Lucid dreaming and waking dream-like experiences, is there a line?

Because my mood has allowed for it, lately I've been starting to pick back up on a few things; one of such things is my interest in trances and such types of waking experiences that can be quite ambiguously defined as dream-like. In fact, I intend on making a more specific thread on that later on, once I decide what part of the forum would be suitable for it, probably "Beyond Dreaming", depending on how discussion here may go...

So, as the title here suggests, I am curious to know what others think.
In your opinion, is there, or should there be, a hard line between different lucid experiences, depending on how they are achieved? Or perhaps more appropriately, depending on what state we are in when having those experiences?

For me the line is somewhat blurred; at present, the principal difference for me between a lucid waking experience in a trance state, versus a lucid dreaming experience whilst asleep, is that while dreaming I tend to get much more vivid and accurate sensations to the inner content, i.e. the dream, while on the other hand having such an experience while awake, or in some other terms, while immersed in a visualisation, it tends to mean much better recall and accuracy of events albeit with much reduced vividity and poor visual detail when compared to an equivalent dreamt experience.

Both experiences seem to allow for very varied levels of control over the content and equally varied levels of how much of what appears comes from a place not known to the threshold of consciousness, i.e. much of the content in both scenarios is not consciously generated apart from anything that is willed or guided in a specific moment.

So for me, the differences look to be about technical aspects, rather than about the state during which the experiences happen. And therefore, to me, to dream something or to have a semi-vivid visualisation experience are such similar experiences that I find it difficult to actually consider them significantly different from one another in their lived aspect, apart from the contrasting fact that dreams in general require no guidance or preparation to occur in the first place, as they are a natural phenomenon that would occur even if I didn't want them; lucid dreams on the other hand do require just as much preparation and guidance to achieve as a lucid waking experience, for most of us anyway.

More food for thought than anything here; because I discovered dreams first and only later did I discover the ability to actively generate inner content while awake, I tend to consider those waking experiences to be "dream-like" as I alluded to before. However, does this make sense? Isn't it only dream-like because that was my first frame of reference? Although difficult to conceive and accept at face value, had it been the other way around, I would probably have been saying that dreams are imagination-like or something, surely.

Interesting experiences!

Personally, the way I differentiate is my body’s physiological signs. I can feel my core temperature and heartrate drop when I’m falling adleep. Perceptions outside of that are more varied and based on where attention is (usually switches to imagined environment, but not always).

It sounds like your experience of it is more about perceived experience and you’ve managed to find some patterns.

I know the experience you're describing, in the half-sleep state. If you ask me, it's kind of like a spectrum of awake--->asleep. Consciousness can be maintained or re-gained at any point on the spectrum. On the lightest end, there's active imagination, followed by audio hynogogic sensations, visual hynogogic imagery, and then dreaming. Of course, what one experiences when can vary person to person.

I love active imagination. This is where we can lay down, close our eyes, and imagine any kind of scenario. As trance deepens, we may experience parts of the imagination are not created by us. Instead, it seems to be a "blend" of our imagination and dream material (which I would say is coming from "source", but will leave that open to your own interpretation).

So is there a difference between states? Yes. I would argue that there is a distinct and definable difference (no blurry lines) between any pre-dream state of hypnagogia or active imagination and a true dream state (lucid or otherwise). This is evidenced when we have a WILD (wake induced lucid dream). If you go through the WILD process, it's clear when you have "lift off". Before that though, it's definitely a blurry line when dealing with active imagination, hypnagogia, trance, etc.