Thread: Memory: the Forgotten Fundamental

Originally Posted by Travis E.

I'm thinking about trying to make the sleeping body/current state reminder be kind of a meditation exercise during an LD, and just try to stay focused on it throughout the dream. That way if I find my thoughts thinking of the dream ending or straying somewhere else, I could just shift my focus back to this as I continue what I was doing.

That' sounds like a good idea; I hope you'll let us know how it goes, should you try it. However:

I suggest though that you try not to stay too focused on it; keep it as a sort of back-of-the-mind affirmation rather than something that feels very important during the dream. Considering your sleeping body is one thing, but maintaining a strong focus on your waking-life condition could work against you.

Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

I've stopped incorporating these "what was I doing earlier" questions in my RCs some time ago, because I wanted my RCs to be more frequent yet shorter, but I'll start doing this memory check again.

I would not recommend asking any questions other than "Is this a dream?" during your RC's, Mimi.

I know I am an outlier on this, but RC's are meant to be simple, quick, state tests that confirm that you are in reality. Adding stuff to them only complicates the procedure, and may muddle their results... I do of course think it is a good idea to do RRC's, where those questions are asked, or other popular exercises (i.e., imagining your world is a dream) as well, but definitely not at the same time as a RC.

So if you're going to ask (and consider carefully) those three questions -- where am I? where was I? where will I be? -- I suggest that you do so in a separate moment than the RC. The purposes of RC's and RRC's are very different from each other, so combining them might be problematic.

Also:

Although, once in a non-lucid dream I needed to find a backpack or something like that, which I knew I had earlier, and I tried to remember, in the dream, what have I done with it earlier. This resulted in my brain making up a false memory on the spot of where I placed the object, even though that never actually happened. Isn't it likely that our minds will create false memories like this during a dream and RCing with this memory check?

Yes. It is more than possible, during a NLD.

When you are not lucid your unconscious is in the business of creating false memories. So if a RRC is done when not lucid, a false memory that "properly" answers your questions for you is very likely -- just as a false positive is likely when a RC is done during a NLD. I am personally convinced that RC's and RRC's are not tools to induce lucidity, but tools to confirm or enhance lucidity, to be used after you sense that you are dreaming. I'm probably once again an outlier with this opinion, but I have a strong feeling it is correct.


All that said, I am reminded that RRC's are an excellent tool for firming up your grip on memory, after you have already laid hands on it by thinking about your sleeping body. If you are unfamiliar with what a RRC is, I think I defined it here, and answered about a hundred questions about it in my DVA WILD class's Q&A thread, if you are willing to browse.

Sageous, sorry, I'm a bit confused.. You say that I should only ask the question "is this a dream?" and do memory checks with questions like "where am I, where was I" etc at separate moments, not to combine these with RCs. But in the OP you said

For instance, when practicing reality checks during waking life (and everyone should be doing that!), don’t just confirm that the clock didn’t change, or that your hand still has five fingers, but, when you're done checking your state, take another moment to remember exactly what you were doing say, fifteen minutes earlier.

Wat Maybe I'm confused cause it's late and I need to go to bed but it sounds contradictory to me right now..

^^ You are correct, Travis, and well said.

Just to clarify (mostly because I already wrote it):

Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

Sageous, sorry, I'm a bit confused.. You say that I should only ask the question "is this a dream?" and do memory checks with questions like "where am I, where was I" etc at separate moments, not to combine these with RCs. But in the OP you said:

For instance, when practicing reality checks during waking life (and everyone should be doing that!), don’t just confirm that the clock didn’t change, or that your hand still has five fingers, but, when you're done checking your state, take another moment to remember exactly what you were doing say, fifteen minutes earlier.

Wat Maybe I'm confused cause it's late and I need to go to bed but it sounds contradictory to me right now..

I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything different, Mimi.

Note that I said in the OP to do the other stuff "when you're done checking your state," as you bolded above. I am saying that it is not a good idea to include all that questioning during your RC, but it is a fine idea to do the additional questioning once your RC is done, or before you do a RC.

In other words, sure, do all that stuff in the same time-frame, but do your RC as a unique, separate operation that has nothing to do with the questions. So, when you do a RC, all you should be doing at that moment is whatever state test you have chosen (i.e., checking and re-checking a clock, finger thru palm, etc) and wondering if you might be dreaming, so that you can have a simple and quick confirmation that you are awake or dreaming.

I hope that made sense; let me know if it didn't...

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ You are correct, Travis, and well said.

Just to clarify (mostly because I already wrote it):


I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything different, Mimi.

Note that I said in the OP to do the other stuff "when you're done checking your state," as you bolded above. I am saying that it is not a good idea to include all that questioning during your RC, but it is a fine idea to do the additional questioning once your RC is done, or before you do a RC.

