Thread: A level above lucid dreaming ?

If I had caught this thread a bit earlier, I would have also suggested that maybe you had become lucid before the dream started and witnessed the dream forming. I've encountered this quite a few times.

Also, just to say something that I don't think anybody said yet (unless I missed it): It might even be possible that you had a level of self-awareness (lucidity) such that you became a bit more conscious than usual of what the underlying unconscious parts of your mind were doing in the process of forming a dream. I've had a few rare experiences that felt a bit like this, and they can be rather hard to describe. There was one LD some time ago I remember where it seemed like just before I “fully” became conscious and lucid I was having some sort of deep-down “below the surface” thoughts that seemed almost as if I was unconsciously arranging for and planning the process of becoming lucid a moment later. It was hard to remember and rather vague. Perhaps this was just a side-effect of the NLD plot of the dream, but maybe it was actually something deeper than that. I've had a few other cases where I was able to remember having a specific, complex (despite happening within only the space of a second or two) path of thoughts leading to lucidity, originating deep down on an almost unconscious level and then spreading out and upward, eventually leading to full conscious realization of lucidity. It was a rather interesting process to be able to observe and actually remember upon awakening. So, it certainly seems plausible to me that something like actually becoming conscious of normally-unconscious mental activity can occur in some cases.

Whether there's a such thing as 100% lucidity is something I could never say for certain and perhaps never will. I somehow suspect that no matter high a level of lucidity I attain, it could always be possible to go even higher. I've heard of people accomplishing some amazing mental feats that I never would have imagined possible, so it seems unwise to dictate a particular upper possible limit. This does mean I always tend to describe my LDs as low-level lucidity, though, because I have no idea how high it can truly go.