When I was a kid, mainly between the ages of 6 and 10, I think, I used to have pre-lucid and low-level lucid dreams. Back then I didn't realise they were dreams at all because I would have these as I was "falling asleep", like a sort of natural WILD happening.

As years went by I thought I didn't have dreams at all, or that I couldn't recall them, because I didn't even consider these events to be dreams. At the time, it just felt like I was very vividly inside my imagination a little while after closing my eyes, and then there would be a blank in my memory and suddenly it was morning. I know they were low-level lucid dreams because of the amount of "control" that I had (it was easy to create things, but not necessarily easy to manipulate all of the reality) and the fact that I was sort of following some kind of plot.

A lot of the dreams revolved around the same themes, the one I remember best in particular was that I was the leader of some sort of godzilla-like alien species that was visiting (invading maybe) Earth, so both me and the members of my dream species were quite... large. For context, I watched some godzilla cartoon quite a lot at the time, so I think that was a big source of that theme.

The other kinds of low-level lucid dreams were strange, by comparison. I remember being in dark rooms, and the walls of the rooms were no specific colour, they were like a dark TV static; the colour almost felt physically fuzzy to look at, if that even makes sense. I never understood these, since I only ever tried to interact with the strange environment, but nothing really ever happened, other than "impossible" physical sensations...


Eventually these stopped happening entirely and I mostly forgot about dreams and the dreamworld in general. I would usually get somewhat upset by others mentioning their dreams, because for many of the following years, I wouldn't remember dreams, almost at all, apart from nightmares; I don't know why it was upsetting exactly, but looking back I think I felt like I was left out.

Then, I found out about lucid dreaming, I don't remember how, and started reading a book from LaBerge and practiced some of the techniques, almost with success. My dream recall had been improving slightly but with some of the things I learned and with a dream journal it ended up improving drastically. Despite not being able to fully use any specific technique, I went from having no lucid dreams at all, to having about 1 per year, on average, and so it has remained, more or less.

In the meantime, I discovered that I have fibromyalgia and that I likely always did from a young age, but that's a different story altogether; I mention it because I know that the way my sleep is and has been, is strongly affected by the condition.
And my first lucid dream was an eye-opening experience. It was the first time in my life I understood what it was like to not be constantly tired, and in pain. That has remained as my main motivation to keep wanting to have lucid dreams; it doesn't even matter too much what I dream about, it simply makes me feel complete, in a sense...

Finally, to end the "short" story; I have recently been having dreams with a low-level of lucidity, more often than I would expect and with no particular effort to it. To be honest, I stopped practicing techniques about 4 years ago, and have only maintained the habit of doing reality checks, now and then. I still miss a lot of situations where there are things in waking life that in my dreams would be a clear dream sign.


TL;DR: Used to have semi-lucid dreams as a kid and only understood lucid dreams a few years ago. Want to focus some more on it again.

From here, I simply hope to make my mind more consciously aware of the dreamworld, in an indirect way, if nothing else.

I probably missed something I wanted to say, I always do, but there we are; I'll probably be reading and posting in random threads that I find curious or interesting, as I like discussing things.