So today I was thinking about reality checking and looking for dream signs. I have been using LaBerge’s technique for improving my memory and awareness. Basically this involves looking for arbitrary signs, such as the first time I turn on a light, or the first time I see a flower. Ideally after seven days of this practice I will have started a good habit and I will be able to look out for real dream signs, in my case school related signs.
But he mentions in the explanation of the exercise that some days you won’t encounter any of the signs he picks e.g. today I have not left home so I have very little chance of seeing a traffic light (unless I watch tv maybe?). I still very much like this technique of actively looking at my surroundings and trying to remember signs, but I also think a more direct exercise might be useful:
The program is simple, it shows you an image and you have to determine whether the image is a dream sign or not. The speed could be variable, this way improving your chances of reflexively connecting the subject with the thought that it is a dream sign. I’m not sure how easy it would be to review this process, for example if my dream sign is school there are many things I could associate with school that aren’t as immediately obvious as a teacher, student or school bus. Maybe the best way would be for the user to review themselves at leisure afterwards?
I don’t think this is a program that would be useful on its own for inducing lucid dreams, but it might help us to be more aware of potential dream signs in real life and in our dreams.
I have seen programs that grab pictures at random from google images which is one possible way of doing it. The other would be to accumulate a large supply of stock images that are likely to be a dream sign for at least one person, but not necessarily everyone e.g. an Oak Tree, a purple car, a parrot etc.
Edit: I was just looking at random image generators and one of them was showing a picture of traffic lights. I had to laugh. (And then do a reality check).
Edit (2): One way to monitor your success at identifying dream signs would be to tag all the images. E.g. a picture of a boy in school uniform would be tagged: boy, male, child, school, uniform. etc and before a user started the test they would have to enter what dream signs they were looking for. (This would work if we had a standard stock of photos, but not if the images were grabbed straight from the net).
there are lots of DS’es you miss if you dont catch them, not even Laberge can guaranteed achieve LD, but its good to catch the DS that you encounter 