In contrast, the lucid plane can also lead you to places you know from the waking life, or collages of them, but you usually start your journey in places that might be very far away from where you're actually sleeping. Anyway, I think it's just a vibratory difference of some sort, with lucid dreams having a slightly lower frequency than the astral plane, with a myriad of different planes that precede and ensue them. It might very well be that at one extreme, in "sleepless sleep and dreamless dreams", the unconscious rests, and at the other, astral and onward, the clearest consciousness shines. Needless to say, though, that both are needed and one extreme probably shouldn't be the sole destination for a seeker. Then again - it's a game. So why not. Let's all give it our best shot But it's probably quite impossible to cling on to just one pole.
When me and a friend of mine were experimenting with mushrooms, I was thinking out loud, only about 20 minutes after eating them, whether some change had already taken place in our perception. But he said: "Oh, believe me - you'll know when the trip begins." And my goodness, was he right... So in the case of astral projection, I'd like to say, with a touch of coolness to my voice: "Oh, you'll know when you're doing astral." But I really can't, since my limited experience seems to show that the lucid plane is, indeed, pretty similar to the astral one. Though I think that the surroundings in the astral world usually resemble the waking plane, probably the immediate surroundings of where you're actually sleeping - everything is just skewed, you see the different facets of things, as is often the case when using psychedelic substances.
I thought I'd share a bit of information concerning your post: "The problem I have with using lucid dreaming to astrally project, is you can't tell whether you've actually projected, or if your just dreaming." I've heard that true astral projection is always accompanied by loud crackling sound. An occult master of some sort even used this peculiar phenomenon as a means by which to see whether his students had really reached another plane or not. I don't know if this is true or not, but oddly enough the two times I've thought I've had an OBE were both accompanied by loud... auditory anomalies. And that's before I'd read anything about their existence or alleged nature.
