Thread: Memory: the Forgotten Fundamental

Originally Posted by StephL

I believe you Sageous that memory exercises in lucidity can, maybe vastly, empower "the one being at home", broadening her scope for self-assessment.
I will give it consideration the next time around, attempt to retrieve the hard facts and context of real life, and watch out for changes in dream-control!

Not so much hard facts and context, Steph, as remembering the simple fact of your current waking-life condition (being asleep in bed), with that action of remembering being far more important than the thing you are remembering. The important part about remembering your sleeping body is that you are not retrieving a specific memory (we really don't store a memory of being asleep in bed), but nudging your memory with a reminder of waking-life reality. This reality will both help pull your memory into your dreaming self and act as a reminder that the body you are currently occupying is not real.

What you need primarily is that type of memory which facilitates a clear picture of your self-construct. Maybe that doesn't require much hard data and autobiographical acuity in principle.

Well said!

Just at the side, not for comparison or anything - how about simple maths or something like this, did somebody try, aiming at more concentration and cognitive boost for example?

This is a good idea. It's especially fun to try to solve math problems when access ot memory is absent, because the solutions can be most amusing! I'm not sure if doing math can reconnect you with memory, but it would do no harm.

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

Just an observation about awareness and memory. In the sense of Eastern contemplative practice, isn't memory and how the subconscious manipulates it at the heart of many of the distractions that diminish awareness, and meditative practice trains one to recognize while neither judging, rejecting or clinging?

Maybe I'm just looking at this from the wrong perspective or not comprehending the usage of the two terms for the purpose of lucid dreaming?

It's a good thing that we're doing LD'ing here, and not eastern contemplation then!

Seriously, though: in meditation you are fully awake and possess all your faculties, including a connection with memory. So, since you are often seeking a unique "Here & Now" moment during meditation, memory can indeed be a distraction. But we're talking about LD'ing here, which is much different conscious event.

In a dream, which is a decidedly "Here & Now" event by its nature, including memory in your experience serves not as a distraction but an aid to unify your entire Self -- something they actually do pursue in meditational practices, BTW.

Originally Posted by TheUncanny

In retrospect, perhaps the term "waking awareness" is a bit of an entendre. A more accurate term would be my "waking mentality", or the manner in which I think while in waking life. Part of this mentality is logic and awareness, such as recognizing when I'm in a dream, and that dreams are illusions not bound by physical laws. However, another part of this mentality consists of conditioned preconceptions about the fundamental nature of reality, and these deeply engrained constructs are not always receptive to the logic/awareness you try to impose while in a lucid dream.

But again, these same preconceptions will operate in a different manner when they are filtered through the knowledge that this dream is really just you, and exists absent any physical laws -- and this knowledge is only fully appreciated when access to memory is part of your consciousness formula; when your entire Self is present in the dream. I guess what would happen is you would shed your "waking mentality" for a "self-aware dreaming mentality" once memory is included in the mix, because you will know that those conditioned preconceptions are irrelevant in a dream.

Personally speaking, I've had far more LDs where I've felt "limited" in some way than those where I've felt completely unbound by limitations.

As have I. But does having lots of dreams with limitations really mean that being limited (perhaps by preconceptions) is the way it is supposed to be? Or maybe reaching a level of lucidity which includes waking-life self-awareness and waking-life memory, a state that dismisses any limits, is simply a rare event? I'd go with the latter, think.

And because most of my LDs have been WILDs, I feel confident in saying that this wasn't the result of not understanding the circumstances. But despite knowing without a doubt that I was dreaming, and despite knowing that dreams were not real, I often felt like I was swimming against an invisible current that insisted things behaved a certain way. Sometimes my will would trump this current, sometimes it wouldn't, but rarely has that current ever not been present to some degree in my dreams. I suppose it's my subconscious.

A difficult side-effect of WILD is that you assume, especially intellectually, that you have entered a dream with your entire waking-life Self intact. I do not believe this is true: your regular functions of sleep are robbing you of bits of Self every moment of the way, the biggest bit being memory. So yes, you are confident of your circumstances, and well aware that you are dreaming, but this awareness is being done without memory, almost a case where you are simply telling yourself this is a dream without innate confirmation. So those preconceptions and their requisite limits can indeed be present. That you were able to occasionally trump them probably indicates those rare events when, like I mentioned above, your entire Self is indeed present in the dream.

[Sorry about all the separate posts, guys & mods; I hadn't planned it that way!]