Day 4 - Friday September 27 2013

I remembered one dream vaguely from after my WBTB this morning. Otherwise dream recall is the same as before. I don't think this method is improving my dream recall as much as simple mantras do. This evening I will do a mantra before bed and another one during WBTB to see if it gets back up to where I'd expect (1 or 2 dreams a night).

I seem to have plateaued in terms of how easy it is to retain awareness. It requires periodic re-enforcement of my determinationin order to have unbroken blocks of awareness at work. Motivation is slipping.

There has definitely been an improvement, though, because even though I find myself forgetting to be aware throughout the day I am constantly reminded of it. In other words, I don't go for long stretches of time where I forget about ADA; instead I might forget for 20 minutes and then remember suddenly and resume my efforts. In this way, the worst case scenario is that I am practicing ADA at least every 20 minutes throughout the day, which is pretty good. If the average dream lasts around 5-20 minutes, and I develop of habit of doing ADA in 20 minute intervals, the odds are higher that one interval will occur during a dream.

I think identifying activities that cause you to lose awareness and concentrating specifically on those daily episodes has the effect of reinforcing the idea of doing ADA throughout the rest of the day, simply because it has a strong impact on your memory to be concentrating so carefully during those times. If you just do ADA when it is easiest (such as when waiting for something, or walking somewhere), it will only occur to you in those situations and the habits you develop will not be of any use during your dreams.

Dreams are generally very intense experiences; very strange and emotional, most of the time, and if you can't maintain awareness during something as stressful as a simple conversation, there's not much chance of doing it in the midst of an intense dream. That's why I'm focusing on the difficult, "intense" situations. The tricky part is planning for them, since they tend to occur unexpectedly. For now I'm focusing on the ones I know are about to occur, such as when I leave a room full of people: when I return I know to get ready and concentrate extra hard.