Thread: Mindfulness - An Alternative Approach to ADA

Thank you very very much all of the thing I need to ADA is here

Good stuff. I've started describing what I do as , "continuous vigilance", which pretty much means mindfulness I believe. Some of the main things I'm mindful of are:

+ location (my dreams are almost always in imaginary/non-waking places)
+ strange/bizarre/shocking/surprising/new things
+ interaction with people (because my vigilance usually wavers while interacting with people, and I mostly interact with people in dreams), this one's hard to keep
+ thinking about dreaming: because after all, the only time I'm not thinking about dreaming is when....I"m non-lucidly dreaming!
+ the dream feeling itself
+ gravity

It's actually something that's mentioned for mindfulness meditation that after you get up from the seated practice you build mindfulness into the rest of your day slowly, like you just be mindful of your posture (notice, not fix) or the way you walk or when a certain feeling comes up. Not everything at once, so it makes sense that you just pick a couple of things that you know don't generally happen in dreams and work on staying mindful of those.

Here are some additions to your list:

• Electrical switches, they rarely work in dreams
• Text, it usually changes in dreams
• Shadows, they aren't always correct in dreams
• Transitions, where were you before you appeared here?

I bet this list sounds familiar.

I can't believe I left out transitions! And, of course, shadows. That's a big one, and people hardly consider them (it slipped my mind lol).

I think it's really important to remember, and I forget this very often as well, that awareness by itself won't make you lucid.

If you look at the alternative translations to mindfulness

Mindfulness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You'll see:

• Mindful attention
• Reflective awareness
• Recollecting mindfulness
• Inspection

For LDing what you want is a state of critical awareness.

Often when we are faced with some sort of problem, we get too caught up in the problem to take a step back and ask "is this actually how it's supposed to be?", it's not just dreams that this happens in.

In real life you turn on the light in your room and you can be fully aware of this, in the dream you turn on a light and you can be fully aware of it. In both reality and in the dream you are aware and you remember turning on the light later in the day and you remember that you turned on a light when you wake up after the dream.

Pure awareness will give you great dream recollection, but not lucidity!

What you want is to note whether the light turned on the way it usually does, this means it's a two stage process.

1. You notice the feeling of turning the light on, the change from dark to light (awareness)
2. You then use your memory and decide if the light did what you expected it to do, did it turn on like it does all the other times you've done it? (reflection)

Only doing step one will only give you good dream recall, not lucidity.


Here's an example from an actual dream:

Last night I was dreaming that I was fixing a weirdly complicated mechanism, I was really busy trying to fix it and was wondering why I couldn't seem to get it right. Instead of wondering if it was actually a real object I was fixing, I was fully aware of what I was doing but only in order to help me work out the problem.

We actually do this in reality all the time, when something doesn't seem to go our way we butt heads with the problem, using all our wits to try and solve it, we don't generally step back and see if the problem is a real problem until much later.

So we need to not just be aware of something but also reflect on it.

By the way don't go into lengthy thoughts like "oh yeah this light switch totally seems to be working so I'm not dreaming let's try it again a few times just to make sure and then follow it up with holding my nose and trying to breath through it and let's see what else doesn't seem realistic" this will get tiresome really soon and there's no way you'll keep it up all day. Mindfulness isn't thinking it's more of a gentle nod.

Originally Posted by Memm

For LDing what you want is a state of critical awareness.

This is why I like the term "vigilance" -- vigilance has the connotation of "looking for something" or "being aware with a purpose": you're on the lookout for the dream state.

