First Lucid:

So, for anyone who has been paying attention to the weather for the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, you would know that Hurricane Gustav recently hit Cuba and Louisiana quite badly. I was caught in that maelstrom, and having ~50 mile per hour sustained winds with 80 mph gusts for half a day is not very fun. Up until this time, I had forgotten again about lucid dreaming, since school had cut into my time to focus on LDing. So I was completely surprised when the night after the storm I found myself subconsciously saying in my dream that "I am dreaming, I am dreaming", and then the clarity (relatively) I found myself in soon after. I am just guessing here, but perhaps my mind was giving me a break after such a stressful experience? Anyway, this happened a week ago and my lack of power and internet has restricted me from posting this earlier. Luckily, I wrote it down with good ole pen and paper, so here it is.

The night started off like any of my school-related dreams in which I am running from class to class not knowing what time it is, which classes I should be in, where I am, and if I have the right books. It isn't really a nightmare, just a very stressful dream. Since I was sleeping on the floor (my bedroom upstairs wasn't exactly safe) I slept fitfully without a mattress on blankets, and I woke up for mere moments many times before falling back asleep instantly. One of these times during the night, however, I fell asleep with an odd sensation I had never felt before. Though I could "see" myself running through my school, I could "feel" my still body as it lay in bed in the waking world. Without thinking much about it, I told myself that I was dreaming. Then I suddenly realized that maybe I could take advantage of this semi-consciousness, and I immediately began to say "I am dreaming" constantly. Unfortunately, the dream world began to fade, and I feared that I would lose the chance. Having no other options, I closed my eyes and intently focused on maintaining awareness and not falling into the mindless dream. When I reopened my eyes, the school had become a pale shadow of what it had been before - the colored hallways and classes and their people within had all vanished and were replaced with a plain white. Everything from floor to ceiling was white, though the structure of the school still remained. Realizing that I had made it into lucidity, I shouted joyfully (the words, I don't recall) and began to run. At this point, the lucidity faded a bit, and I guess it is because of my inexperience, but that lucid dream became a half-lucid in which I was somewhat conscious and somewhat not. The reason I say this is because while I could think as if I were awake, the sights and other senses I had are dulled, to where I focused on the idea of the action I was performing rather than all the visuals. Regardless, I figured I should try to do something, so I tried my hand at flight. Despite my efforts, I failed, but then I noticed a baseball had appeared next to me, so I decided to try to move it without physical methods. I focused on the baseball with my mind as if I were moving it, but without actually pushing on it. Sure enough, the baseball began to move as I imagined it should, but oddly numbers appeared above the baseball designating its velocity, because when I "pushed" the ball faster the numbers increased. With this feat of telekinesis complete, I decided to try and apply the same theory to myself to see if I could fly. Sadly, the dream began to visibly fade, and instinctively I started to spin as fast as I could, but for a moment everything went black, and I feared that I had lost everything. I somewhat lost, because a less lucid and more dreamlike event occurred next. Akin to a loading screen in a game, a "loading bar" appeared on top of the black screen in my mind, with words similar to "Loading Lucid Dream", and the bar filled itself quite quickly. When the bar was complete, I returned to a lucid world, but this one was clearly dream influenced. It was a childish world, with everything cartoonish and fluffy sheep and the such everywhere. Though this setting beckoned me to relive my days as a toddler or something, I was intent on flight, and I applied the telekinetic method on myself and began to soar high above the ground. I had a feeling that the world was going to end soon, so I decided to try one more thing. It has been a pseudo-goal of mine to see the Himalaya Mountains in my dreams, but in this cartoonish world they wouldn't be their majestic self. Regardless, I tried anyway by focusing on the thought of the mountains. All of a sudden, I was high in the sky over an immensely large mountain range, but they were rocky; they had no snow on the top. This wasn't what I had in mind, so I tried one last time to warp them to my will; but I'll never know if it worked or not. In my mind's eye, the snowy mountains were there, but my body's eye told me I was looking at the bunched up bed sheets I was laying on as I slept on the floor. Looking at the sheets, they looked exactly like a mountain range in the dark room, but my head saw them as the Himalayas. I'm not sure if I just made it up or if they really were there for a moment. I instantly got up and ran upstairs to find a notebook and records all of this.

It was really amazing for me to try out so many things in my first lucid dream. Telekinesis, flight, and location-warping, as well as lucid dream defense methods, such as spinning and focus. Whenever I am lucky enough to have another lucid dream, I will focus on self-awareness by trying to see my own hands in front of me and by using strategies such as "Clarity now!" as I have seen suggested on the forum. Then I'll try to do a simple math problems to see if my awareness is really working.

So, for future references: Need a lucid dream? Sleep in a hurricane!