3. Ambiguities in Lucidity Induction
With increasing experience, some facets of lucid dreaming become habitual, making the classification of dream lucidity more ambiguous. Consider the following example:
(DJD74) \"My (nonlucid) dream involved me, X and a bunch of other people. We were all roommates in a big house. I was unaware that I was dreaming. There was a party going on or something. We were down in the basement hanging out. However, at some point in the dream I looked at X and told him I’d be back in a little bit because I was going to go up to my room and try to project! I went up to my bedroom in this dream house. Again, at this point I thought everything was normal and had no idea I was dreaming. I laid down on my bed and started concentrating to leave just exactly like I always do on the physical plane….[text omitted of a 1400 word lucid dream report]
…I decided I was done for the time being, so I got up out of bed. I was still in the dream house and still unaware that I was dreaming. I went looking for some paper to record my experience. I ended up going back into the basement where everyone was still hanging out. X was there and the others and I told them all about the projection I had just had. Meanwhile, I’m getting very concerned that I can’t find any paper. Then I woke up for real. For a moment I was totally disoriented.\"
In this example, DJD, in the midst of a nonlucid dream, performs his habitual techniques for achieving a WILD. He then experienced what was, for all practical purposes, a typical lucid dream. Following this, he \"awakes\" in the exact same nonlucid dream setting and seeks paper to record his lucid dream, which is also a habitual behavior. Shortly thereafter, DJD truly wakes up in a momentarily disoriented state.
How is one to classify such an experience? What we see here is a lucid dream nested perfectly inside of a nonlucid dream. One could argue that DJD merely dreamt that he was lucid dreaming, but this clarifies nothing. The characteristics of the lucid dream (the omitted text) were identical in general features to all of his other lucid dreams. What we believe this particular sequence represents is the cooperation between the global nonlucid dream context and DJD’s lucid dream context. In this particular instance, the global nonlucid dream context provided perfectly for the full expression of the lucid dream context because the subject dreamt all of the requisite details needed for activation of his lucid dream context. After completion of the lucid dream, the lucid dream context returned control of access to the dreamer’s consciousness to the previous nonlucid dream context. This kind of situation could only result because the subject possessed a well-defined lucid dream context that could clearly demarcate itself from the global nonlucid dream context.[/b]
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