Dream Consciousness?

Ok, so I am not sure if there is a similar post about this out there, so forgive me if I am doing some repeating! Its some recent experiences and thoughts of mine.

A little bit of background: I am someone with high dream recall but only lucid dream once and a while, perhaps only once a month. Last summer I read Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, by Robert Waggoner. I found his experiences and thoughts about dreams having consciousness very interesting. During the past couple months I have been getting back into lucid dreaming, particularly these last few weeks. I have also been doing a tiny bit of meditation here and there too.

Anyway, I have had a couple experiences with lucid dreaming lately that go beyond what I have experienced before.

In one dream (in the middle of a sequence), I am in a bedroom with a bed and desk, and I become fully lucid and then remember I should try to meditate in the dream. I have never tried this before so I did not know what to expect. I sat down on the bed and crossed my legs, and closed my eyes. As I began to let go, very strange things started to happen. I felt myself (in my dream body presumably) "flipping" out of my body. It felt like I was doing somersaults out of my head. I was not consciously trying to do any of this, it was happening of its own accord. Then I was floating in a void, then rapidly falling down. I thought that it might be like I was in an OBE, so I thought "fly up" and immediately I was flying upwards at an incredible speed. Soon distant stars started appearing and a few bright blue stars came into view in front of me. Then I was back inside the room I was meditating in. I went over to the desk, and a dream person was floating in front of me and above, sort of. He was talking to me about what just happened. I had paper in front of me, and was determined to draw images which seemed to describe my experience. Then, recalling an idea from a past life regression hypnosis, I placed the drawings in my dream pockets lol, so I would remember when I awoke. After waking up out of it, the intensity of this experience was still affecting me, and I remembered the drawings in my dream as well.

The other dream, which actually occurred first, happened towards the middle of it. I was in movie-mode watching what looked like a caveman's head, and its forehead kept growing larger and elongated. All in a line, one after another, and it seemed to me that I was seeing the process of evolution. Something to do with the head, or skull, evolving and growing. This kept happening until this growing reached a point where something snapped in him and in myself; I saw this flower pattern appear above his head with a vortex flowing out, and I felt a kind of "snap" in my own head and mine growing. I was instantly completely lucid and aware. Then I literally felt myself launched out of my (dream) body and things got strange. I did not initiate this at all. I felt to be in multiple places at once, heard voices including my dads, and voices that sounded like outside. I didn't feel associated with any kind of body or form like I usually do in dreams, and felt very airy and detached, and part of multiple dimensions. Hard to describe.

Then, jump to a couple nights ago. I became fully lucid in the dream, and was in some type of airport I think. I saw a big piano near me, and was about to go play it and see how realistic it would be. But, then I remembered I needed to experiment with meditating again in the dream, about transcendence. So I sat down at the piano bench, facing away from the piano, and closed my eyes. I remembered the other dream I had about meditating and flipping out of my dream body. I then felt myself sinking out behind myself and kind of started to freak out a little bit. But I assured myself I was dreaming, so nothing could hurt me. I felt that I was melding or being pulled out into the piano, or behind me. I was hearing a bunch of crunching sounds, like a bunch of legos were around me and I was being locked into a space. It felt like I was in some kind of spherical space but it felt like I was in a bunch of legos. Then, I saw the room I was in, but the dream (not me) then was moving me forward at an incredible speed. I was flying through all these walls, but then I neared a wall that I could not touch. Despite my perceived speed, I could not approach the wall. Its as if the philosophical example of not ever moving in space, since it would take an infinite number of steps to reach the door, was being shown to me as an example in the dream. I felt everything around me very blurry, and felt as if I was moving at a high velocity, but as close as I got the the wall I never reached it.

Kind of off subject, but talking to dream people has been interesting too lately.

Anyway, this brings me to wonder about the possibilities of dreams really having some kind of consciousness. Whether they are the result of our own consciousness, collective, or other, its really making me wonder. I know that I would usually prefer to fly around and have fun, but I think this deserves some attention. I also know that there are those notions of "dream characters" just being created by our unconscious. It just seems to me that its time to re-examine if everyone in our dream, and the dream itself, really isn't that intelligent, or if there is more yet to explore and learn. I have never experienced anything like this before in non-lucid dreams or lucid dreams. Has anyone else experienced or encountered the dream doing something different than usual?