I don't mean things you've realized from dream interpretation, like "I realized I'm afraid of disappointing my Dad." I mean metaphysical lessons from LDs that have actually changed the way you view and understand waking reality.

Here's one from me.

My first ever WILD. I read about it on the net one night and decided to try it the next morning. In the morning, I'm dreaming I'm at a ski resort on a snowy Winter's day. I wake up. But before I roll over and open my eyes, I remember I was going to try WILD. I'm lying on my left side and, without moving or opening my eyes, start to count my breaths. 1. 2.. 3... 4.... 5..... I feel nice and drowsy but really concentrate on the numbers and my breath. 7....... 8........ 9......... A strange clarity comes over me. I'm no longer sleepy at all and figure I may as well give up and try WILD again tomorrow.

I open my eyes and I'm sitting/lying in the reclined driver's seat of a car, parked in a snow-covered parking lot at the ski resort. The driver's door is open and I'm seated sideways, with my feet out the door and my left side pressed against the seat. You see? The sensation of lying on my side in bed became the sensation of the car seat. I get up and out of the car, looking around in amazement. I'm totally ecstatic with the success. Later I'll fly around and play a flying game with kids I meet on the other side of the ski resort, totally lucid the whole time.

The lesson I learned that morning was simple. It shattered the idea that the waking and dreaming worlds are necessarily separated by a wide gulf of darkness, unconsciousness, or at least hypnogogia. That morning I experienced a totally seamless transition from being awake in my bed to being awake in my dream. There was absolute continuity of awareness. That says a lot about the waking world: that realities aren't discrete, they blend; that one could, hypothetically, move back and forth between waking and dreaming at will, without losing consciousness; that waking up in bed every morning is just as devious a way of 'explaining' a shift between realities as a car seat pressed against your side.

For me, that experience eroded the belief that the waking world is somehow supreme over the dream world, more real. That morning I slipped sideways, not down.