Thread: Definition of a lucid dream revisited

So when I came here, people would often reply that what makes a lucid dream a lucid dream is whether or not you know you are dreaming, and that's it. No minimum requirement for awareness. If you knew it is a dream, you were lucid.

Then someone, I think it might have been Sageous, started a thread questioning that, and saying, that actually one can have a false lucid, where one dreams about knowing that it is a dream, but there is no awareness, and one is not actually present in the dream, and recalls it just as a memory, and that that is not really a lucid.

So I have been thinking about it some more recently. See I had this nightmare the other day. I realized that what was happening could not be happening in waking life. I was aware/conscious and I was present. However, when I did my reality check, it failed, and so I concluded that I was awake. However, I continued to be aware enough to see that things were happening that could not happen, so I concluded that I must be going completely crazy. I panicked. I was very much there, I do not just recall this dream as a distant memory, I remember experiencing it in real time in the present moment, and analyzing my situation, and being aware that things were not as they should be.

At first I thought: I concluded it is not a dream, therefore this was not a lucid dream. However, we say that awareness can be limited in a lucid dream, that one can have some false logic or reach some wrong conclusions. So is this one mistake, concluding that it is not a dream, truly what makes a dream a non-lucid. If one is aware of what is happening in the present moment, is analyzing the situation as it is happening, and one is aware enough to conclude that what is happening cannot or should not be happening, would this really be a non-lucid dream only because of that one false conclusion that this is not a dream after an RC fail.

If we say that it is possible to have a false lucid dream during which one dreams that one is lucid but there is no awareness, aren't we saying that awareness is really what differentiates a lucid from a non-lucid, and not the "this is a dream", and if so could a dream with awareness but without the "this is a dream" conclusion be classified as technically a lucid dream - though a low level lucid of course?

Qualitatively this dream felt more like a lucid than like a non lucid is what I am saying I guess. Even though I had concluded erroneously that I was awake, but I was the dreamer and not the dreamed.