Hi everyone,

I am new to this website and to learning about lucid dreams but have experienced afew over the years without knowing what they were.

I am a 31 year old male and had my first experience at about 17 years, one night at my fathers place while sleeping on the couch i awoke in darkness with the tv on and started to float around the room, i could not believe what was happening but i remembered it felt very euphoric but i was so scared or shocked that it didnt last long, i remained quiet about it and eventually read some info about astral travelling and thought this is what must have happened, i was still very young and naive at the time.

Then over the years, i would awake in my sleep sometimes before my body seemed to, a total paralysis would occur and i would feel i was being sucked down somewhere, not a nice feeling like the obe but a scary feeling, i would have to moan and struggle and till i fought it off and the usually woke up quite flustered. These still happen from time to time.

I never got lucid again untill the night of my fathers funeral, me and him never got to say goodbye even though i had the chance. It was eating me up a little and i was very confused, after a very long day and long wake i went to bed exausted and very drunk, normally i would have slept like a log but a brightness woke me, in my drunken sleepy state i was lunging for a left on bed lamp when i went lucid, we were driving in the car on the same road we were on afew weeks earlier when he was very ill, we talked and said we loved each other and i told him i was proud he was my dad, we were both weeping uncontrollably and we hugged,i remember his beard scratching my face, it was all clear as day and i woke up feeling a milllion bucks, i should have been violently hungover!

Im not religious and eventually put this down to a deep wanting within me that came out in my dreams.I didnt think he came to visit or anything like that.

That was about 4 years ago and in the last 6 months i have become lucid very often, it usually occurs after light drinking or when i feel sick, i will often wake up too early with the sun feeling sleep deprived but also slightly euphoric, once i have this feeling i know its coming, all i have to do is drift off and then suddenly " im here, ok lets go ", wherever this realm is?

Now i have always been very logical and never thought too deeply about this, but the more frequent these dreams become i see that where i go is just as real as here and now, nothing like a dream. And i also read alot of spiritual teachings that have said u are not ur body and when u die the body dies but "u" dont. Wherever "i" go in these dreams im sure my body stays in the bed.

Also i have been reading about Near Death Experiences and they sound very similar to these dreams, people leaving there bodies , euphoric feelings, seeing relatives etc....much more profound experiences than mine but, what is going on here?

Are these realms we are travelling to similar to what these people who have NDE's say about the afterlife? I have always been quite atheist on afterlife thoughts .

Whatever "we" are seem to go with us into these realms and the body stays behind. So when our bodies die, do we too??

sorry this is long, thanks for reading if u have got this far,

any thoughts would be much appreciated,

Cheers , Aliveandhere