Question: People and Awareness in LDs

[LouaiB]

eheheheh, for you who already know i struggle with this concept, i'm getting haunted by it still. To think i solved it, but more like i wish i arrived to a satisfying answer. So, straight into it, do ppl differ when it comes to LD vividness? I hear about ppl who have very vivid and aware LDs, like just have that ability from the start, and others, like me, who have low vivdness and awareness in LDs. how does this work? Is it just a thing you can't change?? Are ppl just cursed (or blessed) with a default standard of how vivid their dreams are?? Now i know practicing recall and supplements help, but there's only so much they can do. It seems hard to believe that there is something i can train to have highly vivid dreams. I just feel my dreams are not that vivid. Even the best of them aren't so much vivid. Sometimes i get dreams that i remember noticing how hyper vivid they are, actually it happens quite often, but when i wake up it's like not that vivid feeling anymore (cuz of recall, i know). Is it just about recall? Do we all truly experience vivid dreams but the 'cursed' ones only think they don't cuz they don't have strong recall?? I'm really demotivated cuz of this. If my dreams will always be like this, then i have little reason to work anymore in the subject of LDing. This is really breaking my heart guys.

[Gr8God]

Well of course if you tell yourself training is going to be hard then it will be and the notion that it's some ability that you're born with is total bollocks, Everyone is unique and the way you do something can effect you more or less just because you're different. Speaking from personal experience, most of my lucid dreams are extremely vivid and that was because it was something I extensively practiced. Take some time to find some guides on the forum and see what works for you.

[LouaiB]

Well of course if you tell yourself training is going to be hard then it will be and the notion that it's some ability that you're born with is total bollocks, Everyone is unique and the way you do something can effect you more or less just because you're different. Speaking from personal experience, most of my lucid dreams are extremely vivid and that was because it was something I extensively practiced. Take some time to find some guides on the forum and see what works for you. i sure hope so. I am familiar with the techniques that help this. I just want to ask: How long have you been practicing LDing? Did you start off with bad LD quality and low vividness? Did you practice and get gradual improvement? How much improvement? What techniques did you use and how you think they affected??

[ThreeCat]

Louai, there are techniques to increase vividness and clarity in dreams, and I'm sure you've probably tried some of them. If I were in your position, I think I would just practice on improving my lucid dreaming skills overall, and see if more vivid dreams appear as you go. It may take some time to have a very vivid one, but maybe it will be tonight. You never know. I don't think it will help to make this a focus for negative energy and stress. You might try setting aside one night during the week where you will try to increase the clarity of your dreams. During a WBTB, smudge some mugwort or other scents meant to provoke clarity in dreams and just fall asleep and see what happens. If you become lucid, try rubbing your hands, focusing on your five senses (particularly touch) and do things that stimulate your senses. See if vividness increases. You can also just practice awareness in the dream--just be aware of who you are and where you are, without running to engage with anything. Others might have more suggestions.

[LouaiB]

Louai, there are techniques to increase vividness and clarity in dreams, and I'm sure you've probably tried some of them. If I were in your position, I think I would just practice on improving my lucid dreaming skills overall, and see if more vivid dreams appear as you go. It may take some time to have a very vivid one, but maybe it will be tonight. You never know. I don't think it will help to make this a focus for negative energy and stress. You might try setting aside one night during the week where you will try to increase the clarity of your dreams. During a WBTB, smudge some mugwort or other scents meant to provoke clarity in dreams and just fall asleep and see what happens. If you become lucid, try rubbing your hands, focusing on your five senses (particularly touch) and do things that stimulate your senses. See if vividness increases. You can also just practice awareness in the dream--just be aware of who you are and where you are, without running to engage with anything. Others might have more suggestions. So it's BS that some ppl don't have the ability to reach vivid LDs?? Are dreams by default able to be hyper realistic?? (at least during late REM)

[Sageous]

