Last night (in real life) after going to bed, we received a late night phone call. After going back to bed and reciting my mantra “I will have a lucid dream tonight” I had the following experience, which I’m not at all sure how to categorize. Did I just have my first (albeit short) lucid dream??

In my dream I had yet to fall asleep after the phone call, when I grew concerned that my wife had shut off the wall switch that controlled the power to my bedside lamp. I tested this by pushing the switch on the lamp several times (without getting out of bed) and indeed, it did not come on. This meant that if I needed to wake and write in my dream journal later on in the night or morning, I’d have to get out of bed THEN, to turn the wall switch on, which I did not want to do. So, in my dream I got out of bed and flipped the wall switch to “ON”. The bedside lamp did not come on...but this was possible because I wasn’t sure how many times I’d flipped the switch on the lamp. All of this felt totally REAL. Hyper-real, in fact.

As I made my way back to bed in our master bedroom in the dark by habit and feel, I started to sense a growing anxiety about being in our bedroom in the dark. I tried to turn the bedside lamp on, but it wouldn’t come on even though I had just assured myself it SHOULD come on because the wall switch power was definitely ON. I was trapped in the dark, and in my dream I started to get anxious. I started to feel like there was something wrong...something amiss...but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I desperately wanted the light to come on, but had exhausted all possible remedies and didn’t know what to do next.

As the anxiety grew over the malfunctioning light, I had the realization...I’m DREAMING. This is a DREAM. That’s why the light switches don’t work! And of course...I woke up for real.

So...was this a lucid dream??? The subjective difference I would describe as follows: My non-lucid dreams are like watching a play or a movie. Last night’s experience was like BEING AN ACTOR IN THE MOVIE OR THE PLAY.

So, was this my first actual LD????? Opinions??