Was this Lucid Dreaming...or not?

[RoryLuna]

I had a dream experience that *I think* was lucid dreaming...but maybe not. I do not actively practice lucid dreaming though. I woke up early in the morning, while it was still dark. Got my baby son a bottle of milk and went back to bed and fell back asleep. I started dreaming that I was exploring my sister's new apartment and we kept finding extra surprise rooms as we toured her new apartment and I was thinking she got a great deal for apartment with this many rooms. So I stayed there and I fell asleep in a bed in one of these rooms....and so I fell into a new dream...so in this new dream...I was suddenly in the middle of a very bright highly reflective ocean. I was on a circular boat and I was given a review of my life all around me. There were like these montages all around me over the ocean of these events in my life. The clarity was crystal. More crystal clear, brighter and sharper than real life. In the back of my mind I felt like this moment was a gift...like I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. Everything that I asked for I got without any hassle. I flew around over the ocean and flew whatever direction and even felt like I was on a roller coaster. And if I wanted to hold a particular item it would pop up in my hands. If I wanted to see a person I saw them. I've never in my life experienced a dream where I did whatever I wanted do with such unbelievable ease.....it was so amazingly easy, super bright and clear.... my goodness...the clarity is something that I will never forget. A strange way of explaining it would be how you feel when you see a dew drop and get lost in it and you feel the softness of the water and you apply that to your life awake. I wondered if I died in my sleep and was in heaven....aaaand that's when I started getting concerned...I thought actually might be dead... so I tried to make myself wake up. I woke up back into my original dream, and I could tell I was still dreaming, and tried again by making sudden jumps and successfully woke up in my bed. The thing is, I was not really super aware that I was dreaming. Except that I was dreaming about dreaming. I was mainly aware that I could do whatever I wanted to do..... One thing I did notice though...was that when I fell asleep the room was dark and when I woke up the room was super bright as the sun was up. I think the brightness of the sun and the timing of it, perhaps maybe triggered this possible lucid dream? In the past the light in my room has an effect on my dreams visuals. For example there was a time where I feel asleep in my room with the lights on. When my mother turned it off the windshield in the car that I was driving in my dream blacked out and I crashed. I got scared and made myself wake up. Also If it's twilight hours my dreams are in the dark, bluish, shadowy no matter how hard I try to see color, it's just all dark. So I wonder if that has an affect too...

[TravisE]

It certainly sounds like you developed some realization that you were dreaming during the dream toward the end, which qualifies as a lucid dream. The illusion of dreams occurring within dreams and then waking up within a dream while still dreaming (a so-called false awakening) is quite common, too, with or without lucidity. Since the dream-within-a-dream and the awakenings are just part of the dream itself, it's still a lucid dream if you knew you were dreaming at any point during them. External stimuli like light can certainly affect dreams. I've had many occasions where I suspect this has happened. Sometimes my eyes will happen to open just before my dream ends and I wake up, which often results in an odd mingling of dream imagery and waking-life imagery coming through my eyes. Very dark, shadowy dreams might also be an example of non-REM dreams. Usually, most of the dreams we remember happen during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep stages; these are the ones with vivid, waking-life-like imagery, but sometimes dreams happen during non-REM periods. Anecdotally, it seems NREM dreams often have a different nature, such as being dark, having weak or no visual imagery, and being more thought- or emotion-based. For most people, most of the non-REM occurs during the first few hours of sleep (with the last hours of sleep consisting of mostly REM), so if you typically experience these early in your sleep, it might be possible that they are non-REM dreams.

[Appirace]

this sounds like a lucid dream you can develop realization towards your dream meaning you can try to control it i never tried controlling my dream since once i wake up i always forget about it but im impress if you can actually control the dream and create a journal about it

[Tipharot]

The normal definition would say that you got lucid towards the end when you realised that you were dreaming, since lucidity is the hallmark of a lucid dream and not control. I like to take a slightly different approach though and regard both dreams with full control, and dreams with full awareness but no control, as partial/semi lucid dreams. The way I see it there are two kinds of awareness and lucidity: awareness of the dream state itself, and awareness of your ability to control your actions. So having either one is a degree of lucidity - and having both is full lucidity. That's just my take on it anyway, so I would say that you were partially lucid at the beginning, and fully lucid towards the end.