avoid multitasking when one of your tasks is critical
-Carry out crucial tasks now instead of putting them off until later
-Create reminder cues that stand out and put them in a difficult-to-miss spot
-Link the target task to a habit that you have already established

This is why I find WBTB + WILD + MILD so effective. During that window of time, there are no *real life* concerns because it's sleep time. There's no other tasks you need to watch for, and you're able to focus only on your intention. If you hit a "bad spot", WILD might take ages or even fail, but remember that during all this time you're effectively developing a very strong target using memory implementation (what you would call visualization), giving you pretty good chances of achieving a DILD.