What Exactly Is Concidered A "lucid" Dream?

[Otto_man]

Hi I've been writing in a dream journal for more than a year now. I don't have a definite dreamsign that appears in all my dreams, and I think that I have never had full lucidity. Whenever I get "lucid", if I even do, I accept being conscious and remember very vivid dreams. Yet, I never been able to explore in my dream. I may of been conscious of "going with the flow" of a dream, but is that considered dream control? I've been attempting LDing for a very long time, and I just have doubts about being gifted. I have the ability to remember up to six dreams a night, but I can't seem to control them. I may leave LD forever if I can't get my goal of complete lucidity. I don't care about doing tricks in my dream, being lucid is glorifying enough. can someone help me? I've tried so many techniques, and only Dream Initiated Dreams work for me.

[Oneironaut Zero]

Sup, Otto man? Well, simply: "A lucid dream is any dream where you realize you are dreaming, while you are dreaming." Nothing more. Now, dream control comes in when you actually start taking control of what you (or the rest of your dream) is doing, intentionally. You can have control of your reactions and whatnot without knowing you are dreaming. This would be a controlled dream without lucidity. You can also know you are dreaming but have a really hard time controlling anything about yourself or your surroundings. This, still, is a lucid dream. If you are a lucid dreamer (how often do you realize you are dreaming, while you are dreaming) it should only take a little practice before you're able to start affecting yourself or your surroundings, consciously, if that is your goal. Hope this helps.

[Jogah]

I think going strictly by the definition generally accepted for Lucid Dreaming "A lucid dream is any dream where you realize you are dreaming, while you are dreaming." that you have acheived that. Now if you want the ability to walk around wherever you want and talk to people the way you would in real life I personally think another name should be given to that kind of a Lucid Dream. That is sort of beside the point but there really is a difference between knowing what you are experiencing is a dream and completely choosing your path in said dream. You said in your post "I accept being conscious and remember very vivid dreams. Yet, I never been able to explore in my dream." and until literally two nights ago I was the same. Before I had considered myself to have had many Lucid Dreams. Now the dream I had two nights ago I is what for my purposes I consider to be my very first Lucid Dream. I think I could have explored anything in the Lucid dream I had but as it was my lucidity only lasted about a minute because I got excited tried to fly and then woke up. You said "I may leave LD forever if I can't get my goal of complete lucidity." I'd say that is a bit extreme if you ask me unless you are really putting a heck of alot of seemingly pointless effort into it. The night before I had my first Lucid I did nothing special before going to bed just my normal routine. I try and keep a dream journal but I go through spurts. So I would say continue trying but mabye just dial back your efforts and you might have a Lucid Dream when you least expect it.