In other words, sure, do all that stuff in the same time-frame, but do your RC as a unique, separate operation that has nothing to do with the questions. So, when you do a RC, all you should be doing at that moment is whatever state test you have chosen (i.e., checking and re-checking a clock, finger thru palm, etc) and wondering if you might be dreaming, so that you can have a simple and quick confirmation that you are awake or dreaming.

I hope that made sense; let me know if it didn't...

Ooh, I get it, think about them separately and do them separately, okay, thanks.

Originally Posted by yaya

really? then what the hell we should do in our DILD practices? so i am doing everything wrong.

i know it is off-topic but if you show me a good link to explain what i am wrong in, then i will thank you so much.

No yaya, doing RCs is not a bad thing. I might be wrong and if I am, correct me but, I think what Sageous means, and I agree with him, is that RCs/RRCs are meant to get you into a habit of questioning your reality and raising awareness so that eventually, in dreams, you start wondering if you might be dreaming, and then you use the RC/RRC as a confirmation that you're dreaming.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I am personally convinced that RC's and RRC's are not tools to induce lucidity

really? then what the hell we should do in our DILD practices? so i am doing everything wrong.

i know it is off-topic but if you show me a good link to explain what i am wrong in, then i will thank you so much.

Originally Posted by Sageous

So if a RRC is done when not lucid, a false memory that "properly" answers your questions for you is very likely -- just as a false positive is likely when a RC is done during a NLD. I am personally convinced that RC's and RRC's are not tools to induce lucidity, but tools to confirm or enhance lucidity, to be used after you sense that you are dreaming. I'm probably once again an outlier with this opinion, but I have a strong feeling it is correct.

I once put my hand up on the wall in a non-lucid dream, looking at It I noticed that I was missing fingers

My first thought "Oh crap, my reality check is faulty, I'm missing fingers and I'm not even asleep"

I put the hand in front of my face and stared at it in disbelief, thinking what am I going to do if I can't trust RCs

Then my thumb began jumping from one side of my hand to the other and back rapidly

My next thought "OK I'm asleep and I'm dreaming" (trigger) I didn't get stable or survive the void but seemed pretty effective at triggering to me once I was willing to trust the un-reality of it all.

^^ What that tells me is that the RC failed to make you lucid but your mind, being in the right place, overrode the non-lucid response to a positive RC with a bit of self-aware reason. In other words, your head was in the right place, and you probably were on a path to lucidity anyway.

Originally Posted by yaya

really? then what the hell we should do in our DILD practices? so i am doing everything wrong.

i know it is off-topic but if you show me a good link to explain what i am wrong in, then i will thank you so much.

Don't worry, Yaya. As Mimi already said, RC's are an excellent practice for DILD (and WILD). But for me they are more a waking-life practice to develop your capacity to become lucid than they are a tool for making you lucid during the dream.

Paradoxically, I also think that fully expecting RC's to work for you in a dream (aka, causing a DILD) is a very good thing, because you will bring that expectation with you into the dream and find yourself saying, "Hey, this could be a dream; I think I'll do a RC." But again, it was the expectation that promoted that dram of lucidity to appear, and not the RC. I believe that you really must already lucidly suspect you are dreaming for a RC to work in a dream, or else it will just fail, as Cooleymd noted above... but that suspicion is formed from lots of day-work that includes sincere RC's.

In other words, keep doing what you're doing for your DILD's, Yaya; it's probably fine, and you are likely doing nothing wrong.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Cooleymd noted above...

Point was I wasn't doing an RC I just happened to look at my hand and notice missing fingers, I believed I was awake, but just looking at my hand reconvinced me I was wrong.

I remember being a bit surprised myself when I first heard Sageous say this about RCs in another thread (one of the Q&As, probably), because I thought surely I had become lucid before by “just happening” to do a RC in a dream. But on closer inspection, it does seem that in most, if not all, of my cases I am already at least suspecting that I'm in a dream by the time I perform the RC. I try to remember to let anything odd or even just slightly unusual serve as a reminder for RCs in WL, since that seems to be how I usually become lucid in DILDs.

Originally Posted by Sageous

That' sounds like a good idea; I hope you'll let us know how it goes, should you try it. However:

I suggest though that you try not to stay too focused on it; keep it as a sort of back-of-the-mind affirmation rather than something that feels very important during the dream. Considering your sleeping body is one thing, but maintaining a strong focus on your waking-life condition could work against you.

I plan to report back, and that sounds like a good idea. So far I've managed to dodge lucidity the last few days, but I'm working on it. On a side note, it seems (though I haven't actually compiled statistics) that there is a general rise lately in the number of quasi-lucids as well as NLDs where I sense something a bit off but don't quite make the jump to “I'm dreaming”. I even had a NLD last night where I sensed an anomaly in my memory of recent events in the dream, and didn't attempt to rationalize it away, yet I just sort of sat there confused like a dummy instead of RCing, haha. Perhaps I'm going in the right direction, though.