This might be a stupid observation but it really struck me today as something very significant. Recently I've been very interested in meditation and during a zen meditation training session, the instructor talked about a type of walking meditation where you clear your mind as you are walking of all thoughts and instead focus on your senses. He said things about noticing your feet walking on the ground and stuff like that. What really struck me is that the technique sounds exactly like the all day awareness technique! This made me think a little bit more about it and to me it seems like the all day awareness technique is simply about shutting off your internal dialogue, such as in meditation, and maybe it's the same thing as the buddhist concept of enlightenment. When I say enlightenment here I'm talking more about the scientific approach to it, simply being aware in every moment and pretty much not having an internal dialogue. What are people's thoughts?    

Personally I believe ADA is way overrated, at least when pitched as a lucid dream induction technique. This technique is essentially based on two assumptions:

- Habits developed during the day also becomes habits within the dream. In this case, one attempts to develop the habit to stay aware throughout the day, and the technique suggests that such habits will get carried into your dreams thus you will continue to be more aware while dreaming.

- When people become more "aware" during the day, they also become more "aware" in their dreams.

IMO both assumptions are FALSE, even though most people tend to accept them as FACTS without really thinking about it. Let's look at the habit thing first. Do we even carry existing habits into our dreams? There is that saying that men think about sex every seven seconds. Regardless of whether it's accurate, we certainly do not think about sex in our dreams nearly as often as we do during the day. You can try other habits as well, such as smoking, singing to yourself, and etc. You will realize that not too many existing habits get carried into the dreams, so why would a new one?

As for being highly aware when dreaming. Science knows now that the neurotransmitter ACh, which is responsible for learning, awareness, attention, and etc., drops to lowest level when we go to sleep. It gradually rise to higher level as we sleep more. Unless ADA somehow manages to keep the level of ACh at a constant level throughout the night, our cognitive ability is not going to be nearly as good as it is during the day. Therefore the little "extra" awareness you gain through ADA is really not going to count much here.

Some people swear by ADA but if you look at their routines you often find that they are combining other techniques. I believe the true benchmark for ADA, according to its claim, should really be this: without doing anything else, one should become lucid EVERY day, within EVERY dreams, and probably even the NREM ones. I know it sounds almost unreasonable, but if ADA's theoretical basis is indeed as solid as it claims then this kind of result shouldn't be unachievable.

One joke I always say is that if ADA truly works as it claims, then Jason Bourn should be the ultimate lucid dreamer. Think about it... LOL