Hello, I have read about what lucid dreaming is about this past week and I found this forum too.
I don't know what to say. I have a question so I guess I can ask it here: I always had a great facility to recall dreams with detail. These last few days I started to write down my dreams and today I had a lucid one. I didn't really practice anything else than dream journaling, because I found the idea fun anyways. So, as for what I see, I think some people have great difficulties when it comes to have lucid dreams and I could have one without so much effort.

In my lucid dream, I wasn't in control as much as I thought I would. I was in the dream, I was realizing it was a dream, and I was doing whatever I can't in real life because I knew it was a dream. Almost everything happened on a beach. But at the same time, I realized (I'm 15) that my mother, who also went to be beach, sometimes looked at me while I was doing all sorts of weird stuff, and even though I was in a dream, instead of thinking "what does it matter, she's not really here", I was thinking, "if she says something about this in real life I'll act like I don't understand and she'll conclude that it was her own dream".

Now that I'm awake I realize she hasn't had that dream like me, but if I'm aware it's all a dream, is it normal to think like that? perhaps everything was so real that I couldn't fully remove the idea that it's not. Also, I was the whole time with a friend talking him about how great lucid dreaming is, without realizing he was in my mind.

Finally I have another question. Is it normal to activate one's senses (gustatory, for example) during normal REM sleep? if it happens, does it mean I have a greater state of awareness than if I hadn't activated my senses during the normal dream? I have had usual dreams during REM sleep where I recall I could taste food and touch things. I once was eating chocolate cake and all of a sudden I realized it was soil and I bit a worm. It was horrible. I also recall touching people. Everything was exactly as I imagined it to be. Is this normal during REM sleep or was I just close to lucidity? I had a lucid dream or two when I was very young.