Thread: Critical thinking during dreams allows for lucidity.

Originally Posted by dolphin

Ask questions as much as possible in waking life, especially when you experience something out of the ordinary.

Questions like what, "Am I awake right now?" Actually does it matter if you ask "Am I awake right now" as opposed to "Am I dreaming right now"? Does it make any difference?

^ Yes, any question makes a difference.

This sounds to complicated. RC essential do the same thing.

im going to try this with RC and ada so hopefully Ill get a lucid dream

Originally Posted by dolphin

There are two steps in a lucid dream:
1.You notice something unusual in the dream.
2.You question this unusual something and recall that it's impossible in waking life to conclude that you must be dreaming.

Assuming you're aware what is and isn't possible in waking life, step one is as far as awareness gets you in the induction of lucid dreams. In order to complete step two, you must engage in critical thinking. After all, if you don't question anything in a non-lucid dream you won't become lucid!

How do you improve your critical thinking? Ask questions as much as possible in waking life, especially when you experience something out of the ordinary. Answer those questions.

The moment before you fall asleep, affirm your intention to question your experiences during your dreams. After you wake up, note anything unusual in your dream that you might have missed. Go through your dream again in your mind imagining you questioned that thing you missed and became lucid. Repeat all of this often!

Do this well and you will have more lucid dreams.

Not always, the majority of my LDs it is just suddenly obvious to me that I am dreaming.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Not always, the majority of my LDs it is just suddenly obvious to me that I am dreaming.

I had a number of these, as well. But can we ever really understand the actual process that takes place? Maybe the cognition of dolphin's steps 1 and 2 still took place, but below the level of our minds noticing it. Or maybe it's prospective memory recognizing the dream state (somehow? "feel?").

Anyway, I have had at least a few LDs via explicit critical thinking in the dream:

1: see girl, think "I wish I was dreaming right now!", then "… hmm, why do I think I'm awake?" *nose pinch* "woohoo!"

2: see weird thing, study it for a while (I do this a lot, up-close study of odd devices/things), scene transitions, I keep thinking about it "that was a weird thing, I've never seen a thing like that before"…."wait, weird thing? never seen it before? DREAM!"

3: (LD #2) I'm dropping things and can't pick them up, they keep falling through my fingers, after trying for a while I realize, "oh, haha, this is one of those times where you should check to see if you're dreaming….DREAMING!". This was a fun one, I "stood bolt upright" in shock realizing I was in fact dreaming.

Unfortunately I don't produce thinking like that very often in dreams recently.

So the questions I get from my experiences, which I try to ponder in the waking state as much as I can, are:"

"Why do I think I'm awake?"
"How odd is this / have I seen this before / has something changed?"
"Is this a dream-like situation/scenario?"

Something I work on periodically when waking is performing:

"STOP! Who/what/where?"

The STOP is to prevent the urge to just keep flowing with the plot and to kick start some critical thinking.

Who: who am I with? alone/friends/strangers? (strangers is a dream sign for me)
What: what am I doing? Does this make sense?
Where: is this a waking location?

But I have yet to perform one of these in my dreams.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I had a number of these, as well. But can we ever really understand the actual process that takes place? Maybe the cognition of dolphin's steps 1 and 2 still took place, but below the level of our minds noticing it. Or maybe it's prospective memory recognizing the dream state (somehow? "feel?").

I now feel that to LD I need to "remember to remember" I'm dreaming.

ie. once your dream awareness is at a certain level you are implicitly aware you are dreaming, you just need to remember that this state is significant and why. So many LDs I'm pre-lucid for ages until I remember that I want to lucid dream and my lucidity starts "leveling up"

You may counter that you often dream of talking to people about how you want to lucid dream. Obviously in those cases self-awareness is lacking.

But I'm standing by my awareness+intent=lucidity formula. Everything besides is complication.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

But I'm standing by my awareness+intent=lucidity formula. Everything besides is complication.

It should be possible to just recognize the dreamstate, instead of having to reasons that things are going on that couldn't be possible iwl so it has to be a dream.

I mean how many times when you are awake you actually have to rc to confirm to yourself that you are awake?

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

I now feel that to LD I need to "remember to remember" I'm dreaming.

ie. once your dream awareness is at a certain level you are implicitly aware you are dreaming, you just need to remember that this state is significant and why. So many LDs I'm pre-lucid for ages until I remember that I want to lucid dream and my lucidity starts "leveling up"


You may counter that you often dream of talking to people about how you want to lucid dream. Obviously in those cases self-awareness is lacking.

