Today is my birthday. I've been having lucid dreams since I was very young, at least since I was 4. Like others in this forum, I developed the skill as sort of a defense mechanism against nightmares. After that, the monsters became my friends.

I have this sense that the dreamworld actually *taught* me how to LD, how to fly, how to manifest objects, etc. For instance, I had this recurring nightmare where this group of angry bandits would capture me, take me up on top of this mountain cliff and throw me over the edge. I'd get that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach and wake up terrified. I had this dream over and over and over. Until one day, instead of falling to my death, I learned to swoop up and glide down to safety. The dream kept recurring and each time I got better at swooping and flying, as well as being lucid. The bandits were transformed into my friends and teachers. They were no longer evil. It became one of my favorite dreams and I discovered that if I flew off the cliff and over the forest, at the far end of the valley was a wondrous amusement park where I'd spend the rest of the night exploring and playing.

I began to have these regular "training dreams" that would teach me some aspect about lucid dreaming. They were abstract, without a "story" to go along with it. Like, just a platform floating out in space where I'd train to levitate, call objects into being. Sometimes there would be a voice, instructing me in technique.

Lessons like: the dream is a direct manifestation of your thought. If you decide that you will see an object appear in your hand, you will see it, without exception. The tricky part is this: the dream will just as easily manifest your doubt. So if in the same moment you think 'I want to see an apple in my hand' you also think 'what if this doesn't work?' -- it won't work. You must arrest all doubt. Only then will you experience the total emancipation of your will.

Even today, "teachers" will appear in my lucid dreams, transmitting some esoteric lesson on the nature of thought, waking life, existence itself. I get the feeling that they are all the same teacher, in different guises. Some are more sinister. Some, benevolent. He likes to scare me so that I'll really pay attention and take him seriously. The only nightmares I ever have anymore are LDs where I can't wake up because he is preventing me. He does this to prove he has more power in the dreamworld than even I do. That is scary.

I started this thread on a whim. I think I'll post here from time to time, some of the more important or crucial LDs that have shaped my life.

I know I'm not alone here in saying that lucid dreams have fundamentally altered my understanding of the world, both asleep and awake. They unlock a new chapter in the human story, one that has only begun to be read, let alone understood.

The last great frontier is the inside of our heads. We are the explorers.

It's our job to bring back to the peasants some of the treasures that are out there. Not simply to prove that there is a there there. But to demonstrate that what we bring back from that place can have tangible, positive effects on the "real world" that monopolizes peoples' attention. That dreams can teach. That lucid dreams open up direct dialogue with the subconscious/collective unconscious/who knows what it is. That brilliant ideas, creative insights, great music, great art can be downloaded on demand from that land inside our heads – by anybody who bothers to learn how.