WakingNomad,
I think you might be offering an overly-simplified portrait of awareness, and perhaps of lucid dreaming itself.
I would say that all the types of lucidity you mentioned are what I would call examples of weak to mediocre lucidity -- quassom’s layer 2 to layer 3. I like to call them levels instead of layers myself, but that’s only semantics. Bottom line is there are definitely different levels of intensity to which your awareness aspires in a dream, all of which relate directly to the quality of self-awareness a dreamer has maintained during the dream:
* At the lowest level of lucidity, a dreamer realizes that the world she is currently exploring is a dream, but fails to remember that her true body is sleeping where she left it, or even that the body she occupies now is just a dream character. This level is often quite exciting, because the dreamer is consciously experiencing all the surprises and oddities of the dream, as though being swept away by it, without ever realizing that her own mind is the one doing the sweeping.
The vast majority of lucid dreams are of this low-level type, or perhaps are not even lucid at all: at this level of awareness, the dreamer is still susceptible to “false lucid” dreams, wherein the dreaming mind fabricates just the right circumstances for a dream to actually be about being lucid, rather than actually being lucid. If a dreamer reports his dream as a long series of events surrounding him, completely out of his control, but he was sure he knew he was dreaming, there is an excellent chance that he is simply dreaming he is lucid, rather than actually being lucid – this is a false lucid dream. The difference between the two experiences in normal circumstances is nil, and by most measures (all of which are subjective) a false lucid dream is every bit as exciting and enlightening as a low-level actual lucid dream, and both are equally valid in terms of conscious experience. Both are also remembered as dreams -- meaning they're not recorded into long-term memory at all in most cases, often drifting from the mind with the slightest distraction upon awakening...this is more important than it might sound, but I don't feel here is the time to go into it at length; I'm being lengthy enough as it is!
* The next level of lucidity carries enough self-awareness to keep the dream from controlling the dreamer, but not quite enough for the dreamer to fully control the dream. In this level, call it mediocre lucidity, the dreamer remembers who he is and where his actual body is sleeping, but still cannot manage to fully accept the non-reality of the dream. When a dreamer wakes from a mediocre lucid dream, he will often describe talking to dream characters as if they were real, and talking about events in the dream as if they had actually happened. For example, his descriptions will include many phrases like, “And then this happened,” or “I looked the other way and a whole new world unfolded before me," or “I listened carefully to what the old man had to say.” A dreamer experiencing a mediocre lucid dream cannot change its content – even if he turns around, or flies away, he merely spurs on a new dream over which he has little control, or loses lucidity altogether. But at this level at least the dreamer cannot be fooled into believing he is lucid when he is not. Also at this level the dreamer's memory of the event tends to be recorded as a conscious event, and thus is more firmly planted in long-term memory -- because it really happened, as it were.
* The next level could be termed full-on lucidity, though it would still not totally tip an awareness scale. Full-on lucidity means that the dreamer’s waking awareness is fully present, self-awareness is strong, she remembers who she is and acknowledges consciously that her body in the dream is not actually hers, but that of a dream character created by her own dreaming mind. This level allows full control of the dream, including the dreamer’s understanding that the dream can be abandoned for something else at any time. This level is the apex for most lucid dreamers, as it embodies the limits of conscious participation in the biological event of dreaming. As the lucid dreamer’s awareness becomes the driver of dream events, everything in the dream, no matter how odd at its surface, becomes by definition intimately familiar to the dreamer. She recognizes that all this is hers, without exception.
For you dream-sharers out there, I truly believe that you need to achieve full-on lucidity before you can identify visitors to your dreaming universe, or create pathways out of your dreaming universe and into someone else’s; anything less opens the door for your dreaming mind to convince you, and, upon waking, your memory, that you did things and met people that in the end were just its own creation. That, though, is just what I believe -- I have nothing, anecdotal or not, to prove or disprove that suspicion.
* There is of course more. After full-on, awareness surpasses the dream and its inherent human metaphor and symbolism completely, effectively turning the state into something else altogether...
So yes, WakingNomad, while LD’ing is all about awareness, it is about more than just awareness that this is a dream -- after all, since it is very easy for your dreaming mind to convince you that you are having lucid dream -- even when you are not, you really do need a certain level of self-awareness to truly understand that this thing you are in is a dream and this body you occupy just a character in the dream. Even more self-awareness is required to accept that everything around you is of your own creation, and that the entire universe around you is malleable.
Sure, lucid dreaming is all about awareness, but as a condition of consciousness, awareness and self-awareness can be incredibly complex things. To set them all at one level is to sell short the potential of the lucid dreaming experience.
**** Please note that I'm being extremely brief here describing a subject about which entire books could be written. I hope I was able to get my point across, though. ****
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