(Note: I get occasional meta-dreams, but not all that often).

This may in fact be my main block right now. With high recall and very frequent vividness/presence in many dreams, I'm wondering why I'm not lucid more. Dream awareness is pretty darn high I think (certainly higher than it was last year), yet lucidity seems seriously stalled.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

But I'm standing by my awareness+intent=lucidity formula. Everything besides is complication.

It's all a matter of one's mental framing ("schema?"). That's why discussions like this can't really go anywhere when you have people who disagree -- there *is no* "right answer" that applies to everyone. LDing is a highly individual practice. Maybe there are larger groups of common framings, like the "notice weird things" group, and the "just need to remember to remember" group.

And my thing is I don't know which group I'm in and I keep bopping back and forth between different approaches appropriate for different groups.

Originally Posted by Kaitakaro

It should be possible to just recognize the dreamstate, instead of having to reasons that things are going on that couldn't be possible iwl so it has to be a dream.

That's a big "should." Yes, but *precisely* how? I practice determining my state all day long most waking days, yet only get lucid a few times a month it seems now.

Originally Posted by Kaitakaro

I mean how many times when you are awake you actually have to rc to confirm to yourself that you are awake?

This is not the way I see it. Rather, "how many times have I missed getting lucid in dreams because I assume I'm awake [or just don't bother to check, or don't remember I want to get fully lucid]?" With high enough dream awareness, it becomes really clear that during *any conscious moment* you could actually be in the dream state. That's why I RC / perform reflection, to "catch" the dream state. I try never to assume I'm awake.

Yes it's a big "should" and i fear it becomes a bit religious when i would try to explain it as my opinion here is based on the Mandukya Upanishad.

And i don't know if that wouldn't rather belong to beyond dreaming or religion-spirituality sub-forum......

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Who: who am I with? alone/friends/strangers? (strangers is a dream sign for me)
What: what am I doing? Does this make sense?
Where: is this a waking location?

But I have yet to perform one of these in my dreams.

Because to remember to do is to already be lucid.

Perhaps critical reflection is useful in the beginning, then the mere moment of questioning is enough.

The reason why we engage in these exercises in the waking state is to raise our critical state awareness, not to ask them in dream. But you knew that already.

When I become lucid the moment of wondering is often enough, and then it's obvious. Sometimes even the moment of wonder is not needed.

It's also my belief that these 'I just know' lucids are of a higher lucidity at the outset, and that the lucids attained via in-dream reasoning require additional work on cognition levels.

Of course you are right about individual differences. I seem to have better memory than most, and don't find it difficult to remember goals once lucid (at least in the 'dream feeling' DILDs).

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Because to remember to do is to already be lucid.

Perhaps critical reflection is useful in the beginning, then the mere moment of questioning is enough.

The reason why we engage in these exercises in the waking state is to raise our critical state awareness, not to ask them in dream. But you knew that already.

When I become lucid the moment of wondering is often enough, and then it's obvious. Sometimes even the moment of wonder is not needed.

It's also my belief that these 'I just know' lucids are of a higher lucidity at the outset, and that the lucids attained via in-dream reasoning require additional work on cognition levels.

Of course you are right about individual differences. I seem to have better memory than most, and don't find it difficult to remember goals once lucid (at least in the 'dream feeling' DILDs).

I find my goal memory is also quite good, in those lucids where I have any memory of the waking state at all. That is, dreams beyond simply "I'm dreaming so that means I can fly, yipee!" I did the Sageous "remember your sleeping body" in a LD very shortly after reading that thread, without much waking preparation of it.

I call these lucids "TOTM-worthy" -- where I understand I'm in a mental fantasy environment, and that I have goals. In these LDs my memory is quite good.

Yes, in the dreams even the beginning of the question usually results for me in instant lucidity, I do not just stand there going "Who am I with? Where am I?" In fact I think not once have I ever done that.

But my thing is....what's happened? Why have I "back-slid?" This is why I concentrate on the state tests so much when awake: I think I need to simply to reclaim my earlier frequency. There's no doubt, my dreaming's great and at an all-time high vividness and presence-wise....but I'm just not remembering to explicitly notice the dream state with full awareness.

There seems to be a bit of misrepresentation of what critical thinking is, and with that it might be hard to perceive how "critical" (no pun intended) it is for lucid dreaming.

QualitySoup's video explain it perfectly imo:

This sounds to complicated. RC essential do the same thing.

Actually, reality checking is an example of critical thinking.

Because to remember to do is to already be lucid.

Perhaps critical reflection is useful in the beginning, then the mere moment of questioning is enough.

