Thread: My somewhat disturbing first lucid dreaming experience

This actually occurred a while back, but I just now thought to share it. For a while, I was very interested in lucid dreaming. I couldn't do WILD, so I kept doing checks during the day in hopes that I would perform them in dream and achieve lucidity. Finally, one night I looked at my hands, and saw that I only had 4 fingers. That's odd, I thought. Suddenly, I realized this was a dream. I felt myself waking up in the dream, and it felt completely like real life. As I looked forward to see where I was in this dream world, all I could see was a huge, dark gate made of intertwined, swirling, complex machinery. Inside the gate was a pitch black cave, and the walls were made of this machinery as well. It was like gears made of every single memory I ever had. Finally, on the top of the gate was a mechanical face, which was laughing at me on a timed interval. I woke up quickly, and have never had dream as vivid as that one. That experience made me really question if exploring the subconscious really was such a good idea.