Hello, everyone. I have only recently joined this site and am quite pleased to be here. I have been practicing lucid dreaming for most of my life (as I am currently sixteen), but have not had the honor of meeting others like me.

I have been lucid-dreaming for a LONG time now. The earliest specific dream in which I can remember having lucidity was in second grade, but I probably began much earlier than that. It was not until I was twelve, somewhere between sixth and seventh grade, that I learned that this was unique (as little as five per cent of the population engages in lucid dreaming, and less than two per cent achieve lucidity on a fairly regular basis, according to some statistics). I am not usually startled into lucidity -- it rather seems to rise up in me spontaneously. It did take effort, however, as well as discipline, to remain conscious of the moment I fall asleep, which I have achieved only twice so far.

I do not have a regular "spirit guide" as I have heard others do, but I had a blue-skinned friend when I was young who I (being of a slight age) called Urkle in my waking hours. More recently I have come across other somewhat archetypal characters, such as the Early Man of Impeding Death, to whom I am dedicate. These are not so much guides as teachers, or Angels in the most literal sense (i.e., messengers) and they seem to stop coming when I have learned what they intend me to discover.

As for the Crossroads which recent research has brought to my attention -- I have been there only once. It was a great elaborate maze-like system which looked something like the sound booths that musicians use when recording, with rooms of varying sizes, all with clear glass walls. And as one walked through the chambers, one could see through these walls into other rooms, and each room had a different dream in it, and one could move from one dream into the next, all the while retaining lucidity. That was a vary odd night, for as I went from one room to the next, having totally separate dreams, but then during the second half of the night, I went back the way I had come, continued each dream, and picked up characters from each dream to continue on into my previous dream, and the dream before that, et cetera. A very odd occurance, even for me.

I usually excersize a great deal of control over my dreams, so I probably would not have joined here except for one particular issue I have encountered in dreaming. And that is the question of False Awakenings, which have been the bane of my mind for some time now. It started with me recording my dreams within my dreams as though I had woken up (with no prelude whatsover), but it has become increasingly (indeed, alarmingly) more realistic since. Besides from it taking a great deal of mental effort to truly wake myself up, which leaves me exhausted, it also seems that whenever I find something by which to do a reality check (the noise of my air filter, for instance, which I used not to hear in a false awakening) then seems to enter my next dream. This is an increasingly difficult problem, and I should like advice on solving it. I have a feeling I shall be working on this for some time.

I hope this is not too long a first letter, but now you all know who I am and just where I am along the road.

With Metta,

~*Aethereal_Pellucidity*~

(By the way, I hope I do not sound too Spiritualist in how I say these things. I am using the language which I am most familiar with, which is primarily Jungian and Buddhist. If any person is offended, please let him note, that I may correct.)