I Did It! Or Rather, It Happened!
I had my first lucid dream just last night!
I'd fallen asleep around 2:00am on a friend's couch and was sleeping quite poorly. I slept on and off for about five hours, and upon waking at 7:30am, I thought I was up for the day, but decided to try for another chunk of rest. I closed my eyes and stared at the faint patterns beneath my eyelids (my usual technique for falling asleep), and the patterns quickly developed into fully-formed hallucinations. I yielded to the visuals, and I began to feel as if my body were being accelerated and pulled in alternating directions. I then entered a full environment. I knew that I was dreaming, and tried to exert my will on the place, but nothing changed. I may have made a little hole in the ground. It was a strange location, however, in that it looked like it was rendered on an old videogame console (SNES, Sega Genesis). I snapped quickly to another videogame environment, tried to change it, failed, and then woke up.
I'm dying for feedback on this. I maintained my awareness throughout the whole experience. I remember thinking "I'm hallucinating, I must be falling asleep, I must be dreaming." I was terribly excited, but the transitions between states were very smooth. I only woke up because my friend had put a cigarette in my mouth in response to my looking "absolutely serene" while sleeping. I was too thrilled to be angry!
Did I accidentally pull a WILD? In any case, I'm ecstatic! More please! Any comments are much appreciated and will assist in future attempts to curry favor from the dream gods.
Darrell