^^ I'm sure you've heard this from before, Louai, but I feel a need to repeat: Lucidity does not equal vividness: you can be incredibly lucid in the dullest of dreams, and have incredible vividness when lucidity is completely absent. Lucidity is about self-awareness, and not about vividness. Okay, now that obligatory repetition is out of the way: So it's BS that some ppl don't have the ability to reach vivid LDs?? Are dreams by default able to be hyper realistic?? (at least during late REM) Yes, it probably is BS, and "loss" of vividness (or failure to achieve it) is, as you noted above, probably more related to recall than to the quality of the dreams themselves. Here's a thought: Dreams by default are able to be hyper-realistic. This is because perception in dreams is instant, and is not tempered by physical filters like eyes, ears, nose, or skin. In other words, the imagery that your dreaming mind creates can potentially be exactly as you expect it to be, without any added nuance like lighting, poor eyesight, atmospheric blurring, etc; so yes, dreams can appear to be more real than reality, simply because perception can be "perfect" in dreams, in a way that reality simply cannot provide. But more to the point of your OP: I think that if you continue to work on your lucidity, and learn to enjoy the quality of your presence in the dream rather than the quality of the dream's general resolution, you will likely find that resolution improving over time. Also, there might be a chance that, thanks to dream recall that has led you to believe that so many of your dreams are dull, you have built an expectation of dullness into your LD's... if you can step away from this expectation, you might find it easier to render your dream scenes with a finer brush.

[ThreeCat]

I think that if you continue to work on your lucidity, and learn to enjoy the quality of your presence in the dream rather than the quality of the dream's general resolution, you will likely find that resolution improving over time. This is great advice for life in general, I think. Thanks, Sageous.

[LouaiB]

@Sageous So it really is senses being kinda separate from awareness; how aware and lucid you are doesn't affect how high quality the senses are. This must be why stabilizing the dream works. Vividness is a dream control thing. Also recall is how much i regain from all that happened. It is NOT what happened, but how much i saved from that experience. Just Memory degration. There is something that confuses me though. What is awareness anyways? lol i know, seems like a dumb question. Is it how much i'm focused? Is it in like not being in autopilot and actually being aware of the environment and what's going on? Is it more of the self awareness we work for with RRC? Is it more of being not drunk-ish?(or is that drunk effect just a cause of bad recall making us think we weren't very conscious and aware??) It's just kinda hard for me to understand how awareness and consciousness work in dreams. Do you think I should research these stuff to get a clearer image of how they work in LDing??

[Mr0Blonde]

I think it could have a lot to do with how and when you get Lucid. Mine have always been really vivid from the very first one and about 95% of them still are, so I thought I was just lucky. Lately though when thinking about it, I realised I pretty much always get Lucid the same way and that's with MILD/WILD in the last stages of sleep and REM. In the few Lucid's I have when they're not so vivid and I don't quite act the way I usually would in WL, they're in some of the Lucid's that I get naturally during the night when I'm in a deeper sleep. For me the deeper asleep I am is a big reason for the difference in having WL vividness and memory, or less vivid and less waking memory in Lucid Dreams. Try getting in a light sleeping state by trying to LD in the morning, lay on your back, or a different position from what you normally sleep in and try MILD or WILD. I think this is where the whole WILDs are more vivid than DILDs thing came from. I'm not saying DILDs are any less vivid in themselves, just that DILDs can happen at any time, and often happen when you've been asleep for awhile so you'll be in a deeper sleep. With WILDs and MILDs though you have them as soon (or pretty close to) as you fall asleep, meaning you're sleeping much more lightly and get a more vivid experience. You also wake straight from a LD when sleeping lightly making the memory of it extremely clear.

