WHAT IS LUCIDITY?
You were born lucid. You were born with simple needs. Like most babies, you screamed when you felt the pain of hunger, and you cried out in fear when your mother disappeared from view. You whined when you were tired and complained when you were uncomfortable. But your default state, so to speak, was one of simple, gurgling, blissful contentment; of Lucidity.
As you grew, you learned to separate yourself from the world around you and to identify your innermost self with certain ideas (I am clever, or kind, or stupid, or biddable, or lovable, or not…). As your family also grew around you, you took on a role that gave you an identity. You connected certain emotions to certain situations, and you created a vast storehouse of automatic thoughts and ideas – pop-ups that, well, pop-up whenever a certain button
is pushed.
You learned as time went on to connect a good, happy feeling with outside events rather than inner contentment, and you planned a pathway of becoming for yourself that you reasoned, either consciously or unconsciously, would lead to a fixed state of happy-ever-after.
With every step you have taken along that path from birth to ‘arrival’ you have moved further away from the Lucidity you were born with and the real, unshakeable contentment that goes with it. Your identifications, conditioned emotions and automatic thoughts are so compelling to you that they direct all your reactions and decisions. But they have made the once-crystal waters of your psyche into a turbulent torrent, making it difficult to see clearly either your psychological riverbed, so to speak, or what is really going on in the world above the surface.
“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”
– Ramana Maharshi
All metaphors aside, Lucidity is the ability to recognise psychological events as they appear, to experience them without being controlled by them, to understand how (un)real they are and to penetrate the psychological barriers they often throw up. With this ability you are able to assess events and situations in the physical world unhindered by emotions or thoughts that are conditioned or automatic. Lucidity is connected to contentment and your ability to make the best life choices. Lucidity diminishes, or even dissolves, psychological suffering and gives you direct access to your full potential for a healthy and contented life.
The Lucidity Quotient®
Through a process of careful question-and-answer it is possible to determine your level of Lucidity and to compare it with the general level of Lucidity in the population, arriving at a figure that is more or less than 100 – the average – to create a quotient, rather like an Intelligence Quotient (IQ). This testing process (using the LQ Test®) leads also to a detailed and fascinating picture of the fabric of your psychological life, making it available to you as an exhaustive report. For those working on mental health issues, the test can provide your practitioner with a new and powerful tool for pinpointing obstacles to Lucidity and facilitating work with you to increase it. After a period of work, the LQ Test® can be used again to get a clear view of the progress made. The test can be taken in full – the LQ Test® – or as one or more shorter tests that focus on a certain area of your life: your work and career, your relationships or your sexuality.
The mathematics behind the Lucidity Quotient®
The LQ is a measure of an individual’s overall mental clarity and personal contentment. Part of the purpose of the LQ Test® is to determine that quotient.
The therapists and professionals who have developed LQ testing use LQs to set specific standards for the Lucidity Quotient®. The average LQ of the population is set to 100. The Gaussian distribution (normal distribution) is used to determine the LQ below or above the mean value. The standard deviation is assumed to be 15. This means: 68% of subjects find themselves within the first standard deviation (100 +/- 15); about 95.5% of subjects find themselves within the double standard deviation, i.e. between 70 and 130; and 99.7% of subjects find themselves within the third standard deviation (i.e. 55 to 145).
The table below shows very roughly how the various LQs might be interpreted:
| LQ | Meaning | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| <40 | No significance; questions were probably not understood. |
|
| 41–70 | Far below average; high level of mental stress or high psychological isolation. |
c.2–3% |
| 71–79 | Below average. | c.6–7% |
| 80–89 | Somewhat below average. | c.16% |
| 90–109 | Average. | approx. 50% |
| 110–119 | Above average. | c.16% |
| 120–129 | High. | c.6–7% |
| 130–159 | Very highly lucid. | c.2–3% |
| >160 | No explanatory power, because LQ test questions too simple. |
The LQ project aims to measure and increase self-insight through the concept of Lucidity. It promotes a new understanding of how the mind creates automatic responses and limiting identifications, and eliminates all that, psychologically, stands as an obstacle between you and your potential for real contentment and self-realization.
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