My first "purposeful" lucid dream

So about 5 nights ago I came across the topic of lucid dreaming, which spurred further investigation and eventually landed me on this and many other informational sites. After a lot of research and reading and a few attempts, 2 nights ago I landed my first LD after my 3rd or 4th night attempting to do so and it went a little something like this.

I laid in bed and attempted to "go to sleep" while my mind was still conscious. I felt sp set in and I fought to remain still and awake in a sense. All of a sudden, I got the urge to sit up in my bed and couldn't fight it. I thought I had ruined my attempt, but I noticed I had sat up with literally no effort at all, no tensed muscles, no noise even. I turned to look and I was staring at myself sleeping. I got out of bed, trying to keep myself calm because I remembered that excitement is a beginners worst enemy when it comes to stabilizing lucid dreams. I walked to my room door and attempted to open it. Since I had seen myself sleeping I guess I was under the mindset that I was some sort of ghost and that everything in the room was very real, so my hand went directly through the door handle without it moving. This troubled me, but I remembered shout commands help, so I pointed my hand at the door/wall and yelled at it to open a hole, and sure enough immediately a hole opened up exposing the hallway. I stepped through the hole into the hallway, and the pure joy at it actually working that well woke me up.

I hope to have more LD's very very soon, I'm researching it a lot and have already planned several different methods for the next week or so of sleep so hopefully one will pay off.

Congratulations on your lucid dream!
You're a very fast achiever, it took me over a month for my first lucid.
Don't be to gutted about waking up, I highly doubt anyone has had a decent lucid dream there first time, you did well not waking up straight away.

Even If I don't get another Lucid for awhile, I must say I am enjoying the massive increase in my recalling abilities. I don't know why but usually I only remember a dream every month or sometimes longer, I've never really concerned myself with them so I guess my brain figured they were unimportant and discarded them. After doing all the reading I've done over the past week and attempting to enter a LD for the past 5 nights or so, I have at least remembered dreams from almost every single night. One night I had the Lucid, the other 3 nights I remembered the non-lucid dreams that I had, and only one night did I wake up with nothing from the night before.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship with myself and my inner subconscious.

That actually sounds more like an OOBE (Out of Body Experience). Staring at yourself sleeping and your hands going through things are very common telltale sounds you're having one.

Like Josher said, what you experienced was in fact an out of body experience. Congrats however, you are a natural for doing it so quickly :) It took me months and I still haven't mastered it!