[RelaxAndDream]

Hi, i just started some month ago but i see a raise in vividness and quality of my dreams (LD and NLD). for me my lucids are most of the time more vivid than my NLD because i am there and just experience and perform them live whereas NLD are kind of just memory after i wake up. sure there are exceptions but most of the time its like this for me. and different than Mr0Blonde most of the time my DILDS have a higher quality than my first WILD attempts where i slipped into a DILD. When i have a random DILD i am alrdy in action but when i tried WILDS i often started my LD in my bed like a FA and it was more dull. but i think when i would try out WILD now maby i would have better experiences/higher quality LD´s MILD on the other hand i try now everytime i notice a microawakening For vividness: i had not many but some LD´s where i for example fly and i felt the wind and smell the salty water and felt the acceleration in my stomach. That was an awesome feeling and i was soooo happy when i woke up later on because it felt great and so realistc. This are the experiences that fuel my motivation and want me to have more LDs and to get bette rat it and that make it sooo special. and i think when i happen sometimes just like that, with practice it will be more and more often until you just know how it works. i think its a combination of expectation, focus/awarness and confidence. When you have a lucid and just run the street because you want from a to b you wont feel or experience much because like in WL you filter everything that is "not important" and focus on your aim. but when you stop and try to smell anything you maby wont smell anything at first but then you focus your attention and you just know (confidence) that there is ALWAYS a smell in the air even if you dont notice it. and suddenly you start to smell i dont know the trashcan or maby rainy air or whatever (a little expectation). but you need to focus on it you need to want to smell something. same with visuals or feelings. when you stop infront of a house its just a house but if you take a second look you will see the texture of the wall and when you put your hand on it and feel it at the beginning there is not much but when you focus your attention there will come a feeling and you will feel the roughness of the wall. and in the end its all about the same: Lucid in waking life= lucid in dreams.(kind of a inflationary used sentence that i am bored of alrdy but is just so true) how often do you run the same way and after 3 years you just notice the mailing box or the one house that was always there. how often do you have the feeling that there is no smell in the air but there is? be present in what you do in the moment and you will notice way more in waking life and then in your dreams i think.

[Sageous]

@Sageous ...There is something that confuses me though. What is awareness anyways? lol i know, seems like a dumb question. Is it how much i'm focused? Is it in like not being in autopilot and actually being aware of the environment and what's going on? Is it more of the self awareness we work for with RRC? Is it more of being not drunk-ish?(or is that drunk effect just a cause of bad recall making us think we weren't very conscious and aware??) Well. There's a post that would take a couple of books to properly answer! What is awareness? ... More important: what is self-awareness? I have a feeling that you already know the answers to both those questions, Louai, if you really think about it, and you also already know that they are both very different things, with awareness being the natural ability that all living things have to sense and react to their surroundings, and self-awareness being the sentient ability, that very few living things possess, to know that they are sensing their surroundings, and to understand that they are present in their reality. A mouse, for instance, has a greater mastery of awareness than a human could ever achieve, yet it will never know that, because it has no self-awareness at all. Yes, focus is important for both self-awareness and natural awareness, though self-awareness tends to benefit more from focus, especially when that focus holds you above auto-pilot. Auto-pilot, BTW, can include lots of natural awareness, if that helps to illustrate the difference (for instance, when driving a car you tend to be extremely aware while being on full auto-pilot, self-awareness-wise). I have a feeling that that "drunk" effect is indeed a function of recall, especially with NLD's: when not lucid, during the dream you rarely feel anything less than fully conscious -- until you wake up and remember the dumb things you did or believed. The drunk effect during LD's is a bit more complex, brought on by things like your level of lucidity, how close you are to waking, lack of access to memory, and expectation. With practice, patience, and a change of expectation, it can be overcome, I think. I realize I'm not saying anything useful here, Louai, because I simply don't have the time (or space) to give your questions the answer they deserve. But: It's just kinda hard for me to understand how awareness and consciousness work in dreams. As I think RelaxAndDream already said above, suffice it to say that awareness and self-awareness are manifest in dreams exactly as they are manifest in waking-life. Consciousness is consciousness, wherever you are, and attention and memory can be just as absent or miserable in waking-life as it is in dreams. Do you think I should research these stuff to get a clearer image of how they work in LDing?? That wouldn't hurt at all, I think!

