All lucid dreamers should have a basic understanding of what their bodies go through every day. There’s no way around it. The products and services that we are advertised hold real risks to our well being. I’m talking about fine tuned biological rhythms that affect your very being human.

I found this excellent article which in as clear and concise fashion as possible expresses what our bodies go through every day – a circadian rhythm. This is clarity beyond anything I’ve ever encountered at wikipedia.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21811695

The simple act of drinking water at night can have profound effects on the quality of sleep, electrolyte balance and (by extension) the dreaming quality.

All of the sudden all those awakenings at night start to make a lot more sense in terms of their cause (the article describes them as polyuria) and seems to have the opinion that it is bad. So if I keep drinking water after each awakening, I further upset my electrolyte balance, potentially wake myself up prior to REM or interrupt my REM sleep.

Please read the article, it is really good, probably as good as scientific explanation could get.

I have to announce that the development of lucid dreaming apps has severely drained my bank account. Even though the iPhone app sells, it does not make enough money to support my development efforts.

This is why I had to start working full time as an iPhone developer. I’m pretty good at it, and it pays well. But it leaves very little time for research and development. I expect that my amount of time will be severely reduced once the company I’m working at will start to aggressively push their development schedule forward.

That said, I have to say:

• Android app has no support, it is unlikely to receive any more upgrades in quite some time. The iPhone app does not work as it should, and copying that over to an Android app is not feasible at this point.
• My efforts to discover a way to influence dreams (AKA inception) by sound will continue. I believe it is possible, but do not have the knowledge to make music myself, much less music that is for a lack of a better word psychoactive.
• iPhone app is likely to remain the way it is. The interface is clunky, but it is there for a reason. I may put together a super reduced version of the app, but it will have 0 customization options apart from the smart alarm time (yes, the app has smart alarm, but I don’t know how to present it without causing user complaints).
• My personal projects would favor apps that make money. I need to get a few money making apps that would be able to support my development efforts. Once my apps pay for rent and groceries, I will feel more secure about spending 3 more months on R&D.

This means:

• I cannot answer your emails with questions
• I cannot fix bugs
• I cannot do any kind of technical support
• No feature requests

The good news is that I may get enough money to get the first batch of the iPhone wrist holder created!

Once I come back from my work assignment and have some cash to support me for a few months, I will resume my development efforts on this app. So far it looks like this would happen at the end of September.

Awareness

Have you ever considered that you spend as much time awake as sleeping?

Contemplate that fact for a moment, then take a look at the photo below if you still don’t get it. The time that we live with is the same, it’s speed is the same, whether we are awake or asleep. Our hearts beat all the same. This is where awareness comes in.

Have you ever considered that you spend the same amount of time awake as dreaming?

Consider what you have done in the past 90 minutes? How much have you really lived?

I yearn to have lucid dreams, yet in my ordinary waking life there come long stretches of time when I’m unaware…. I’m caught in the daily game of work, endless fantasies, endless games that the brain plays with itself for the sheer sake of keeping it spinning. Depending on how much coffee I had in the morning, I may play the same games, same fantasies or fear the same illusions in my mind, only more or less intensely. Yet this is not awareness. Same stuff happens in dreams. Plots unfold, actions are taken, yet all of them lack awareness. I’m like a leaf blown on the wind of whatever fancy my mind might have at the moment.

I do not  know how awareness can be cultivated. All I know is that just like in lucid dreams, it comes and goes. My ability to even comprehend this fact is also coming and going. On some days it shrinks so badly that I act and think like a zombie. All interactions with the outside world are reduced to no more than a set of pre-determined games. I know or I think I know the rules, yet as I examine my actions later, I notice that they are really baseless. I’m acting out on fantasies. Yet when I do so, it does not feel that way. The world is the same, the people in my life are the same, but the entire outlook on the world changes.

This outlook on life is what defines me. This is my awareness.