Below is me just thinking aloud (not declaring any mindfulness target as "right" or "wrong"):

On the contents of the particular lists:

• I can safely say that not once have I ever noticed a shadow or wind or other small environmental factors in about a thousand recalled dreams/scenes this last year.
• Lighting I'm usually at least peripherally aware of in the background, fairly frequently (producing the sense of nighttime/daytime/dusk/levels of darkness).
• Gravity I've noticed, but less than a handful of times.
• Text I've noticed perhaps a dozen times (and a few times very closely considering it) but not once getting lucid from checking it.
• I've never once touched an electrical switch.
• I've seen myself in mirrors about 3-4 times (but never getting lucid despite sometimes strong confusion from what I see).
• Locations of course are *always* there, awareness of location and really thinking about it probably a dozen times. My dream locations are either one place (my childhood home) or non-waking-world locations. Location frequently has played a factor in becoming lucid for me.
• Location transitions are always there, but I've actively noticed them only once or twice.
• emotional response: fear, joy, anger, frustration: very common
• people: always present, interacting with them. Sometimes they are distorted. Cause of lucidity: fairly frequent.
• the "dream feeling" -- harder to asses, but I think this is also a fairly frequent, if not the majority, of the triggers of lucidity for me. I suppose this is at its root "self-awareness + memory" combining.
• thoughts -- in dreams I will frequently ponder ideas or visualize games or think about objects and how they work, sometimes with a very close-up visual of the object.
• bizarre/strange/shocking/impossible-in-waking people or objects or events: medium frequency, in fact over time my dreams seem to becoming more and more "life-like" focusing on interacting with people in locations, but occasionally a really strange object or person will pop up.

So for me, people, interacting with people, and the location+transitions are the really big ticket items, plus just general self-awareness ("dream feeling").

In waking life, my mindfulness is at its lowest while interacting with people (or concentrating on mental activities like working). Work I've always recognized as a low mindfulness time, but low mindfulness while interacting with people I have recently realized this and am now working diligently on rectifying it, I think it will result in a big boost to lucidity, that's my hope at least!

Being mindful of when I'm talking to somebody is something I started working on recently as well, it just happens so often in dreams and I always find myself zoning out during conversations.

So +1 to that idea!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

This is why I like the term "vigilance" -- vigilance has the connotation of "looking for something" or "being aware with a purpose": you're on the lookout for the dream state.

Vigilance is something that is definitely stressed in the Zen tradition (in which there has always been more of a martial flavour to buddhism), I've read a Zen metaphor of zazen meditation as being like sitting in a jungle clearing while knowing that a tiger is nearby!

Terms like vigilance and particularly "critical faculty" that Memm adressed were also central to the original source of reality checking, the "critical state test" in Laberge's ETWOLD.

I can't link to it due to forum rules, but on LD4All there is a an article by Robert Wagonner in which he discusses interviewing naturals and their constant state of critical skepticism towards their current state of awareness. There you have it, perhaps your very state of awareness is an object in itself of which to be critical.

[*]I can safely say that not once have I ever noticed a shadow or wind or other small environmental factors in about a thousand recalled dreams/scenes this last year.

Agreed.

[*]Lighting I'm usually at least peripherally aware of in the background, fairly frequently (producing the sense of nighttime/daytime/dusk/levels of darkness).

I wouldn't claim that dreams lack lighting, obviously they do, but that the lightsource is often unverifiable - unlike IWL in which you can always locate the lightsource of whatever location you find yourself in, be it the sun or a flourescent lamp

[*]Gravity I've noticed, but less than a handful of times.

Usually only noticeable when it is distorted ala Hukif.

[*]Text I've noticed perhaps a dozen times (and a few times very closely considering it) but not once getting lucid from checking it. [*]I've never once touched an electrical switch.

Classic RCs both.

[*]I've seen myself in mirrors about 3-4 times (but never getting lucid despite sometimes strong confusion from what I see).

For me mirrors rarely present dynamic reflections (ie. changing as I move my position), instead reflecting a static image like in a poor video game, as if simply to designate them as a mirror at all.
Also, look out for other reflective surfaces like bodies of water, windows, cars, anything metallic. Like Lacan said, 'many things in this world behave like mirrors'

[*]Locations of course are *always* there, awareness of location and really thinking about it probably a dozen times. My dream locations are either one place (my childhood home) or non-waking-world locations. Location frequently has played a factor in becoming lucid for me.[*]Location transitions are always there, but I've actively noticed them only once or twice.

Some dreamers report 'jump cuts' as indicative of dreaming.

