Oneironaut or cop out?

[Occipitalred]

Hey, I thought I would share some thoughts. I find I often drift away from this community... Maybe because I don't even know if I can call myself a lucid dreamer (or because I find the website has become less technically accessible over the years). Don't get me wrong, I am an oneironaut. I dream (non lucidly). I give attention to my dreams, I remember and play with them. They affect my personal growth and my personal growth in turn affects them. It is one of the most rewarding parts of my life. But, am I just copping out of lucid dreaming? The other night, I had a dream, turned into a nightmare. There was a sadistic all-powerful monster. He stopped the school bus he was driving beside me where I was walking on the sidewalk. I was struck with dread, knowing I was his target and I was powerless. In the past, my response was always to run away from big threats like this. But this time, because of the work I have done on this, I almost immediately recognized the monster as a metaphor for the various things that gave me fear, most likely, fear of professional and social failure. I calmed, knowing it was merely perceived danger and I was safe. I knew confronting it was necessary so I approached my antagonist, accepting the sacrifices that would have to be made in order to move on. Very close to each other, the monster hesitated, tried to be terrorizing but failed and felt very uncomfortable from my behavior, ending the dream on a good note. Before, when I actively tried to "lucid dream," if I had "realized I was dreaming" (and I put the quotation marks on purpose), I would have still felt afraid and would have unskillfully flown out of reach and into a broken dream. Or maybe, I would have shouted out loud "Hey friend, come with me!" and expected the antagonist to be good (but he wouldn't be, instead, even killing me as I naively made myself vulnerable). There's definitely something to say about "lucid dreams" defined by "knowledge that one is dreaming;" they are a unique experience. Yet, I often find that I use my sudden or gradual "knowledge that I am dreaming" to cheat out of any problem, leaving them unresolved. I always want to deepen this hobby so I could re-commit to lucid dreaming... But I wonder if I could do it in a more subtle way (in fact, that's why I stopped lucid dreaming sort of).... I don't like the term "lucid dreaming". I know people have discussed the definition at length, talked of different degrees and etc... But maybe there's just different things. Maybe there are many sorts of dreams (kind of obvious now that I say it), like lucid dreams and vivid dreams and etc... and they're just about different types of awareness being at play. I feel even being self-aware doesn't even have that much to do with lucid dreaming, it's another thing altogether, or else, lucid dreaming is like a homophone. And the dream I described above, where I was not aware I was dreaming but was aware that my experience was a metaphor, that's some kind of other type of awareness (I don't know which)? Anyway, this is my response to the "Did you know you were dreaming? Then you were lucid dreaming." "Your dream was vivid but you weren't lucid" "You weren't self-aware so not lucid" etc... Maybe there's more than a word. Why are we focused on lucid dreaming? What's up with that? But, honestly, I'm more interested in how I can "lucid dream" without it meaning I go around shouting "I am dreaming!", fly away from enemies and enact the same response to the "I can do literally anything" scenario in every dream. Okay, well, sorry for this rant. I'm probably out of context because I don't participate here enough. I will leave this here anyway