Thread: I think I experienced a fully conscious lucid dream?

I just noticed how freaking big this post is after writing it out. This happened last night and I spent most of the day thinking about this so yeah... I'll try to break it down into sections at least.

Long story short: I fell into sleep paralysis while being fully aware, and I'm not sure whether what I experienced was more of a lucid dream or more just me being awake and "half-dreaming".

Onset:
I tried to will myself into having a lucid dream as I was falling asleep. Just as I had gotten into a comfortable enough position to fall asleep, this wave of vibration-sort of feeling started to hit me, and I realized it was the SP kicking in, I was in the transition of going to sleep, or was already asleep and fully aware. Either way, it was unreal. I could clearly still feel my body lying on the bed, but it was like my consciousness was sort of going off somewhere else. I think it was close to what an OBE is like. From what I heard the vibrations for an OBE are really intense, which was what I was feeling, but no matter what I did I couldn't separate myself from my physical body laying on the bed.

Active LDing (I think?):
I then started to think in the sense of "I'm asleep right now, so I must be dreaming", and I started imagining stuff like soaring through the sky, changing from scene to scene, seeing myself as the character in various video games, and a whole bunch of crazy stuff. Although all of this felt only slightly more realistic than daydreaming, it was nothing like an actual dream where I'd have to question whether it was a dream or not. It was like I was TOO aware, it made my dreaming seem too fake. My reality was always tied down to my body laying on my bed in sleep-paralysis mode.

Having doubts:
It went on for what seemed like a couple hours. I started to wonder if maybe I would be like this all night. Would I "wake up" feeling like I haven't slept at all? It really seemed like I was asleep, because before the SP happened I was really sleepy and now I felt like I was getting the sleep I needed, my mind was wide awake and hyperactive from dreaming so much. My breathing felt like it was on autopilot. None of that sleepiness from before was there. I actually doubted whether the body I felt laying there in bed was actually real or if it was part of a dream itself. If that were the case, I must've been having a non-LD of me being in bed thinking I was LDing... weird...

Figuring things out:
After a while, I think I started feeling as if I was going through the sleep cycles. I remember the vibrations and hyperactive dreaming (which is the REM stage) slowed down a lot, and I guess I then went into the deeper stages of sleep. By then I was content to forget about having LDs and just doze in and out and kind of get lost in thought. I started to think in terms of the 2 halves of my brain. For some reason I felt the right side of my brain was the part that was conscious, and the left side was the part that was asleep... it made sense at the time. Then I thought about other random stuff such as trying to figure out what "existence" really is, how time is actually just one continuous moment, and the past and future are just illusions... mostly stuff that you'd normally only think about after smoking too much pot.

The last part I remember:
And it STILL didn't end there. I eventually felt the vibrations of SP kick in again, which I figured meant I was going back into the REM stage. This time, I hoped I would be able to fall into a deeper dream state. I don't remember what happened after that but I guess my consciousness fell asleep completely and I woke up remembering all of this experience clearly. Though I wasn't able to recall any of my unconscious dreams...

So yeah it didn't feel as dreamlike as I hoped. It was still a great experience though. The thing I'm most confused about is, if I am that fully conscious, I have to wonder if it really counts as being asleep. Was I REALLY asleep? That's what I wanna know, though I don't expect anyone here to be able to answer that for me.

...I mean, my conscious mind needs to sleep too doesn't it?