Present State Awareness Practice

adapted from Stephen LaBerge, “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming”

Spend about 1 minute consciously experiencing each of these aspects of awareness:

1. Look: Become aware of what you see: notice the richly varied and vivid impressions—shapes, colors, movement, dimensionality, the entire visible world.

2. Listen: Become aware of what you hear: register the various sounds taken in by your ears—a diverse range of intensities, pitches, and tonal qualities, perhaps including the commonplace miracle of speech or the wonder of music.

3. Feel: Become aware of what you touch: texture, weight, temperature, etc. Also note how your body feels right now and compare that to the many other ways it feels at other times, tired or energetic, stiff or limber, painful or pleasant, etc.

4. Taste: Become aware of what it is like to taste: taste a food or beverage, or remember and vividly imagine one. Taste the inside of your mouth at rest.

5. Smell: Become aware of what you smell around you or vividly remember and imagine a smell you have encountered.

6. Breathing: Become aware of your natural breathing. Hold your breath for a few seconds. Let it out. Now take a deep breath. Notice that being conscious of your breathing allows you to alter it deliberately.

7. Emotions: Become aware of your feelings. Is there anger or joy, serenity or excitement? Are there a mix of emotions? Are there ones you cannot name? How real do emotions feel?

8. Thoughts: Become aware of your thoughts. What have you been thinking while doing this exercise? What are you thinking right now? How real do thoughts seem?

9. “I”: Become aware that your experience always includes you, the experiencer of experience. “You” are who is aware, always at the center of your private universe of experience, but you are not always consciously aware of yourself. Briefly repeat the exercise, but this time, as you attend to each aspect of experience, be aware of the “I” that is noticing these things (“I am smelling rain”, “I feel soft fabric”)

10. Awareness of awareness: Finally, become aware of your awareness. Normally, awareness focuses on objects outside ourselves, but it can itself be an object of awareness... Here, experience cannot be adequately expressed by language.