01-26-2015, 12:00 AM
The following is meant to be informative, but you can take it as boasting if you choose. Or you can take it as but hopefully someone will find it useful.My experience:
I was surprised the other day to find out that my definition of lucid dreaming was actually different than the norm. I'd been defining it as "being fully awake, like we are in daily life, while dreaming". Based on this definition, I'd been assuming I lucid dream very rarely and haven't lucid dreamed regularly since I was a young boy, ( when I used to be fully awake while dreaming almost every night ). However, it seems I haven't been using the same definition as most people on this, which I've now learned is "To be aware that one is dreaming while dreaming". This struck me as odd because I'm almost always aware that I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming and always have been. I've sort of taken it for granted, and assumed everyone else was aware that they were dreaming in dreams as well. I guess this might seem unusual to some, but for me questioning if someone knew they were dreaming would be like wondering if someone knew they were speaking while they were talking to me. It just never occurred to me to do so.
Even since I joined this site a year ago and started paying more attention to dreams, I've been assuming that the other's I've dreamt with were aware they were dreaming at the time. In dreams when I was more awake, I'd check to see how aware others were of their environment ( ranging from zombie to fully interactive ), but I always assumed they were aware they were dreaming.
A Recent Discovery
This morning, I was talking to my father who told me about an interesting article he'd just read. Basically it was establishing a link between lucid dreaming and meta-cognition. Meta-cognition refers to thinking about or paying attention to the process of thinking. Not so much what is thought, but the process of thinking, the means we use to draw conclusions, the real reasons why people believe what they believe, and similar stuff. The link, ( according to the article ), is that there is a certain area of the prefrontal cortex which is enlarged and used in both lucid dreaming and meta-cognition. This link suggests, ( according to me ), that putting attention on the process behind one's and other's thinking is a practice that could lead to more lucid dreaming.
How my experience relates
So, speaking as someone who pretty much always lucid dreams ( it feels weird for me to think of myself that way still as I'm so used to the idea of needing to be fully awake in a dream to call it lucid ), I can tell you that I put a lot of attention on meta-cognition. A lot of attention. Every time I'm thinking at all I pay attention to the process. When others make arguments or explain ( or attempt to ) their ideas I'm putting far more attention on the processes they seem to be using than the actual specific arguments they present. To fully demonstrate how much attention I've given to meta-cognition, I offer the following unecessary and lengthy tangent which will probably make you .
In my mid 20s I happened upon an my dad's old logic textbook from his college days buried in a storage closet, (I now wonder if spirit hadn't been behind that), and casually started browsing through it. I found it fascinating and couldn't put it down. I ended up reading it a few times as well as other books too, studying logic as a beloved hobby. I loved how logic focused purely on the method of argumentation and not the arguments themselves, (in spite of the many websites created by psuedo-logicians with political bents offering lists of "fallacies of insert-target-group-here"). I ran into a snag with this though, in that whenever I tried to show anyone that their argument was fallacious, pointing out the actual rule of logic which said so, they didn't change their belief. This baffled me, because whenever I was shown a logical proof that my view was flawed I always changed it and acknowledged that the person who'd shown it to me had done me a favor , ( albeit the latter came somewhat reluctantly at times ). I was somewhat obsessed by this, and I had a real emotional "need to know" why other people weren't doing this. The answer, (again, spirit may have been involved here), came to me in a dream. In the dream, I was talking to a friend of mine who was an alcoholic. He was in denial of the fact that he was such, in spite of how obvious it was. The friend was a rather smart person so I could tell he didn't really believe his arguments. So I looked into his mind. In it I saw an image of himself sitting all alone at home on a Saturday night, watching television and feeling lonely. I had a Eureka! moment. I suddenly knew that his refusal to accept the belief that he was an alcoholic had nothing to do with any evidence or arguments at all but was completely about his fear of being lonely and having no social life if he gave up drinking.
