/me adds this topic to his signature. Let’s try to grow a community around this technique, shall we? We need people with ideas, people with experience and people with different perspectives to perfect this technique.
This is an excellent article; half of it had me nodding in an “I know what you’re talking about” manner, whereas the other half had me thinking “ooh I see what you did there!” There are, as usual, a couple caveats. So I’ll put down some of the things we discussed in chat, as well as some other thoughts that occurred to me while writing this reply to your article.
So this is it, in a nutshell. Lucid living is hard to grasp, hard to master, occasionally stressing, and from its very conception many people have disputed that its point is to induce lucid dreaming (indeed it servers a bunch of other mostly purposes and is arguably a great tool in applied and experimental philosophy).
But it hits the right note: along with a hundred other things, lucid living indeed comprises the three basic elements of any LD-inducing technique. So you’re proposing a new technique, a stripped down version of lucid living so to speak, which aims at keeping specifically these basic three elements. To wit:
We discussed this in chat. I’ll expand on my thoughts.
[title]The Fire Tetrahedron of Lucid Dreaming[/title]
If I were to write a “fire tetrahedron” for lucid dreaming, recall would be the oxygen: the invisible element whose lack makes it impossible for a lucid dreaming to happen even if you have the fuel, the heat and indeed a chain reaction in place. If you can’t recall your lucid dreaming, it sort of doesn’t count.
Then there’s awareness, the heat of lucid dreaming. You can sense it and it makes all the difference; only through it can a lucid dreaming begin and only in its presence it can continue. Our first intuition, in fact, is that merely with heat one can start a fire, and so with awareness and lucid dreaming.
Finally there’s the fuel, which you referred to as “dreaming,” but you meant something specific by this: the trance level in which your perception bears little to no connection with your physical reality. Lucid dreaming is variously called “conscious dreaming” and that’s precisely the point here: you’ve got to be in a dreaming state and you’ve got to be aware of that. Thus, dreaming is the fuel: it’s the base, that which is going to be transformed once the reaction sets off.
The fire tetrahedron model has a fourth element which is worth notice just for the sake of completeness: oxygen, heat and fuel have to produce a chain reaction, or else they’ll simply coexist, maybe producing the occasional spark. So with stability in lucid dreaming: a lucid dreaming has got to be stable or else it will merely be (possibly false) awareness, dreaming and recall coexisting, maybe producing the occasional spark.
Every widely-embraced lucid dreaming technique covers the first three elements, whereas stability is variously treated as a topic in its own right or simply not mentioned at all. I think it plays a moderate role in your technique and this could well be expanded upon.
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[title]Review, FIXMEs and TODOs[/title]
The following is one part review, one part notes-to-self, as I plan to expand upon some of the issues I raised, and to pen a few of the exercises and paragraphs which I’m telling you to write. Like I said in chat, I’m fully embracing your technique and the way you explained things, and I’m hoping for an active community expanding on it, criticising it, testing it, rethinking it. I want to be part of that.
Your thoughts on “memory and distraction” are a bit confusing until you get further in the text. We could definitely work on that section a bit, it’s more relevant than it currently looks. In particular, I wasn’t completely sure the terms you were using matched the associations I made with them.
What I mean is, “low level memories” and stuff like that need to get out of the text or made very explicit before you use it in as part of your reasoning. Maybe a rewrite pointing out how memory works through association (and associative barriers) in a more “hands on” manner (let’s come up with some exercises!) could be beneficial to readers in understanding dissociation, and therefore in grasping awareness and recall.
The cream of your technique is covered in the Consciousness Levels section. Your table of consciousness levels is very thorough and useful. Though it’s important to point out that it’s just a framework, it gives you a list symptoms to look out for when diagnosing your own level of consciousness.
I think this section, even more so than the last one, should be made damn practical. Don’t just tell readers, show them what you mean. Make them assess their own awareness along the way. Produce different awareness situations through exercises here, set up a dreamer’s workout routine.
Show the reader how low consciousness and high trance are strongly correlated. This is the key to understanding that in order to succeed in lucid dreaming you’ve got to essentially bring about a dreaming while staying aware (WILD) or bring about awareness while in dreaming state (DILD). Even if someone doesn’t embrace your technique, let them take home this priceless piece of teaching.
Only after you pointed this out I realised it myself. Of course there are exceptions, but you’re right, that is the rule, and with waking life (such as when people interrupt you with a “penny for your thought” kind of question) as well as in dreaming, this is a terribly important lesson. This should be illustrated and expanded upon a little.
Also, I’ve no idea what this image is supposed to illustrate:
Using these questions to emerge from dreaming to waking state is something I’ve yet to test and it already sounds reasonable. Fortunately enough, your seven questions are tie in very neatly with me “fishing for recall” routine, and they’ll probably work together very well.
This little paragraph is your technique in a nutshell: oxygen, fuel, heat and a spark.
These should be brought together. That post is a very fine theory of WILD and it can be helpful in DILD too: a lower trance level can be bad for the stability of your dreaming.
That post of yours is really nice. It should definitely be included in this guide, maybe in a separate post, but as part of the whole AC thing.
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What I like about your technique that I haven’t seen in any other guide is that your three articles together lay out a framework for understanding, diagnosing and exercising BOTH awareness and trance levels, which makes it possibly the most complete guide to lucid dreaming from a practical perspective.
I don’t know whether or not this is useful for the LaBerges out there, but for people who want to get there (and get better at getting there), this is quite possibly the ultimate Theory of Lucid Dreaming guide. Like I said, it needs to be expanded: it can span more than a post and it should definitely include exercises all along the way.
Other guides I’ve read (and the way I teach lucid dreaming myself) are either trial-and-error or “keep bashing your head against the wall until you break it.” This guide explains how the whole thing works, it has potential to make people understand what they’re setting out for before getting there, and it might as well be a great tool to help beginners and intermediate dreamers become proficient.
This idea has got to spread. Good work.