dreaming of lucid dreams?

Hello everyone!
My name is Linus and I'm new here! This is my story:

A couple of months ago I spent some time in Chile (I'm from Sweden) and I read Carlos Castañeda's book The art of dreaming. So I began practicing his trick of looking at my hands once an hour.
A few weeks ago I managed to go lucid while asleep. I had a dream that shitloads of camels started running through my bedroom wall. I thought "Hell, this can't be true, I must be dreaming, I better look at my hands!". And lo and behold, my hands were dizzy, as if I shook them violently! I realised that I was dreaming and entered what I think was a lucid state. I decided to try to fly (as everyone else I guess, haha!). Of course everything went black, and then the regular dreaming started again.
Now, a few weeks after I'm beginning to suspect that I just dreamt that I had a lucid dream, since I've been thinking so much about it lately. The reason I think this might be the case is that it didn't really feel real. I think I was aware, but it was nothing like the real waking world, but more distant in a way.
Is this normal? Was I lucid? Are there any tricks to avoid this and go further? Not that I don't feel great about this dream, but I believe there's more to get out of this.
Any thoughts on this appreciated!

Hi there!

:welcome:

You dreamt you had a Lucid Dream? Did you know you were dreaming? Because you can have a Lucid Dream without neccessarily thinking "I'm Lucid", "I'm dreaming and I know it" is what you're looking for, and being able to control is what you want to do, and choosing what to do, all that kind of stuff. But then again saying that, it is possible to be half Lucid. ;)

Some personal advice would be, if you have a Dream Journal, continue with that. The way you described yourself not knowing if you had a Lucid Dream and your dreams went black and all, I think increasing your Dream Recall is something you should do. Just make a Journal, make it look pretty, and write down your dreams every morning, or in the middle of the day if you take naps.

You seem to have the Reality Checking technique perfected, so keep doing that, by reading your experience it looks like it suits you.

And that's it really, other than telling you to increase Recall using a Dream Journal, keep checking Reality, and that you might of been Lucid or half Lucid, all I can do now is recommend some links for you to visit.

To start you off, like I mentioned before, the Dream Journal section. You can find our online ones in the link following, some people like to have them in their forum signature, like me. If you want to see mine for inspiration, I've put it in a link in my Signature. Anyway, here's the forum section I'm talking about - Click

Reality Checking is the thing I think you're quite good and experienced at, but if you want to know more about them and more things to try out, I recommend you click here to visit more information and more Reality Checks - Click

Here's the tutorial section, it has good techniques for you to try out, I recommend you try some of the advanced ones (like WILD and MILD) a bit later on. You seem to be on the right track with checking Reality and all. Here's the link to it anyway - Click

Sorry to put this in the last little or big paragraph but I'd just like to mention Dream Signs. As I've said a million times, you seem to be good at Reality Checking, you can go one step further and try and catch your Dream Sign. This is where there's something or someone in your dream that is mostly, in your dream. When you see it, you do a Reality Check. For example, my Dream Sign, or one of my Dream Signs, is my old school. When I see myself in my school, I do a Reality Check, or I should do anyway. There's certain methods you can do to force Dream Signs (like SILD, PILD, UILD and TILD) but I've never tried them and I think you should only try them if you're prepared. Like, going to the toilet in your dream for example, it makes you wet the bed, but on the bright side, you know you're dreaming. That one is UILD. I can't really see a page dedicated to Dream Signs in the tutorial section but I can see it here in the "Lucid Dreaming Quick Start Tutorial", look at Step 2, or just read the whole page altogether if you want. It's here - Click

Lastly my friend, welcome to the community! We're all very friendly people here, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask! :D

Well hello Jdeadevil!

Thank you for being so kind and giving me such an elaborate answer! I've read this, understood it and finally got my ass down town and bought a nice dream journal. I've been using it for a couple of nights now and I am really looking forward to progression!

A good thing is that all the pollen makes me so tired that I sleep all day long, which gives me more time to dream! Hahaha! :banana:

Anyway, thanks a lot for telling me how important the dream journal is. Before I kind of thought of it as a silly thing that I don't need. Oh well, I'll keep you posted on any kind of progress in this thread.

Cheers!