Depends: if you check DJ's around DV, there's many instances of genuine "reality check because this sounds weird/I passed a door/this reminds me of something", which point that you can reality check without being lucid: it's called questioning.
When we talk about reality checks as a confirmation that you are dreaming, there was already a process of reasoning (that might be unconscious to you, just like so many of us do when we're driving for example) that allowed to reach such conclusion, and that leads to lucidity.
But reasoning is a mark of critical thinking: you need critical thinking throughout your entire lucid dreaming "career", because to become lucid is to analyse information. There's never such thing as "simply becoming lucid" because lucidity is a rationalization over a concept of state of consciousness, that's why animals like dogs don't know they are dreaming, as they possess no knowledge of the concept of dreaming (but they are capable of critical thinking).

When I become lucid the moment of wondering is often enough, and then it's obvious. Sometimes even the moment of wonder is not needed.

It's also my belief that these 'I just know' lucids are of a higher lucidity at the outset, and that the lucids attained via in-dream reasoning require additional work on cognition levels.

It's not that you're skipping steps, it's more that you're making use of tacit knowledge. But naturally "wondering" is not the whole process, because if you don't answer the question "am I dreaming?" you'll never become lucid. So what you're doing is being intuitive about it (this is also a great example of how tacit knowledge is so hard to explain/transcribe to others). I do agree though that different ways to rationalize over whether you are dreaming or not might require different levels of cognition.

I feel it's just important to remember that whenever you make a judgement regarding something, like "I am lucid", there's always reasoning occurring, even if you're not aware of it.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Anyway, I have had at least a few LDs via explicit critical thinking in the dream:

Yay had another one last night (critical thinking LD). Short since it was in the late morning dozing period where all dreams are short and transition often. But I was a passenger in a car in a very complicated freeway "pretzel" interchange and we'd taken the wrong turn. We stopped at the peak of one path with a good view and I was looking all around trying to find the right road. I observed the very complex interchange around us in all directions, paths moving above/under other paths. Other cars stopped behind us with the same problem, trying to choose the right road. I was sitting in the car with several other DCs when I realized "This is a dream-like scenario, I should check." I felt a little bit silly because I was so obviously awake. Nose pinch a bit vague at first, then I paid it more attention and decided I was dreaming. Got out of the car trying to decide what to do and decided to jump up into the air and the dream transitioned and I lost lucidity.

Before bed I set very long, very intense intention to remember to recognize the dream state. I tried falling asleep with this intention running in my head but couldn't, I ended up having to take some melatonin since setting very strong intention tends to keep me awake.

I'll take all styles of lucid that I can get, critical thinking LDs are very welcome. Since I have this very strong conviction that I'm awake (or just simply not caring about the dream state) in dreams lately, this very strong intention and emphasis on remembering (PM) to recognize the dream may be my path out of this current rut.

It is a never-ending source of amazement: that total conviction of feeling awake at the moment of lucidity. It's the wrong emphasis of course: it's *consciousness* that I'm feeling. And consciousness does *not* imply the waking state (as I've been saying for some while now). Getting that notion firmly into dreams is also the key.

It is a never-ending source of amazement: that total conviction of feeling awake at the moment of lucidity.

I laughed a lot when reading this, because it's the exact same thing that happens to me! It's like when you were a kid and you had a very solid idea of how a certain aspect of the world worked, and then you're struck with the true explanation of such aspect: mind blowing experience!
This insight moment that people call "becoming lucid" can come in different ways, but the stronger is your disbelief, the stronger the impact of the moment (of realizing that you're actually dreaming) seems to be, at least for me.

It's very hard to describe it with words, but it's like you're covered in some oily and dark substance that doesn't let you pay attention to what's around you, and then suddenly...someone hits you with a bucket of cold water! Oh god, the water is so cold that all your senses start tingling and sharpening, and there's a breeze that spreads all over your sensory field, like you're opening a second layer of your eyes. And then you feel a mental explosion like you just had a big sip of hot coffee or an energy drink as you reason that "NO, this is not waking reality, I was wrong. This IS a dream indeed". Personally, this "eureka" moment is enough to increase vividness by some degree, and even after being more than familiar with lucidity I tend to smile like a kid when I manage to become lucid in this kind of situations

Thanks Fryingman

You're welcome . I'll never forget my first LD: the sensation was like transitioning from watching a movie in a theater on a (flat, 2D) screen to being sucked into the screen and onto the (deep, 3D) set standing there with the actors.

But yes, especially in my 2nd LD that I referenced above, it was a total bucket of ice cold water: like