DJ Comments

First of all, congratulations on the lucid man!

Despite being a bit excited at this discovery, I was so tired that I convinced myself that it hadn’t really worked, and I almost went back to sleep. Then I checked something else though, despite the tired haze. My hands, I believe. I looked at my palms. I don’t remember how they looked like but I do remember that for a brief moment this strobe light type effect started to happen around me, and that was the point where I realized I was definitely dreaming. There was a whoosh, a pop, or something. I can’t explain it. But when that happened, everything became much more in focus.

I guess it’s the rush that I’ve read about. They say you get a surge as your senses and mind come alive in the dream, the moment you realize it’s a dream. Now I finally know what that feels like.

Definitely have to be diligent on the RC's, you can still be fooled sometimes. I love that rush, that moment of knowing you can do anything and everything you ever wanted. I never gets old, really.

Another thing to note before I move forward is that I was never too much in control of my surroundings. I know I changed the weather (and will again soon), summoned the cats, and teleport once later in the dream.. But for the most part, I just let the dream world build itself around me. Then again, it’s worth mentioning that I couldn’t convince any of my dream characters that I was dreaming. Which in itself helps show that I wasn’t in complete control anyway. So of course the world was mostly building itself. Still, it was worth noting.

There's a good book on what you're talking about: Lucid Dreaming: gateway to the inner self. The writer talks about how there's a "Man behind the scenes" or so he puts it figuratively. An excellent quote from it is:

One common assumption.... is that the [lucid] dreamer controls the dream. Yet, any thoughtful analysis shows that lucid dreamers direct their focus within the dream but do not control the dream (as the sailor does not control the sea). Those maintaining the assumption of control limit their experience and understanding, unless they are able to see through this assumption and broaden their viewpoint.

It's a very entertaining book. It's not really about how to get lucid, but about lucid dreaming itself.

Going through my old dream journals (I used to write them by hand and am gradually trying to type them up) I notice a lot of cases where at the time I wrote that the dream was "semi-lucid" but reading the report later, it looks like it has all the features of a fully lucid dream. Your report reminds me of this, since it looks fully lucid in its details (you did an RC and realized that you were dreaming, then took control and changed the narrative) but you still expressed some subjective doubts about the degree to which you felt lucid.

Part of the problem might be that many popular descriptions of lucid dreaming suggest that it feels exactly like daytime awareness. It doesn't... or at least it never has for me! It always feels like it is somewhere on the continuum between waking and dreaming, and there are even times when I have felt almost fully in possession of my reason and all my senses and yet on waking realize that I completely failed to observe some huge discrepancy with waking life. (One frequent example is thinking I'm in "my house" when the building I'm in actually has no resemblance whatsoever to anywhere I've ever lived.)

So dreams can definitely be "more lucid" and "less lucid," it's not just a binary! From what you describe, it sounds like you were at least somewhere on that continuum.