On the verge

I joined this site because I'm on the verge of going lucid and was wondering if you guys had any tips or suggestions
Basically I've been performing RCs and stuff, but I still don't do it in my dreams (i've only been doing them for a couple of weeks), but the last two nights I was really close to lucid dreaming. The dreams were really vivid and I was consciously thinking, as If I were actually awake and thinking. The most interesting dream happened last night where I dreamed that I was trying to go to sleep and have a dream. In my dream I got into a bed in some room (i never seem to dream about actual places I've been) and closed my eyes and thought about my target dream, but there was too much noise there so I got up and picked up my stuff from the table (laptop, few other things) and walked out, eventually walking upstairs inside another building and seeing my friend who was studying to be a photographer (not really, just in the dream). Her teacher wanted her to take a picture of me, but I suddenly became extremely tired and just wanted to sleep so I told her teacher I looked really tired, but he said "you look fine" so I started following them to the picture area but I was so tired that my eyes kept closing as I walked and eventually I fell asleep in the dream, which made me wake up.
Is it usual to try to dream in a dream? I'm curious as to how many of you have had a similar experience, and how you managed to go lucid :)

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Originally Posted by AAred

The dreams were really vivid and I was consciously thinking, as If I were actually awake and thinking.

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You still didn't know that you were dreaming at this point? Because when i "think like waking life" it's only when i am lucid. I know i have different feelings and thoughts when i dream but it is nowhere near waking consciousness.

If i should suggest anything, it would be to take alot of naps when you can. I have only been lucid during naps so far and i believe it is because you don't go through the heavy sleep phases thus maintain more awareness.

And if you wake up in the middle of a nap, try doing a DEILD. Handed me my first.

Also: If you have problems keeping still when you wake up naturally, try having someone call you from a distance, mom, dad, brother etc. It's important that they call from a distance, or else you might wake and turn. :P

Good luck.

You are very very close, there is very little more that can actually be suggested to you other than keep doing what you're doing. What's happening to you sounds exactly the same kind of build up that I had before my lucid, it was short but vivid and amazing. Good luck and have fun in it :)

Remember that when you do get lucid, focus on stabilizing the dream first or it may just collapse after a few seconds of achieving lucidity.

GL, it is one hell of an experience.

Thanks for the help guys, but things have gotten even stranger...
The last dream I had was really long. happened between 7:30-9:00. I used this mp3 downloaded from youtube ("Beautiful Memories" Lucid Dream Induction + Binaural Beats (90 Min Cycle)) and started it at 7:29 so it'd be over right before my alarm went off at 9:00. Anyway, the really interesting part about my dream is that i had fully conscious thinking again like in the dream from my other post. The dream started at school then I went outside to a tent, (a lot happened at school and tent but that's just personal stuff) then somehow I ended up in a grocery store. The transition from the tent to the grocery store was kind of sudden, so those two parts of the dream didn't seem to flow. At the end of the dream i was being chased by these 3 fat witch-ladies, with makeup that looked made them look like the Joker, through the grocery store. In the music from the youtube link, near the end it says "you are dreaming, take control" multiple times, and assumingly I understood it in my sleep (i've never before heard/understood sounds from reality during my dreams) and i actually remember thinking "maybe I can take control like in my dreams" and then proceeded to kill 2 of the witches, the first with a hard uppercut and the second with a levitating flip kick (levitation is one of my reality checks). Here's the best part: after levitating to kill the second one, i realized I had been dreaming. Kind of. Instead of realizing I was currently dreaming, I realized that the beginning of this whole dream (from the school to the tent) was a dream but I thought that i had woken up and went to the grocery store (probably because those parts weren't connected), so I went back to the ground, took out my phone, opened my dream journal app, put in the password, and actually started recording the beginning of the dream, until my alarm woke me up for real.
I hope you're laughing because I am. I think it's hilarious that I had waking consciousness but still couldn't realize I was dreaming XD
I'm going to try what you guys suggested but I thought I'd share this for your amusement.