Quote Originally Posted by Smudgefish View Post
... and also realised that a lucid dream really is still a dream and very dream like: when I first started out I imagined I would be entering a totally new dimension as real as real life but better...
There are lucid dreams where I'm not really 'awake' but I'm lucid. It's hard to explain: it's like I know I'm dreaming, or maybe I know I can change the world around me, but I somehow am not "myself"; I'd say in most dreams like that the feeling of lucidity doesn't start all that well, it's like it gets stuck or something, it's weird. Conversely, I have had a fair number of dreams in which that feeling did go off "completely", and not only were they shocking, the moment when lucidity came was a right kick in the head. It's really hard for me to talk about it in an organized and coherent fashion simply because there's so much to think about, but there's one thing I can say that might be relevant for you: the more I lucid dreamed - with previous intent of doing so, that is - the stronger they got.

One dream I was lucid for about 1 minute, and all I remembered that I wanted to see how real and clear the world was around me, so I grabbed a man's face and looked at the pores of his skin, and I said over and over "this is real, I can see clearly and everything", and when the dream ended I knew. Try something like this sometime.

Another relevant thing I might add is how we deal with memories of dreams. I wrote a post about that a long while ago, I'll try to find it later.