Hey everybody!

I've been lucid dreaming since I was a kid, with inconsistent results. Around 6th grade, I spent a while trying to get back to this mystical city of green crystal and black obsidian, which I had seen once in a non-lucid dream. I remember becoming lucid in a warehouse setting, and thinking back to instructions I had read online about summoning things in dreams-- I pictured the city as best I could, then turned around and looked behind me. There was a cardboard cutout of a city standing there-- not quite the same city, even-- and I could walk around it and look at it in all its mundane glory.

I've always wondered at the significance of this experience. Was this a manifestation of limiting preconceptions? Or simply a misunderstanding of how to work with the dream, born from inexperience?

I'd be curious to know what you guys think. Do you have any reliable techniques to go someplace specific in a dream? Also, how much do you find you can control a lucid dream versus go with the flow, and work with the contents that the dream presents on its own? I've read a little by James Hillman (much of which I found mystifying) but he has this idea of respecting the dream image on its own terms rather than killing it through interpretation. Makes me wonder, is it better to work with the contents of the dream lucidly rather than try to force the dream to obey your desires?

(That said-- that green and black city is still my white whale, so any tips would be welcome)