[*]emotional response: fear, joy, anger, frustration: very common

Often inappropriate responses for the situation

[*]people: always present, interacting with them. Sometimes they are distorted. Cause of lucidity: fairly frequent.

I find faces to often to be blurry unless the DC is someone I know well.

[*]the "dream feeling" -- harder to asses, but I think this is also a fairly frequent, if not the majority, of the triggers of lucidity for me. I suppose this is at its root "self-awareness + memory" combining.

This is central to Yoshi's, and Naiya's, original idea of ADA - that dreams simply 'feel' different - and why the critical faculty is perhaps not as crucial with ADA as with other techs (such as RC) because through ADA you are making yourself intimately mindful of both dream and waking, and how they differ.

[*]thoughts -- in dreams I will frequently ponder ideas or visualize games or think about objects and how they work, sometimes with a very close-up visual of the object.[*]bizarre/strange/shocking/impossible-in-waking people or objects or events: medium frequency, in fact over time my dreams seem to becoming more and more "life-like" focusing on interacting with people in locations, but occasionally a really strange object or person will pop up.[/list]

These things often get justified by the narrative, making it difficult to become lucid by the traditional means of logical questioning - hence where mindfulness enters.

So for me, people, interacting with people, and the location+transitions are the really big ticket items, plus just general self-awareness ("dream feeling").

In waking life, my mindfulness is at its lowest while interacting with people (or concentrating on mental activities like working). Work I've always recognized as a low mindfulness time, but low mindfulness while interacting with people I have recently realized this and am now working diligently on rectifying it, I think it will result in a big boost to lucidity, that's my hope at least!

Doing a menial activity such as a 9-5 job is actually one of the best opportunities to practice mindfulness

Originally Posted by Memm

Being mindful of when I'm talking to somebody is something I started working on recently as well, it just happens so often in dreams and I always find myself zoning out during conversations.

So +1 to that idea!

Same here. People say I'm a good listener, haha!

I found that article you were talking about, it's really interesting and raises a very good point. Back when I had much more frequent DILDs I would say I was a lot more worried about my environment throughout the day, looking out for people and things I wanted to avoid. This wasn't the only difference though, so I can't say how much weight I would place on it.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I can't link to it due to forum rules, but on LD4All there is a an article by Robert Wagonner in which he discusses interviewing naturals and their constant state of critical skepticism towards their current state of awareness. There you have it, perhaps your very state of awareness is an object in itself of which to be critical.

Yes I've read that and it was probably the major impetus for me moving from a LaBerge ETWOLD style (discreet short moments of reflection/intention, and RCs [these fairly frequent]) day practice to a "continuous vigilance" style. That plus trying Hukif-style ADA-RC (location) (which while I didn't get Hukif-style lucid frequency [a point that I think even Hukif forgets to mention is that it didn't take him 3 months for ADA/RC-gravity to start working for him, it took *8 years and 3 months* of his LD efforts, so he had a massive build up of awareness and dream sensitivity and recall over that time, just waiting to be tapped by his gravity RC], did definitely result in some location-based lucids) really gave me a taste for the continuous vigilance approach, so that's what I stick with today, plus doing nose-pinch and hand check RC fairly frequently at discreet "interesting" moments. Plus Sageous-RRC.

I wouldn't claim that dreams lack lighting, obviously they do, but that the lightsource is often unverifiable - unlike IWL in which you can always locate the lightsource of whatever location you find yourself in, be it the sun or a flourescent lamp

Yes, good point. When presented with "outside archetype" + "bright light" the assumption is "it's daytime and the sun is the light source" but I never think about that in the dream.

[emotion]Often inappropriate responses for the situation

Or strong (almost overwhelming), which for me usually is associated with sadness [deceased pets [this is one of the strongest, *knowing* in the back of your mind while interacting that he's really gone], missing the children's young-n-cute stage].
Also for me is confusion/frustration: I can't pick up the cards (got lucid from this, LD #2), can't count the billiard balls (I guess "inappropriate" sort of applies here).

I find faces to often to be blurry unless the DC is someone I know well.

