Printable View
Sorry for bumping an old thread. But I do have one question. Let's say, for example, that I'm walking outside and I decide to use ADA. Do I focus my attention on one thing (maybe for about 30 seconds) and then shift it to another sensation? For example, I might focus on my breathing and then shift over to focusing on one visual aspect. Or do I need to "absorb" every sensation all at once?
Thanks!
Back from the dead ;). Also, I'd like to thank everyone for answering questions in my absence. That was greatly appreciated.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Hopefully, you are still around to read this. As for your question, yes that is perfectly fine to do initially. it makes it easier to start your ADA practice. Eventually though, you are going to want to engage all of the senses at once. Try to slowly build-up to where you are doing more and more sensations at once.Quote:
Originally Posted by DreamBeard
Thanks for the response! Glad to see you're out now! And no problem about being late. better later than never. Yes, I am still around. But I'm more of the type person who just likes to read around rather than post a lot. But anyways, I'll heed the advice. Since I am usually very busy at college, I can try ADA during one those long and boring Physics lectures :PQuote:
Originally Posted by KingYoshi
Nice! Good luck to you and feel free to hit me up anytime if you have any questions.
WOWWWW! welcome back KING YOSHI!!!!!!!!!!!! glad to see you again! :bliss:
Well, firstly a warm welcome back, and where are you with lucid dreaming now?Quote:
Originally Posted by KingYoshi
Thanks :)! As for Lucid Dreaming, I am pretty far out of practice, so it will probably take me a couple weeks to get back into the swing of it. I had plenty of lucids while I was gone, but I had pretty much retired completely from active practicing of ADA as well as DJing or anything like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ctharlhie
Wow, getting back into the ADA habit is going to be killer! A great opportunity for the rest of us to see the master's progress from scratch. Be sure to update us on your progress.
Haha, I shall. Today did not go very well. I was waaaaaay too hungover :P. Tomorrow will be my official first training day.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ctharlhie
Welcome back! You dont know me, but i do kinda know you. Your guide was a huge inspiration when i first got really serious about lucid dreaming, i took a break, and now that im back i still use ada, now along with new things, but the awareness is becoming a fixed program in my mind. Thank you for your guide!
No problem at all. Glad it helped you out a bit and thanks for the welcome :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dodge631
Thanks. Perhaps if feeling overwhelmed try only increasing awareness on a specific need (not want or desire) you have have the time.
I was avoiding ADA, because it seemed to need so much effort but if it gives such good effects, I'll definitely try this.
Can I start with noticing only some things and slowly advance to notice more? I'd like to go about it this way.
Edit: I will start with paying attention to breathing and hearing sound.
Today was my first day of practicing this technique and i gotta say i've never felt so ''alive'' :lol: I'll admit i had to use an alarm to remind me and it's quite tiring but i hope i can get used to it! Thank you for sharing this technique!
You can bet your bucket this method works! I had an hour long lucid dream with only a day of practice. Thanks for the tutorial KingYoshi!
OK, I was trying for some time. No effects... I don't know, why. I was paying attention to everything I could for about a week. Next, I started trying with only one thing. I used body sensations, my weight, gravity, each for a week or more. Two dreams about LD at the very beginning of my practice, that's all I managed to get... :( Do you have any advice?
you are not wrong sweety! for most people in this site, ADA and similar practices have only worked after some weeks of practice or even some months!!!! your results were great for the first week. so please continue and see how it will work:)
Thanks! 2 days have passed since I began this technique and I just had a lucid dream last night! Also, I have a question. If I keep my lucidity all the time, would that mean I would reach a point where each dream I have becomes lucid? Also I found this, similar to ADA: The Secret of Frequent Lucid Dreamers
Never mind, I re-read the tutorial and you answered by question.
Sorry it took so long for my replies.
Awesome! Yeah, it can be very tiring at first. Just stick with it and will slowly get more and more used to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by WhatIsReality
Thanks and congrats on your success! I'm glad it has helped you produce some results. Just keep at it :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaephr
Like yaya said, just keep at it. It sounds like you are doing the right things. Practice makes perfect and it can take some time for the technique to start producing strong results. You have had some good success so far, so just keep working at it and use that experience as your building blocks for future endeavors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oktek
It is possible to reach that point, yes. Congrats on your success and just keep working at it. The more effort you put into it, the better the rewards. Just make sure you are staying relaxed and not stressing yourself out. Stress can be a killer when it comes to Lucid Dreaming.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alien348
I figured it would be worth mentioning from the perspective of someone who's done this myself for a while, how I feel this is best accomplished for a beginner. I started doing this as a result of the fact that I meditate multiple times a day every day, practice yoga, qigong, and various routines and ritual practices that demand constant mindful awareness, and when this first began affecting my dreams it was mostly just as a result of the awareness I put into these exercises. It was later on that through my practices I decided to devote more of my day to maintaining such a level of awareness, and as that grew, dream clarity, recall, and DILD went up significantly. It's nice to see someone has written a guide to doing this, since it's one of those things I just did automatically through my practice and would probably normally forget to suggest to people, despite how much it helped me.
Anyway, if you're just beginning, the idea of being aware of every moment of your day sounds like a chore. The trick is to understand why awareness helps your dreams first of all. If you know how to drive, or work a repetitive job, or have done long school work before, you know how good the subconscious is at automating our processes. The first time you drive a car, it's hard, you have to do everything manually, and you make mistakes, but once you've done it a few times, your subconscious just takes over, and you don't really "think" about the process of driving the times you do it after that. This is how most of our routine each day goes, our subconscious takes control, and leads us about like a bit of a machine - however, we still have our conscious thinking happening on top, so if something astoundingly weird were to happen that breaks the routine, we'll question it.