I awoke shortly after this and recalled the dream. I was thrilled, I'd found the answer. The idea that people really didn't care if their beleifs were true, but were primarily interested in what they percieved as the social implications of having the belief was a real revelation to me. I realized then that logic wasn't enough, what was needed was a full system of rationality; with rationality being defined as "Acknowledging that what the evidence one has seen suggests is the most likely truth; is the most likely truth". After searching in bookstores and online for such a system and not finding any, I decided to create my own. Over the next few years, I created what was orignally called the IOWA method and later changed into the IOWEEGA method for thinking. I repurposed the word "****" to mean "One who believes something for any reason other than because it's what's most likely true according to the evidence they've seen", and compiled lists of reasons why people engage in "idiocy". I also repurposed "nincompoop" to mean "one who attempts to push a belief without regard for whether or not it is true", and started lists of the methods "nincompoops" use to detract from or steer away from any arguments/conversation that they feel might lead to exposing one of the beliefs they're pushing as untrue. This was a very illuminating process for me with a lot of self-discovery as in the end, I was forced by overwhelming evidence to acknowledge that I myself was guilty of every single infraction on the lists. I ended up using the notes and attempting to write a book with them titled "The Complete Dummies Guide to Nincompoops, For Idiots!" under the psuedonym of "A. Recovering ****", (I've got some 60 pages scattered about here and there), but that's been sort of sitting on hold for a while now.
Well, if I haven't convinced you yet of how much attention I've put on meta-cognition than I don't expect I will. Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty much always paying attention to it, and I'm also pretty much always aware that I'm dreaming when I am. As a second point, my father has told me all my life that he lucid dreams every night. I was always a little skeptical of these claims, because I had the definition of lucid dreaming I mentioned above, but when we talked this morning and I questioned him he gave me the common definition of lucid dreaming. I can say without question that he also puts a great deal of attention on meta-cognition. While 2 data points aren't much, I think it's interesting that the only 2 people I know who lucidly dream all the time also spend a lot of time with meta-cognition.
Open at your own risk! One quick warning before I give you the link. The article use the terms meta-cognition and self-reflection interchangably. Self-reflection is used in Castenada's books and here a lot to mean "thinking about oneself", which is not how the article seems to be using it. I'd advise just mentally substituting "meta-cognition" whenever you see self-reflectioned mentioned there. Here's the link. Science Daily
I was surprised the other day to find out that my definition of lucid dreaming was actually different than the norm. I'd been defining it as "being fully awake, like we are in daily life, while dreaming". Based on this definition, I'd been assuming I lucid dream very rarely and haven't lucid dreamed regularly since I was a young boy, ( when I used to be fully awake while dreaming almost every night ). However, it seems I haven't been using the same definition as most people on this, which I've now learned is "To be aware that one is dreaming while dreaming". This struck me as odd because I'm almost always aware that I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming and always have been. I've sort of taken it for granted, and assumed everyone else was aware that they were dreaming in dreams as well. I guess this might seem unusual to some, but for me questioning if someone knew they were dreaming would be like wondering if someone knew they were speaking while they were talking to me. It just never occurred to me to do so.
Even since I joined this site a year ago and started paying more attention to dreams, I've been assuming that the other's I've dreamt with were aware they were dreaming at the time. In dreams when I was more awake, I'd check to see how aware others were of their environment ( ranging from zombie to fully interactive ), but I always assumed they were aware they were dreaming.
A Recent Discovery
This morning, I was talking to my father who told me about an interesting article he'd just read. Basically it was establishing a link between lucid dreaming and meta-cognition. Meta-cognition refers to thinking about or paying attention to the process of thinking. Not so much what is thought, but the process of thinking, the means we use to draw conclusions, the real reasons why people believe what they believe, and similar stuff. The link, ( according to the article ), is that there is a certain area of the prefrontal cortex which is enlarged and used in both lucid dreaming and meta-cognition. This link suggests, ( according to me ), that putting attention on the process behind one's and other's thinking is a practice that could lead to more lucid dreaming.
How my experience relates
So, speaking as someone who pretty much always lucid dreams ( it feels weird for me to think of myself that way still as I'm so used to the idea of needing to be fully awake in a dream to call it lucid ), I can tell you that I put a lot of attention on meta-cognition. A lot of attention. Every time I'm thinking at all I pay attention to the process. When others make arguments or explain ( or attempt to ) their ideas I'm putting far more attention on the processes they seem to be using than the actual specific arguments they present. To fully demonstrate how much attention I've given to meta-cognition, I offer the following unecessary and lengthy tangent which will probably make you .