Interestingly in the past about 5-6 months, I've gone from never noticing (or remembering at least) faces much (except in a few lucids where they were lifelike) to really seeing them on occasion in non-lucids. Painfully beautiful shining dream girls, and just regular folks. Usually with distinctive features (the elfish-featured tall near-albino from 2 nights ago). Come to think of it I've seen the distinctive/sharp-featured platinum-haired "elf" before, a month or two ago (possibly as a woman). Faces have been becoming more a part of recall gradually.

Just saw a quote recently on FB, "Some quit due to slow progress. Never grasping the fact that slow progress... is progress"
which is really appropriate in LD practice where sometimes results seem to take forever. And those tantalizing tastes of lucidity that you want back immediately but remain weeks (or months) away at times. Sigh. Well, as I said, dreaming (even non-lucid) is awesome!

Oh, I forgot: hiding: I'm reasonably frequently trying to avoid being discovered.

Haha -- the mind is a wonderful thing. Incubation at its finest:

Last night I experienced for the first recalled time: temperature, the feel of moving air, and (at a later waking) looked up into the blue sky with faint cirrus clouds.

contrails3.jpg

Now all I need are some light switches and shadows .

I also had an unusually large amount of recall quite early: woke at about 2-2.5 hrs (quite rare for me), woken from music being played outside that made it through my earplugs. The recall was notable since it was coherent and lifelike, usually dreams that early are very abstract and bizarre. And actually seemed like a fairly long dreaming session, 5-10 minutes perhaps.

^ Haha, brilliant! The other night I found myself really scrutinising things and trying to practice ADA within the dream, without becoming lucid - which was a sign that I was on the verge of becoming lucid from it when I last tried ADA.

It sounds like ADA is already affecting your recall.

This morning I also had a very vivid LD in which I was in a chippy and the look of food deep frying was perfect, but I got none of the smell/heat/sound:


Also, another thing to add to the list of objects of attention: blinking! when have you ever blinked in a dream? or coughed or sneezed (useful for those like me with hayfever).

^^ That leads to an interesting point: what is most effective for mindfulness: positives (things you notice or are present in dreams) or negatives (things you don't experience in dreams)? My impulse is to think that positives are more effective than negatives because they enter your attention from the dream....but I'm not sure. An area for research....

Originally Posted by FryingMan

^^ That leads to an interesting point: what is most effective for mindfulness: positives (things you notice or are present in dreams) or negatives (things you don't experience in dreams)? My impulse is to think that positives are more effective than negatives because they enter your attention from the dream....but I'm not sure. An area for research....

In my mnemonics thread I mentioned how the brain filters memories, I've read before in mnemotechnic discussions that scary / unpleasant mnemonics stick less than funny / sexy / weird etc.. ones. Personally I haven't tested it out enough to say I've noticed a difference but usually my visualisation are more weird than scary.

The meditation article you linked was really good, thanks.

Originally Posted by Kaiern9

The meditation article you linked was really good, thanks.

Probably the most no-nonsense guide on the internet.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Probably the most no-nonsense guide on the internet.

That article seems oddly similar to this:

Mindfulness In Plain English

Perhaps inspired by?

I love the connections being made between meditation and lucid dreaming. For me it wasn't the concept of ADA that inspired lucid dreaming, but rather after a spontaneous lucid dream, I became constantly critical of my surroundings. I couldn't agree more that this awareness and mindfulness (that are often hard to separate) are essential with regular lucid dreams, though I am not completely sold on which is causing which. I could go either way! And it is likely that they feed off each other in many successful cases.

It's very helpful to see the "object list." A few stand out to me, such as the 'feeling of clothing.' I agree that they are not present in dreams, but they are also not present in waking life. Obviously (and fortunately) our body disregards the regular contact, so it plays no relevance in waking life or in dream life. It seems to me that if I made myself more aware of the feeling and allowed myself to 'feel my clothing' through increased awareness awake, then my dreaming self might be one that feels clothing as well. So rather than trigger a lucidity cue, I might just be a dreaming guy that feels his clothes...

