Thread: What was your first deliberate lucid experience?

From my DILD workbook:

I am pretty sure, I had lucid dreams in my childhood. What I remember is that I repeatedly "knew" I was dreaming and when that happened, I used to jump out of windows - esp. our kitchen window of my mother´s/grandmother´s house.
That would give me the momentum, I needed to go flying - it was actually "air-swimming" - so I did it in a later lucid as well.

First time around I gained lucidity later after consciously aiming at it was around me being 20 years old.
I had been reading Castaneda and took it all on face value.
This was not exactly a good thing in my case, since expecting to be in a real danger while in the dream-world followed from it.

I had been telling myself, when I notice I dream, I will look at my hands etc. for about 2 weeks every night before falling asleep.
And then it did work - I fully stabilized* the dream with looking at my hands, till I saw every little detail crystal clear.

This was on different levels one of the most memorable and profound experiences I ever had - finding out, that waking reality as it appears is in no way the only one, that can be fully experienced with all my senses in 3d and fully realistic.
Primarily though - I expected to have switched reality-realms and - as said - was in real danger there eventually.

While pondering this - the scene changed - the walls of a cave which I was exploring for fun with friends suddenly turned to sand and came down from all sides on me.
With all the willpower I could muster, I transferred my consciousness back into my body - just to find, I was literally unable to move or scream - no malignancy hallucinations luckily - I was just afraid to be sucked back to where I had just escaped from.
This was the only time such a thing happened to me.
The whole affair - the nightmarish dream, superstitions, which seemed to be confirmed, and the full on REM Atonia afterwards kept me off trying again for years.
In the meantime I let go of my little and bigger "beliefs" - I would call them superstitions today - and took an agnostic standpoint.

A bit of a letdown - sort of - isn't it just nice to imagine a world of easily reachable real beings of another realm and to believe, one can leave the physical body in form of one's spiritual body and really affect reality?
Well - it´s nice but also scary and I do see no reasons to believe in such. Actually I would want my dreams for myself only anyway now - otherwise - there would be no complete freedom - how sad in a way, to think such.
Instead I hope for first contact with aliens during my lifetime now...lol

*Unfortunately - the three LDs in the further past - before taking it up once more by joining here - were really, really stable and fully realistic all around. Didn't really get there lately - some two or three were pretty good - but this feeling to really completely be in another world - it lacks often - at least to some degree.
But maybe that reddened belief did it - and the following 2 LDs - I expected to be like that from the onset, too.