Thread: Accidental lucid dream during recurrent nightmare? Also, Hello! :)

That is a good question. I'm not 100% sure if I became conscious of dreaming or not. It was definitely a conscious decision within the dream when I recalled being in this same situation two times before and made a conscious decision to escape the infinite staircase. There definitely wasn't that recall in the previous staircase dreams.

Also an interesting observation about the recurrent nature of the dream and the meaning behind it and I have given it some thought. The past year has been somewhat tumultuous due to a health scare with my mum and also all the covid stuff and some job insecurity that's happened so maybe there was a level of loss of control influencing and creating the feeling of no escape within the nightmare. And the last dream I had where I had some level of recall and a conscious decision to escape and succeeding in that. It will be interesting to see if I have anymore of the same nightmare and if I was able to resolve it through conscious recall and action within the dream.

Thanks for throwing up some ideas guys!

Originally Posted by dreamfeeder

That is a good question. I'm not 100% sure if I became conscious of dreaming or not.

OK I am going to play devil's advocate here a little bit.

The fact that you are not sure if it was lucid says to me that it may not have been fully lucid. There are dreams that we can have where we dream about being lucid, without being lucid. We can even be aware that it's a dream, and even do things like rewind the scene (because it's a dream) or other strange actions. I generally consider these dreams to be "semi-lucid". However, I am not saying your dream was one of these - it could have been a true, fully lucid dream - only you really know.

The key feature that (to me) distinguishes a lucid dream from a semi-lucid dream is the "aha moment" or "Eureka moment". It's a sudden realization, like an epiphany, or when you solve a puzzle feeling. Then, you should have very conscious thinking compared to before that moment.

There are also levels of lucidity, even with aha moments. There are low level fully lucid dreams, that are barely above a non-lucid dream, and where lucidity may come and go with the scenes. There are higher level lucid dreams, some so lucid that the scenery is surreal - even more real than waking life, even more vivid and colorful, and in these dreams, you may have a fairly good command of your logical brain (something usually lost in non-lucid dreams).

So it's also possible you could have a lower-level lucid dream, which may be causing you to question.

Ultimately, experience is going to let you know what kind of dream you had. When you have more lucids under your belt, and also more semi-lucids, more low level lucids, and high level lucids, you will learn to discriminate between the states.

Thank you for sharing, and I hope this was helpful.