Quote Originally Posted by VagalTone View Post
If that high state of consciousness is available to us during the day, why do we loose that when we fall asleep ? That's something we can't accept . Is it a psychological habit or a physiological imperative ?
Well, you know how you can never remember the last minute before you fell asleep, most of your dreams, and some times that you woke up during the night. What if we never reach a level of 0 consciousness, we only reach a low level of consciousness and then, we also just don't stock the information in our long-term memory (not even the short one for that matter)?

At the same time, we all know that Lucid Dreaming is possible. It is possible to sleep and have a high level of consciousness. A low level of consciousness is therefore not a prerequisite of sleep. Some people even claim that they can be aware throughout their complete sleep period, although I am skeptical about that feat.

In that sense, a lowered consciousness during sleep is not a physiological imperative.

I am tempted to say it is a psychological habit, and perhaps a necessary one. We have very noisy minds, or at least I do. I think that as a whole, we have a lot going on in our heads and if we try to sleep while with a normal level of consciousness, we pay too much attention to our complex problem solving of what to do tomorrow, evaluating yesterday, etc... If we trained to clear our mind easily and simply focus on being, then maybe, we could enter sleep without being distracted by anything complex. Like a WILD.

I guess that means that I believe that getting a higher level consciousness is a habit, a habit of focusing your attention on certain ideas that create this feeling of higher consciousness. But to sleep and have a higher level consciousness we must be able to have a quiet mind, by focusing attention only on being for very long periods of time.

Quote Originally Posted by VagalTone View Post
--> adults have more interesting dream contents and intentions, but not so much vividness. They have higher potential to explore, which means they have more levels to progress, if they want.

--> children have more vivid dreams, and more dream control abilities, dream more often, but their dream contents are not as much evolved. They reach their potential easily, without deliberate effort.
Could children be more able to lucid dream because they have simpler minds and therefore more quiet minds which allow them to have a higher level of consciousness during sleep. And perhaps kids are more like animals which pay a lot of attention to the world. A child is very captivated by its surrounding while us as adults spend a lot of time studying abstract concepts and on the internet which does not require observance. Children, being more observant, have more vivid dreams.

Just throwing my own experience out there, I can well remember at a young age, 9 being the oldest age I recall experiencing this, I would find the feeling of self-awareness very strange. It made me feel so special and so confused at the same time. It was an explainable feeling, where I thought, if I only experience me, who experiences other people? For example, if you watch TV, you can only experience one person at once, and in this life, I was always only watching myself, making me feel as if I was the only conscious being in the world. This could of been when my self-awareness was developing which seems to me like I was quite old for that to be happening then...