For years I’ve struggled to express this simple idea. The awareness comes and goes. It is not permanent. There’s a whole spectrum of awareness, or different “flavors” as I started to think of them.

Just like in dreams, the intensity of this awareness ranges from the most dull to the most brilliant. I wander if this is what’s happening when I go to bed – what happens when I shed all the baggage of knowledge and responsibilities. This is when I can judge the quality of my daily awareness. Is it dull ? Is it grasping at straws? Is it controlled by it’s own imagination?

I don’t know.

What I know is that the 90 minutes between the Singularity experience markers are the same, whether I’m awake or asleep. My body is the same. My brain is the same. And if I have the audacity to ask why wasn’t I lucid last night, I just need to look at the last 90 minutes and ask myself: “How many moments of those 90 minutes have I truly been alive, aware, and awake?

All too often the answer is 0. It may be days before I regain enough power over myself to get even the most basic duties done. The simple act of folding laundry holds in itself the promise of many more future days. More showers and changes of clothing. Folding laundry may be an opportunity to prepare for the future and reflect at the current situation. Same can be done with washing dishes.

Yet in the past I noticed that I tend to delude myself with fantasies and put way too much work on my plate. Way more than can ever be accomplished by a single man. On top of 2 months of unfinished lucid dreaming app for android work, I have other unfinished and half done projects. All together 6 months of solid work, with more and more piling up. And I wander, why am I doing this to myself? This robs me of awareness as I navigate a complex intellectual labyrinth. I build machines with moving parts. The Lucid Dreaming App for Android has over 40 components, and the iPhone app has over 60, with close to 40 sleep scoring metrics. Even if it takes me an hour to process a single data file, when can I ever hope to process 40 sleep scoring metrics for every single night? I’m not trained in the techniques of scientific analysis of such large datasets. This is the reality. I would keep chasing after something, while missing the very thing that I was chasing: the awareness.

Awareness is the very thing that defines my being. It is the seamless fabric of my being. Every action that I’ve taken, every word I said went through that as a focal point. And time is way to measure this seamless fabric. What did I do in the past 90 minutes? How long was I really aware?

As I listen to the chimes of daily reality check reminders that I set with respect to my last bedtime, I can gaze at how long I spent awake.

Have you ever considered that you spend the same amount of time awake as dreaming?

But can I gaze at how long I’ve been aware?

The day is 24 hours. It always is, it always will be. There’s nowhere to fit in the extra time, except you can take it from the next day. But then your next day will be shorter.

The arrows in the figure above deftly part the day, the same day of 24 hours, into several segments. From bedtime until sunrise is peaceful, restful state, where my awareness wanes. From the sunrise, until awakening is an enjoyable, dreaming state. From awakening until 15:00 is the daily game of work, solving problems and accomplishing something, all the while being completely oblivious to the world around me, and myself included. Then the reminders start. And they keep on going, reminding me that the day is still 24 hours, and asking me: what have you accomplished in the past 90 minutes? How have you lived? Did you really see, or was it all just wallpaper for images and illusions for meaning?

And as I look at the dial, I see the bedtime approaching, and know exactly how much life I have left in a day. Any more I’ll have to borrow from tomorrow.

To give you the chance to take a look at your waking life through the 90 minute reminder lenses,

I’m making the lucid dreaming app for iPhone free for 2 weeks. Get it. Try it. Look at your last 90 minutes and see how much you’ve really lived. Once you know what to look for, maybe this will manifest itself in dreams.

Happy dreaming!

Sleep history for research purposes

• Black markers mark absolute time of going to bed
• Orange markers are absolute times of awakening
• Green markers indicate dreams. The brightness of the marker indicates more dream content remembered and recorded, also more clarity of thought and visuals.
• Cyan markers indicate lucid dreams, dreams where I was aware that I was dreaming.
• Bright cyan color of a marker indicates a dream where I could control the content of the dream, wheter being aware or not.

