Thread: Gaining waking awareness in a dream

So lately since I joined this forum I have obviously reading a lot about Lucid Dreaming, and a lot of places it says that gaining awareness that your dreaming and gaining waking awareness is key to Lucid Dreaming. Well it never have been so for me, it mostly just makes me wake up, either instantly or slowly after the dream just feel unstable. All my Lucid Dreams have been to some weird feeling I have and sometimes upon a dream I just stumble upon it or realizing something, not waking awareness but something else, that I can't really describe that well. The feeling also is always present when in my sleep paralysis and it's there that that feeing is the strongest.

So I might as well tell about the dream I had today where I gained consciousness, or the ending of it where it became relevant what I was talking about. The dream was like a video game, and I took out a old musket that was dated and I wanted to save inventory space so I shot all the ammo at a spider, the musket worked poorly and I was nearly about throwing it away, then a guy sat on a bench said that the musket had some value and that there was a name on the side of the musket, and he walked towards his apartment. I followed him as I wanted to know more of this so I could probably sell it, it was here I gained waking awareness and kind of drifted off to being awake, but I wanted to continue the dream so I stayed in it. But now the dream felt unstable, like any thought not related to the dream was going to wake me up. I still continued it tough, and it didn't feel like a Lucid Dream, but the whole dream itself felt very clear, like I could remember all details about my environment and it was 1st person. So I entered his apartment and he went on hes kneels to take my shoes off as a sign of hospitality, and he had a lot of interesting stuff on shelves. But then I woke up as I kind of knew it would eventually.

Also sometimes when I gain waking awareness in a dream I can control my actions, and the dream doesn't get unstable, then I mostly just have to follow the http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...ml#post2061218 (more explained in the link) or sometimes have unlimited potential in the dream, but it doesn't feel like Lucid Dream. The Lucid Dream always come from that certain feeling.

But mostly it just wakes me up in the way I described about it in the dream I had today.

So how do you Lucid Dream? Is it just gaining consciousness and immediately enter a Lucid Dream at will?