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Here's my latest video aimed to answer one of the most commonly asked questions on lucid dreaming, "Did I Have A Lucid Dream?".
Hopefully, this will save a few of you the time answering this question when approached by those new to the topic! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbLK17IiIaA
That's an interesting perspective; I don't think I've thought of it quite that way before.
It makes sense when I think about it. These days, I usually have little difficulty determining whether a dream is lucid except for such cases as unusually foggy recall or very borderline “semilucid” dreams (in which self awareness seemed to be possibly present but apparently very weak or incomplete). As you pointed out, the main way I settle this is by deciding whether, to the best of my memory, I was in fact operating under some kind of understanding that I was occupying something other than waking reality. This is clear evidence of lucidity, as whenever I'm not lucid I tend to indiscriminately react to everything I experience—the senses and internal thoughts/daydreams/dreams alike—as if it were all some form of waking reality, regardless of its real nature or my current wake/sleep state.
Your description of semi-lucid or, even better, proto-lucid dreams really resonates with me. After almost nine months of pretty intensive LD/DY training I am consistently aware that I am in a dream but that proto-lucid dream awareness is still not quite at the surface. But then there are moments in some of these dreams where full lucidity will suddenly bloom.....and there is absolutely no doubt about my state.
In American football a forward pass is considered to be completed if the receiver can make a "football move"....that is, possess the ball and turn up field. I know I have been lucid when I have made a "lucid move". That is still most often flight, but I am working hard on the ability to change the physical characteristics of that anomaly that triggered my lucidty.
My proto-lucid dreams remain with me for days.....sometimes much longer.