Welcome! It sounds to me like you've basically stumbled into lucid dreaming and learned how to master it, pretty much on your own!

I can't speak to the occult, but from what I know of lucid dreaming, I'd explain what you've described like this: You basically found the DILD technique with your own version of a reality check - you performed an action in waking life so diligently, you found yourself doing it in a dream and then used that to tell that you were dreaming. Most lucid dreaming technique reality checks would be a little different, like trying to breathe through a pinched nose, then when you do it in a dream and CAN breathe, it cues you to the fact you're dreaming, but yours had a similar effect. In a lot of the training, being focused and diligent is the key, so you could say this helped you here. Once you had your cue in place, you then had great success in telling when you are dreaming and then becoming lucid. You could then argue that with this in place, you then just became better and better at becoming lucid in your dreams and working on dream control on your own, also mastering that!

I think you'll find that what you can now do is what almost everyone on this forum is striving towards.

Just my two cents!