In our dreams however, you go about like a machine on autopilot, but your conscious mind is asleep, so when a giant flying dinosaur comes through the window and takes a dump on your friend's head, it doesn't trigger any reason to break autopilot, and you continue being blissfully unaware. So essentially what this technique is about, is about reclaiming yourself from autopilot in your day to day life, so that you stop being in autopilot in your dreams, when you're not in autopilot, you take actions slowly (increasing dream length), you pay attention to your surroundings (noticing things and becoming lucid more often), and you recall the events afterwards much easier.
So really, the easiest way to get started is simple. What are you doing right now? Reading my post. How are you reading it though? You were probably just aware of yourself reading it, but were you aware of the feeling of each of your fingers on your keyboard? Of the background sounds happening outside your house? Of the flashing of your Skype window beneath the post? Pause right now, and take a moment to engage each of your senses. First, what do you see? Your monitor, your keyboard, now look around the room, take it all in, examine things. Now what do you hear? Listen to the sounds, explore where they're coming from mentally, i.e. if you hear your neighbour, try and picture where exactly outside they'd be to be making those noises etc. Next up, touch, how does the keyboard feel, how does your body feel? Is your back aching from being in a strained position? Well sit up and straighten up a bit, get comfortable. Now what about smell? Forgot the deodorant today? Or can you perhaps smell your parents cooking downstairs - why not go ask them what's cooking! Taste? Grab a snack, enjoy it, take your time to eat it slowly instead of rushing to get back to what you were doing.
If you'll notice, all you've really done in this process is SLOW DOWN. Instead of focusing so intently on your task that you ignore everything else, you've taken the time to pause, slow down, and take in what's really happening in all five of your primary senses. So the easiest way to get started, is just to do things more slowly and carefully during your day. An easy one is meals - instead of rushing to finish, while watching TV at the same time. Take time for your meal, eat it while doing nothing else, focus on the taste, the texture, the smell, and really enjoy it - if nothing else, you get to enjoy your food better, and eating slower aids your digestion, so its good for you, but it also starts to get you used to a heightened awareness of your senses. Now what else do you automate each day? Do you walk to school in the morning and find yourself marching along a bit like an ant? Slow down, leave earlier in the morning if you're worried about being late, and take the time to walk there slowly - take in the sights. What's going on at the building sight across the road? Where's that tweeting coming from, which tree? Try and spot the bird! What can you smell? Hear? See? Go touch a tree on your way past it, feel the warm sunlight on the bark.
You get to school, and you've not really taken any effort or time out of your day, but you've enjoyed your walk to school a lot more, you've enjoyed your meals a lot more. Now start doing it elsewhere. Having a quick bath or shower? Instead of rushing through it, take the time, look at the parts of yourself you're washing, check your teeth and see if they look/feel healthy, maybe get out a tape measure and see if you've grown any if you're not too old, or perhaps weigh yourself and see if you've put on any muscle in that extra time you've devoted to your morning walks!
Take your day slowly, reclaim your senses, and get yourself back from being a slave to autopilot. Both your waking life, and your dreaming life will improve massively as a result. You'll start to see the world more beautifully like you did as a kid, because instead of focusing on your destination 24/7, you're present in the NOW, in this moment, enjoying what's there in front of you :)
You literally don't have to take ANY extra time out of your day for this, instead you're just reclaiming the time you already let go by in a blur to slow down and enjoy the day!
OK, so I have made an 30 day ADA experiment on Reddit, but was sick and failed to accomplish it. Now I want to start again, but I was wondering what have you guys used to remind yourself to do ADA? I was considering doing it in scientific, experimental manner. I would stop doing everything else dream related and just focus on ADA for 30 days. But I can't seem to find right reminder. What do you guys use?
@KingYoshi Do you think it is beneficial that when doing ADA we also always ask ourselves: "Am I dreaming right now?". I don't mean usual reality check, I mean on developing habit to always be aware that everything might be a dream. I know ADA gives us much more information than we would usually have, but with this I think it would be even more powerful. What is your opinion on this?
Make a solid commitment to noticing whenever you've zoned out, and tune back in. Then do it. Lather, rinse, repeat. That is, just keep doing it. Be patient, and over time you will find yourself noticing more and more and remaining tuned in longer and longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elaol
Well your Q wasn't @FryingMan but I'll weight in: IMO you do need the constant notion in your mind of why you're doing this: to determine your state (awake/dreaming). It's not enough just to be aware of sense input, you must also reflect upon it with the ultimate goal of determining your state.Quote:
@KingYoshi Do you think it is beneficial that when doing ADA we also always ask ourselves: "Am I dreaming right now?". I don't mean usual reality check, I mean on developing habit to always be aware that everything might be a dream. I know ADA gives us much more information than we would usually have, but with this I think it would be even more powerful. What is your opinion on this?
OK, thanks man. This has helped a lot!Quote:
Originally Posted by FryingMan
Once it's much easior to be aware than not aware, do you have to keep focusing on what you see, hear, feel...or is just being aware enough?
For the 95% of us that don't have results in the first week, how long does it normally take to see results?
So far I've been doing this for two months. I'm aware about 80-90% of the time. For a month and a half I've been doing a Dream Journal, and doing reality checks, using a beeper that gives two beeps every 10 minutes.
Two nights ago for the first time I noticed something weird in a dream, a ferris wheel that was weird shaped in the center, but I didn't become lucid. So far, the only way for me to become lucid is having my mind very awake and alert when I go back to bed doing a WBTB after being up for an hour, or taking a lucid steroid!