Thread: The sense of time and its implications for lucidity

Hi folks!

Today I had a random thought about time and lucid dreaming

I am not thinking about reality checking with watches

But i am definitely thinking about how watches and digital clocks on devices may be dumbening us in relation to the passage of time and making as less aware of it

Can we recapture a sense of time?
How to do so? Relying on memory and senses and avoid using the assistance of external time indicators?

Could it make us more lucid during the daytime ?

This is is just a random embryonic idea and i invite everyone to share a thought

Continually bringing yourself to the present moment, and resting in vivid lucid awareness, "dropping the stories being told in your mind" (TWR, TYoDaS) (that drag you away from the present). Becoming vividly present and aware as often as you can for as long as you can will give you a closer connection to time...

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Continually bringing yourself to the present moment, and resting in vivid lucid awareness, "dropping the stories being told in your mind" (TWR, TYoDaS) (that drag you away from the present). Becoming vividly present and aware as often as you can for as long as you can will give you a closer connection to time...

That is certainly true.
But my question was more about how do we know what time is it ? How do we feel the passage of time ? And if this faculty is also impaired in dreams and also to some extent in daily life?
In some aspects, Frying man, i remember about your practice about location sense, and i think time and location are a similar construct in our minds, in some ways, although i think time is more elusive, more subjective and more difficult to understand

I know i am not being very clear here, i am still trying to define my thoughts about this subject

Originally Posted by VagalTone

That is certainly true.
But my question was more about how do we know what time is it ? How do we feel the passage of time ?

I'd say it's primarily driven by our memories. Our brain gives us some sense of a sequence in which the events occurred, and over the longer term they're tied to markers like big events in your life, your growth and ageing and changing routines and environments. On top of that we have the conventional names for the days, months, years and the numerical systems of hours, minutes and seconds which we can use to try and quantify the distances between the various events - although I'm not too sure how useful this bit is for lucidity, except it gives a way to spot anomalies (maybe something changing impossibly fast in a dream?). There are probably better ways to spot those anomalies and inconsistencies in a dream though, I don't really know.

Those days and months and hours are of course somewhat based on the relative motion of Earth, Sun and Moon and we have our natural circadian rhythms, sensitivity to daylight and ancient instincts that will give us a sense of that passage of time - night and day and the changing seasons, the moon waxing and waning - our bodies to give us a sense of that without needing a calendar or a watch.

I'm guessing the brain has other ways of keeping time as well. It has to regulate lots of biological processes. The most obvious are the heart rate and breathing which can change pace but are usually very regular.

Food for thought, I hope. (By the way, I like your sig - it's a good approach and there are a couple of those steps I really need to work on, mainly getting good sleep, quality and quantity!)

One idea i can clarify and objectify is that in the dream state the sense of time is impaired, that is, we seem to don't know very well what time is it, what hour is, what year is, what season of the year is.

That is not surprising, and probably reflects deficits in memory and self awareness typical of dreams.
I don't think science has explained how we process the passage of time, but it seems reasonable it depends on memory and sense of self (which also depends on memory).
But the theme seems to be up for debate


This raises the possibility of using time as a proxy for thedaytime practice of lucid dreaming fundamentals?
Maybe when we try to sense and feel what time it is, we are engaging memory and self awareness (which many people consider fundamentals for lucid dreaming)

Maybe we can, for instance, use time as a reality check.
Are we able to tell what time it is right now?
Can I understand myself and my identity in this time?
Can i project myself in the past and in the future, in a coherent story ?

These kind of questions make sense to me, and i think we can try to feel these questions instead of thinking about them analiticaly, which would render them easier to retrieve and make a habit

I should add that in my brief experimentation the questioning of time seems to be, for one hand, more automatic and effortless as it is part of our daily routine to assess the time ....
And if I try to answer the question with feeling and introspection without resorting to devices my mind becomes a little bit slow and present, something which a conventional reality check might bypass and not allow enough time for that feeling of recapturing presence and self awareness

I feel now i have clarified my thoughts a little bit

In my experience, practically speaking, state tests need to be very simple and fast to perform, with basically almost no mental processing to analyze the results. Time awareness may be a decent waking life reflection theme but IMO it's not a practical state test for dreaming, unless this somehow resonates very deeply with you. As with all things LD, try it and see!