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been experimenting with the Lucid Dreaming App version 1.3, which allows me to schedule reality check reminders over the course of the day. A total of 5 reminders have been playing every single day, 12 hours away from sleep cycles #2,3,4,5 and 6. Every single time I’ve heard the reminder, I performed a reality check, and became a little bit more aware.

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve never remembered to perform a reality check in a dream.

I will try to play the reality check reminders at night and see if they trigger any actions on my part.

EEG Advancement

I’m very excited to announce that the Android version of the Lucid Dreaming App will work with Zeo wireless ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG) headband for sleep phase tracking. This enables the app to monitor your brainwaves with the EEG headband and make very accurate predictions about when you are dreaming and not.

Image courtesy of shinyTV http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2011/09/how-to-get-a-better-nights-sleep-zeo-manager.html

Why this is significant

I could not dream about having access to EEG data on a mobile device 5 years ago. Now it is a reality. Up to date, most dreaming masks relied on EOG – ElectroOculoGram to measure the movements of the eyes to detect REM. This technology required precise positioning of the mask to be able to detect REM. Zeo’s headband monitors brainwaves directly and scores them as sleep, wake , deep sleep or REM sleep. Once this information is available to a cell phone app, the possibilites are very broad. For the first update, I will simply add Zeo as a source of data and let the app work the same.

• Requires no calibration

• Provides sleep statistics

• Customizable light, vibration and audio reminders when REM is detected

To use the Zeo Wireless headband, you will need:

• Zeo Wireless headband from Amazon.com
• Zeo Sleep Manager App from the Android Market
• Charge up the headband for 3 hours before first use
• follow instructions in the Zeo Sleep manager app to pair the headband with the Android phone
• When the headband is paired and working, you will see a headband on head icon in the status bar
• The Zeo Sleep Manager will say “Now tracking, you can go to sleep”
• Hold down the Home key to switch between recent apps
• Select the “Lucid Dreaming App” – it must be on top and active to deliver reminders

Start the Lucid Dreaming App

• To configure the app to work with Zeo:
• Open the menu within the Lucid Dreaming App using the menu button on your Android phone
• Tap on “Preferences“
• Tap on “REM prediction preferences”
• Tap on “Select Smart Timer configuration file”
• Pick your configuration file from the list provided
• Now you can edit the Smart timer events.
• Tap on the event you want to use with the Zeo Headband
• Ensure the event is active
• Scroll down to see the “Use Zeo Headband” checkbox
• Make sure the checkbox is checked
• Commit the changes you made to the event
• Repeat to configure other events
• The clock screen must be on top to process Zeo Events

Check the "Use Zeo Headband" to enable headband REM tracking

If you consider buying a Zeo headband for use with the lucid dreaming app, please consider using the link below. I collect affiliate marketing revenue for sales made through Amazon.com.

I’m adding an ability to schedule reality checks through the lucid dreaming app for iPhone. A reality check is an external cue that asks you to check your state using a simple action, such as checking time on a digital clock or flipping a light switch.

What’s cool and new about the way the Lucid Dreaming App for iPhone schedules reality checks is that you can add one for each sleep cycle when you are dreaming. As far as I know, all previous attempts at external reality checks throughout the day were random. I’m going to present reality checks at a time which is dependent upon when you had dreams last night.

I don’t know if this will work, so I’ll test this for about a week before publishing the update on the app store.

I can add a reality check exactly opposite to the time when I will be dreaming. This may help the reality check to manifest in the subsequent night's dreams

I’m getting multiple bug reports about bugs in the app, please check below for a solution

iPhone 3 (GS)

iPhone 3GS is not supported. I’ve built the app for iPhone 4 and higher only, and have never tested it on iPhone 3GS. I have contacted apple to remove iPhone3GS from the list of supported devices in the App store.

current iPhone3GS bugs:

• calibration cannot be completed
• calibration is completed, but the app does not collect actigraphy data
• application’s sleep cycle graph does not show any peaks or valleys.