[Gr8God]

i sure hope so. I am familiar with the techniques that help this. I just want to ask: How long have you been practicing LDing? Did you start off with bad LD quality and low vividness? Did you practice and get gradual improvement? How much improvement? What techniques did you use and how you think they affected?? Well it might be luck but I had my first lucid dream on the first day I found out about lucid dreaming (that was month before I signed up on this forum) and if you want to know how vivid that first lucid dream was well lets just say I remember that lucid dream better than alot of things I remember happening that year... meaning it was pretty vivid

[Patience108]

Sageous - that really is wonderful advise - I feel - "Enjoy the quality of your presence in the dream " Also RelaxAnd Dream speaking about experiencing the smells, sights and other senses and not just running from A to B is also very poignant advise - thank you I suppose doing all these things does involve memory ...as first one has to remember to slow down or take time or take that breath of fresh air or look around ... Then on top of that one starts to get a feeling of knowing that one is doing it and enjoy it - taking a simple pleasure in being and experiencing .... Is that how self Awareness is amplified possibly? By this process of remembering and experiencing and enjoying the quality of whatever comes?

[LouaiB]

So, this is pretty much practicing mindfulness and self awareness so i can be more present and mindful in the LD, plus practicing recall so all the experience, details, emotions, sense of presence and 'being there', etc. would be as much intact as possible? Was i just overcomplicating something that is actually pretty simple to understand and practice?

[LouaiB]

So, this is pretty much practicing mindfulness and self awareness so i can be more present and mindful in the LD, plus practicing recall so all the experience, details, emotions, sense of presence and 'being there', etc. would be as much intact as possible? Was i just overcomplicating something that is actually pretty simple to understand and practice?

[RelaxAndDream]

Was i just overcomplicating something that is actually pretty simple to understand and practice? i think so. i am someone who always needs to know WHY something is how it is and i try to be as efficient as i can because otherwise i have the feeling of loosing time. at the beginning i came with the same approach to LD and i get lost in all the techniques and everyone tells you you need to "Only" need to do this this this and that and you will be a LD-Master and you get lost in reading all the threads and so on and because i wanted to do it perfect i overcomplicated it. this is exhausting and no matter how much motivation and energy you have when you do it this way you will get burned out and loose focus and interest in the whole thing. you need to find your own direction in your own speed because its more important to have persistence in what you do so you still do it in 1 month or half a year and dont be too strict with you when you have a bad day or a bad week its normal but you know why you do it and it gets better again and before you know you will reap your work. and it will feel good and in retrospective you didnt even do that much. i´ve learned this a month or something ago and reduced my daywork to some simple aspects and just continue doing it without scrutinize/judgement and with patience and confidence. i go for the long approach because i think i still want to LD in 5 or 10 years so what is a month more or less?! and since then it feels more natural and its not that exhausting and i still make nice progress from month to month and i get better and better and "just like that" have every week like 1 or 2 LD and now i am working on the quality of them but its all just practice and one day maby it will be like riding a bike and especially selfawareness or mindfullness: you dont need to understand it 100% just do it and do it the whole way and just like that one day you wake up and have a epiphany and will start to know what mindfullness really means and some pieces of the puzzle will come together and yet its not the end of the road Just today Frying Man posted this in another thread: Really great summary, Ctharlhie! I've had an epiphany of sorts over this year, re: mindfulness/self-awareness, how to practice it, and how to explain it. It is really simple! Just: pay attention! That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. It works its magic the more you do it. The more you do it, the more you want to do it. Don't over think it, don't ask "but what exactly should I pay attention to?" Instead, just learn what it feels like to be in a state of paying attention. It is the opposite of not paying attention: remember what it feels like to be zoned out, and catching yourself there as you return to lucidity, realizing that you were just in an "autopilot" state just before. There. That moment, that's mindfulness. Also, on reddit a guy posts a sentence periodically "You are now aware that you are breathing." Your attention turning to your breath as soon as you read that sentence: that's attention/mindfulness/lucidity, that's the goal. For lucid dreaming practice, I like to add the underlying purpose as a subtext to the attention: remaining aware of my state (dreaming/awake).