What I'm getting at is, do you find your increased awareness leave itself at the dream gate? Or does your dreaming self also become more mindful?

Originally Posted by sleepingSYNAPSE

What I'm getting at is, do you find your increased awareness leave itself at the dream gate? Or does your dreaming self also become more mindful?

I sort of made this point earlier, but I think it bears repeating: my approach to mindfulness ("vigilance") is not purposeless, pure awareness: I'm *specifically on the lookout for the dream state*. I think if you take that approach, color your awareness thoughts with *what you're looking for*, the awareness of your clothing will not simply slip by and miss the moment to recognize a dream.

I agree with most of the above. I just want to offer my input on translating Buddhist concepts and finding practical use out of them for lucid dreaming.

Mainly, I would be cautious when using translations of Buddhist concepts from Pali words or other Eastern languages because they can be misleading, especially when writers combine and expand on them, getting further and further from the original meaning. It's not that the translations are wrong, it's that they are usually defined and explained in a particular book where there is a lot of context and qualification. But then other writers extract just the single word translation and lose all the context. In particular, I find the Wikipedia article on mindfulness to be problematic. Or it accurately captures the fact that the word "mindfulness" has become an umbrella term for several different and sometimes conflicting Buddhist-y concepts. Either way, it's not super helpful for practical use. Usually, there's never a one-to-one translation of Pali words so the most useful translations are the longer descriptive ones.

The two relevant Pali words are Sati and Vipassana. Sati is mindfulness in the general sense. Vipassana is the meditation practice. For a moment, let's set aside the word "mindfulness" as too vague. Sati is very certainly not anything like "concentration," "reflection," or "recollection." Those are explicitly different concepts in Buddhism and the definitions and discussions that include those words must be out of context. "Presence" is closer. I think the best translation of Sati is "sustained openness of awareness." It is "sustained" in the sense that it avoids or easily returns from interruption or distraction for a period of time. And it is "open" in the sense that new objects easily enter and exit it from it, without attachment. On both points, it is "easy," not forced or constrained. I think the inferior translations of "retention" or "memory" are trying to allude the the "sustained" quality of Sati but they are more misleading than anything else.

Two interesting terms mentioned in this thread are "critical awareness" and "vigilance." I agree that these are useful and practical for lucid dreaming. But they are not mindfulness in the purest sense because they include some aspect of reflection. I agree with the point that awareness alone doesn't result in lucidity. It's the reflection that triggers lucidity, but awareness is how you get to the reflection. (I'll get back to that point in moment).

Vipassana, in the most formal usage, is a mediation practice that uses Sati to cultivate insight into the nature of impermanence, which is a whole other topic. More relevant here is that it has many positive side effects, including inducing a state of calm and developing the mental capacity for awareness over time. These side effects are the usual goals for less formal and Westernized practices.

Sorry if that was all a bit snobbish, let me get to the practical point. I interpret critical awareness/vigilance as frequent periods of awareness followed by reflection. That combination is the magic recipe for DILD lucidity. Without awareness, you never get to the reflection and it seems that what most people lack is awareness. If, hypothetically, you just increase awareness alone without reflection, you don't necessarily improve lucidity. However, it also seems that reflection naturally follows from heightened awareness, even without training. So any amount of awareness should naturally improve awareness+reflection. It's a double bonus if you train both. In Vipassana, you actively try to avoid the shift from awareness to reflection because you want to sustain awareness. But the side effect is still more awareness, which in non-meditation situations will naturally shift to reflection. Thus, Vipassana or similar meditation practices trains your awareness muscle, which is the more difficult of the awareness+reflection pair. Training the reflection muscle, I think, involves prospective memory. And that's where the object-oriented part comes in. You choose specific prospective memory reminders (gravity, light, etc) to trigger the transition from awareness to reflection, and ultimately lucidity.

I had researched the differences between the terms, but didn't include it in the OP because I felt it was beyond the scope. I hadn't realised the implications for lucidity the distinction between terms implies - thanks for the insight

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I sort of made this point earlier

That you did, and your post is helpful. I didn't see it exactly in that light, but now that you mention it I do. The mention of vigilance feels very relevant to me.