In my mid 20s I happened upon an my dad's old logic textbook from his college days buried in a storage closet, (I now wonder if spirit hadn't been behind that), and casually started browsing through it. I found it fascinating and couldn't put it down. I ended up reading it a few times as well as other books too, studying logic as a beloved hobby. I loved how logic focused purely on the method of argumentation and not the arguments themselves, (in spite of the many websites created by psuedo-logicians with political bents offering lists of "fallacies of insert-target-group-here"). I ran into a snag with this though, in that whenever I tried to show anyone that their argument was fallacious, pointing out the actual rule of logic which said so, they didn't change their belief. This baffled me, because whenever I was shown a logical proof that my view was flawed I always changed it and acknowledged that the person who'd shown it to me had done me a favor , ( albeit the latter came somewhat reluctantly at times ). I was somewhat obsessed by this, and I had a real emotional "need to know" why other people weren't doing this. The answer, (again, spirit may have been involved here), came to me in a dream. In the dream, I was talking to a friend of mine who was an alcoholic. He was in denial of the fact that he was such, in spite of how obvious it was. The friend was a rather smart person so I could tell he didn't really believe his arguments. So I looked into his mind. In it I saw an image of himself sitting all alone at home on a Saturday night, watching television and feeling lonely. I had a Eureka! moment. I suddenly knew that his refusal to accept the belief that he was an alcoholic had nothing to do with any evidence or arguments at all but was completely about his fear of being lonely and having no social life if he gave up drinking.
I awoke shortly after this and recalled the dream. I was thrilled, I'd found the answer. The idea that people really didn't care if their beleifs were true, but were primarily interested in what they percieved as the social implications of having the belief was a real revelation to me. I realized then that logic wasn't enough, what was needed was a full system of rationality; with rationality being defined as "Acknowledging that what the evidence one has seen suggests is the most likely truth; is the most likely truth". After searching in bookstores and online for such a system and not finding any, I decided to create my own. Over the next few years, I created what was orignally called the IOWA method and later changed into the IOWEEGA method for thinking. I repurposed the word "****" to mean "One who believes something for any reason other than because it's what's most likely true according to the evidence they've seen", and compiled lists of reasons why people engage in "idiocy". I also repurposed "nincompoop" to mean "one who attempts to push a belief without regard for whether or not it is true", and started lists of the methods "nincompoops" use to detract from or steer away from any arguments/conversation that they feel might lead to exposing one of the beliefs they're pushing as untrue. This was a very illuminating process for me with a lot of self-discovery as in the end, I was forced by overwhelming evidence to acknowledge that I myself was guilty of every single infraction on the lists. I ended up using the notes and attempting to write a book with them titled "The Complete Dummies Guide to Nincompoops, For Idiots!" under the psuedonym of "A. Recovering ****", (I've got some 60 pages scattered about here and there), but that's been sort of sitting on hold for a while now.
Well, if I haven't convinced you yet of how much attention I've put on meta-cognition than I don't expect I will. Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty much always paying attention to it, and I'm also pretty much always aware that I'm dreaming when I am. As a second point, my father has told me all my life that he lucid dreams every night. I was always a little skeptical of these claims, because I had the definition of lucid dreaming I mentioned above, but when we talked this morning and I questioned him he gave me the common definition of lucid dreaming. I can say without question that he also puts a great deal of attention on meta-cognition. While 2 data points aren't much, I think it's interesting that the only 2 people I know who lucidly dream all the time also spend a lot of time with meta-cognition.
Open at your own risk! One quick warning before I give you the link. The article use the terms meta-cognition and self-reflection interchangably. Self-reflection is used in Castenada's books and here a lot to mean "thinking about oneself", which is not how the article seems to be using it. I'd advise just mentally substituting "meta-cognition" whenever you see self-reflectioned mentioned there. Here's the link. Science Daily