[Ginsan]

I didn't read the whole thread, but I'll just pitch in. Practicing mindfulness influences my mental clarity in lucid dreams, and my mental clarity in lucid dreams influences the vividness. The mindfulness-clarity correlation is, in my case, more direct than the clarity-vividness correlation. I want to question Sageous, please note that I am not accusing him of being wrong. The poverty of my experience may explain why I'm wrong. "High lucidity without vividness is possible, high vividness without lucidity is possible". Is it really honest to draw conclusions from this? Are these not just the rare cases and is there not actually a fairy consistent correllation between vividness and clarity? It may often stray, but in most cases it is still true. If I misinterpreted your views, please tell me, as this is quite likely

[Sageous]

I suppose doing all these things does involve memory ...as first one has to remember to slow down or take time or take that breath of fresh air or look around ... Then on top of that one starts to get a feeling of knowing that one is doing it and enjoy it - taking a simple pleasure in being and experiencing .... Is that how self Awareness is amplified possibly? By this process of remembering and experiencing and enjoying the quality of whatever comes? It sure is! I believe accessing memory is the best tool available for boosting your self-awareness/lucidity in a dream (and in waking-life, for that matter). I say more about it here, if you're interested. Also, putting yourself in the moment and really enjoying its qualities is certainly a way to amplify self-awareness -- and the experience itself. So, this is pretty much practicing mindfulness and self awareness so i can be more present and mindful in the LD, plus practicing recall so all the experience, details, emotions, sense of presence and 'being there', etc. would be as much intact as possible? Yes. I want to question Sageous, please note that I am not accusing him of being wrong. The poverty of my experience may explain why I'm wrong. "High lucidity without vividness is possible, high vividness without lucidity is possible". Is it really honest to draw conclusions from this? Are these not just the rare cases and is there not actually a fairy consistent correllation between vividness and clarity? It may often stray, but in most cases it is still true. If I misinterpreted your views, please tell me, as this is quite likely You may have misinterpreted me slightly, Ginsan. I personally tend to equate, in a literal sense, clarity with vividness, and not with self-awareness/lucidity, so I would probably have listed vividness right along with clarity above while at the same time saying that the state of lucidity by itself has nothing to do with either of them. If, however, by "clarity" you mean the level of your lucidity or mindfulness in a dream, then yes, of course I would agree that clarity equals lucidity. If by "clarity" you did indeed mean "vividness," then I must stick to my guns: I truly was saying that there is no correlation between vividness and lucidity, period. Yes, you can use your state of lucidity in the dream to heighten vividness, but that enhancement comes with your suggestion (or perhaps just the presence of your focused attention) after you are lucid, and does not come as an immediate byproduct of lucidity. From my perspective, I am quite comfortable drawing these conclusions. I have had many thousands of LD's, and spent quite a bit of time listening to the accounts of many other LD'ers, and, drawing from that sizable pool of experience, I have found that very vivid LD's are about as common as very vivid NLD's, just as very dull LD's are about as common as very dull NLD's. In other words, a dream's initial quality does not depend on lucidity. These conclusions might not be terribly scientific, but I have found that vividness really is not initially related to lucidity, and that "High lucidity without vividness is possible, high vividness without lucidity is possible" is a fairly honest statement representing something closer to a norm than rare cases. Lucidity is a reflection of self-awareness in a dream, and not vividness. Just to add to the pile, I think I explored LD'ing and discussed other people's explorations for decades before I ever even heard about this assertion that lucidity must include vividness. Sure there was lots of talk about using lucidity to increase vividness (and clarity) through dream control, attention, and focus, but the quality of the initial dream was never assumed to change with the onset of lucidity (in other words, when lucid you can notice the vividness of a dream that was already present before you were lucid, but your DC "You" simply could not appreciate it) . This connection of vividness and lucidity seems to be a relatively new theme/requirement/expectation for practitioners -- a connection that I wonder may have come about both because the word "lucidity" itself, when looked at sideways, seems to imply greater vividness, or simply because just another misunderstanding of the nature of lucidity wandered into the nomenclature through the repetition of well-intentioned people who might not have fully understood the state (sort of like SP). [EDIT: I forgot to mention why I made this point in the first place. I wasn't just trying to state a fact or call anyone wrong, but was trying to point out that the lucid experience does not require vividness: You can have a great time in the dullest of dreams, if you allow yourself to appreciate where you really are (in a dream!). Indeed, some of my most memorable LD's did not have much at all in the way of vividness, because I was focused on the experience itself, and not the pretty pictures. Plus, the duller dreams form an excellent blank slate for creativity, so I often welcome them. I'd hate to see dreamers abandon their LD's -- or LD'ing in general -- because they initially find themselves in the same dull dream they thought they just left by becoming lucid and are disappointed because the promised vividness didn't burst onto the scene.]

