Hello Lucid Dreaming World... I didn't even know such a thing existed until a month ago when I stumbled upon it completely by accident. I've always been a poor sleeper and a few weeks ago someone suggested I try a sleep monitoring device (not sure if I'm allowed to mention brand names or not.. but it's the one that has a head band that links to the app on your phone).

Anyway, I started looking at the graphs and reading a bit more about the different types of sleep. I discovered all sorts of information about REM sleep which I find fascinating. I've been keeping a dream journal for a month now, and every few days or so I have what I think is a lucid dream - the dream starts and I tell myself I'm dreaming. I usually remain aware of that fact throughout the entire dream, even though I can't control much of it. I'm still a little confused if what I'm doing is actually lucid dreaming or not. They mostly happen at around the same time - between 4am and 6am and they usually only last for a few minutes before I wake up.

My main obstacle now is that my lucid dreams (if, in fact that is what they are) seem to be scripted along the lines of a story I'm writing. The story is part fan-fiction and part original, and one of the characters in it is loosely based on me. So whenever I have any lucid dreams, I find that I am simply playing out whatever part of the story I've been focusing on recently. It's not unpleasant, actually it's kinda interesting to see things I've written playing out visually, but I'm just wondering if this is cheating. Should I be trying to direct my lucid dreams towards other stuff?

I have many more questions, so I'm off to do some searching through the other forums. Thanks for reading.

JaS.