The goal of ADA is a challenging, yet fun endeavor; we are essentially aiming to naturally defy a large part of our "modern" definition of a dream (the lack of self-reflection). Just like the new Voss study, we are trying to 'ramp up' our (frontal) brain activity, though through awareness rather than external stimulation. Even though it can be frustrating, the fun part about lucidity for me is the success that comes from achieving it naturally...I like the idea of grabbing the reigns of my mind.

Which has a stronger effect from ADA: are we increasing awareness just to look for cues, or rather are we increasing our level of waking consciousness to the point where we don't lose as much of it when we dream? It seems to me the second, since no matter how much I can know that gravity only exists in a dream, a non-lucid dream constitutes a lack of self-reflection so I'll never notice. Even if I was aware in the day, the typical 'loss of self-reflection' by decreased frontal cortex activity in dreaming would not allow me to take note. I need that "frontal power" of my brain to self-reflect and make the observation, and as Ctharlhie has pointed out elsewhere, by using the above-mentioned practices we are making physical changes in our brain. So I feel like it is those changes, that come with practice, that allow you to carry that awareness into your dream state. And though it seems like it would take forever for those changes to occur, in my experience I was amazed at how quickly meditation seemed to take its effect on both my waking and dream life.

Originally Posted by sleepingSYNAPSE

Which has a stronger effect from ADA: are we increasing awareness just to look for cues, or rather are we increasing our level of waking consciousness to the point where we don't lose as much of it when we dream? It seems to me the second, since no matter how much I can know that gravity only exists in a dream, a non-lucid dream constitutes a lack of self-reflection so I'll never notice. Even if I was aware in the day, the typical 'loss of self-reflection' by decreased frontal cortex activity in dreaming would not allow me to take note. I need that "frontal power" of my brain to self-reflect and make the observation, and as Ctharlhie has pointed out elsewhere, by using the above-mentioned practices we are making physical changes in our brain. So I feel like it is those changes, that come with practice, that allow you to carry that awareness into your dream state. And though it seems like it would take forever for those changes to occur, in my experience I was amazed at how quickly meditation seemed to take its effect on both my waking and dream life.

I'm not sure that "loss of self-reflection" is quite correct, at least in my dreams I have noticed that what I lose is mindfulness. Basically when you start talking to somebody and then 20 minutes later you "come back to your senses" and realise you've just zoned out for 20 minutes and lost track of what was going on in the outside and the inside world. Same with dreams, I have quite clear recall, often I even recall the very beginning of my dreams all the way to the end, when I wake up it's not that I've realised that "oh that was a dream" but more like "oh crap I got lost in a dream", it is exactly the same feeling as getting lost in thought, at least for me, but I doubt I'm any different from anybody else in that regard.

Next time you wake up from a dream, try to really get the feeling of that dream, not what you did in the dream but what it felt like to be in a dream, the dream experience, I think you might find the same thing; it's a "I have just zoned out" effect, the same one you get while awake when you stop paying attention and just let your mind wander.

I believe dreams have more in common with the notion of daydreaming or being lost in thought than shutting down of brain parts during sleep, or at least they would be the same parts that are affected by not paying attention and wandering off into lala land while awake. So if you can learn to keep from losing yourself during mental wanderings then being lucid wouldn't be any different.

I'm currently working on a specific training methods to not stay mindful all day long per se but rather I have this notion that what is important is to notice when you have lost awareness while it is actually happening, since afterwards it's too late, you've already woken up (in wakefulness or in sleep), I think concentrating on just this would be enough (and it seems to correlate with some high-frequency lucid dreamer's habits of, for example, asking "what was I just doing", which I'm theorising has more to do with them trying not to doze off during the day than anything else, same with those that become natural LDers because of nightmares, they don't want to lose awareness because they're afraid, so they become good at catching themselves in the act of losing themselves), anyway this is a quick theory of mine at the moment, will post more thorough info after I attain results, but if anybody wants more info you can PM me and I'll explain my training routine if you want to try it with me. =]