These bugs are caused by the Core Motion framework which was introduced in iOS5. This framework processes accelerometer and gyroscope data and runs additional sensor fusion algorithms. If this framework is not available, the app will not work. If the framework says you do not have accelerometer and a gyroscope working, the app will not work. Unfortunately it seems that on iPhone3GS the framework does say that accelerometer and/or gyroscope is not available. Older apps that do not use this framework will still work on your device, but Singularity Experience will not. Maybe in the future Apple will fix the framework for iPhone 3GS, currently it seems broken.

Jailbreaks.

The app does not support any jailbroken iPhones and have never been tested on that.

Audio not playing:

Please follow instructions in this document:

http://luciddreamingapp.com/appdata/Singularity%20Experience%20audio%20fix.pdf

My Life and Performance is a simple tracker app that can be used to track your food, sleep/dreaming, exercise, work and mood events.  Developed using the same tools

My Life and Performance tracker helps you track everyday activity to see how it impacts your productivity later in the day

that I’m using for my dream journal in Singularity Experience, My Life and Performance is a quick and easy to use app that helps you visualize complex information about your life in multiple ways.

The app works by helping you understand your biological cycles and find optimal times throughout the day for many activities that you may be interested in.

App uses:

• Track when you eat and get hungry
• Track when you go to bed, wake up, use the app as a dream journal
• Track when you do or don’t exercise
• Track important information about your body
• Track when you accomplish tasks or procrastinate
• Track your moods, social interactions and the things you really like
• See how complex interactions between your body and mind shape your life for better or worse

During  a special 10 day promotion that ends on Jan 23 2011, the app is free! Regularly it is 1$.

Get My Life and Performance tracker at the App store

The super-secret, experimental lucid dreaming reminder that may change the future of lucid dreaming

Maintaining a critical-reflective attitude has been called the key to successfully recognizing that you are dreaming while within a dream. Up to date, the main method of training such awareness was through reality checks. There are apps out there that periodically ask you a question : Are you dreaming? When you get that random prompt, you become aware, do a reality check and proceed with your waking life.

Here I'm combining my phone's text tone with another piece of audio to create an effective audio reminder, which may trigger an awareness reflex in a dream

I’m taking the concept of reality checking one step further!

Your phone’s ring tone becomes a cue which you can use to prompt reality checks! The ringtone or text tone is brief, unexpected and prompts you to instantly switch your activity and focus attention on the phone. This is a task that we all have learned to do. It is well known to “crackberry” addicts, who get a surge of adrenaline whenever their blackberry vibrates. You are trying to learn a similar technique and become aware whenever your phone rings/vibrates.

• Pick a custom text tone, and use it for about 2 weeks.
• As you hear the tone, become aware of the world around you, become aware of what you are doing
• Perform a reality check on the phone’s digital clock.
• At this point, whenever you get a text message, you become aware and do a reality check.

Next, assign the same audio cue as a custom reminder with Singularity Experience.

• Whenever the app detects dreaming, it will play the text tone to you.
• Chances are your brain will integrate your text tone into the content of your dream as a text message within a dream.
• This is when you can do a reality check and become aware that you are dreaming!

Sample text tone files

I’ve been training myself to recognize the text message tone for over a month now, and am finally ready to put this to a test. These text message tones are rather long, but distinct enough. The melody transitions in a predictable way, my brain recognizes the onset of the melody and prepares to brace itself against the subsequent more intense part.

http://luciddreamingapp.com/appdata/11%20lucid_text.m4r

Here’s the same text message, as it can be added to the iPod music library.

http://luciddreamingapp.com/appdata/11%20lucid_text.m4a

Here’s a tutorial on how to make your own text tone from any audio that you own:

http://www.demogeek.com/2009/07/31/how-to-add-custom-ringtones-to-your-iphone/

Tonight will be the first night when I will be actually playing a text tone at night and see what happens.