[Sageous]

...That made me go "Aha! Now I get it!" So at the moment of becoming lucid, the initial vividness and the awareness are not correlated. But, the more aware/lucid/clear-minded you are, the higher your chances of improving the vividness of the dream. This makes sense to me, combined with you saying it, convinces me that this is indeed the case. So did I get it right this time? Yes, you did! By clarity I meant mental clarity/lucidity/awareness. I had a feeling...

[LouaiB]

So much good info here. I must thank you all! (I am not being sarcastic here. I don't know why my posts sound like that sometimes. I would use (*sarcasm*) if I am ever being sarcastic. Sry had to clear that out)

[Ginsan]

People might be confused by Sageous quoting me. I deleted the post after he had quoted me. There wasn't much interesting stuff in there anyway. I deleted it because I thought I had misunderstood his response, and my post didn't make any sense, but now it doesn't matter, because now I understand and agree with him.

[Goldenspark]

There is an interesting point that Louai makes at the beginning, about different people having different clarity in LDs, but I would also add non-lucids to that as well. I've certainly seen wide variations in the clarity of my dreams, but I wonder if there is an inate "baseline" of clarity that an individual has? I would explain my own variation in clarity being possibly because of the different levels of awareness at the time. I know that I am capable of amazing apparent clarity, because I have experienced it quite a few times, but I say "apparent" because the brain is quite capable of giving an illusion of clarity which may not be all it seems. Waking life clarity might seem to be the ultimate clarity, but of course that is an illusion. If we "skim" over the real world experience, the actually very clear real scene can seem to be less so. If you think back and try and recall a scene, the apparent clarity is affected by your recollection. If you were deliberately concentrating on trying to remember the clarity (like mindfullness), then the memory of that scene would be one of more clarity, but the actual experience at the time would have had more clarity as well because you are heightening your senses to it. Getting back to the differences between people, I would imagine that the basic "hardware" for perceiving a clear LD is the same for all, but the use and practice of the "software" is probably what could make the difference in terms of perceived clarity between individuals. By software, I mean that an individual who has more of a tendency to drift through life and not notice things or remember them so well is likely to have lower real world awareness that might translate through to low-level clarity in dreams. I suspect that in all individuals the level of clarity in dreams can be improved from their "baseline" by mindfullness in RL, which should drift through into dreams. Certainly in a good lucid clarity can be improved by concentrating on noticing the details of the dream, just as the clarity is reduced, both actual in the moment and in the recollection later if the LD is "drifted through" with less mindfullness.