Hi, new and unsure of what to do.
Hi. This is kind of a long post but I didn't want to miss any detail, sorry. I'm kind of new to this whole asking people for help/advice on the internet thing and find it amazing that people are willing to freely give their time to others over an entirely anonymous and un-rewarding medium. Thanks so much for your efforts, for myself and the others who havn't thanked you. Also please grant me the benefit of the doubt and tell me if I say something that isn't kosher around here.
Ok so about two weeks ago a friend told me about lucid dreaming. I found it intriguing but once she told me how much effort it was I decided it wasn't really worth it. All I remembered from her was that when you realise you're dreaming you should rub your hands together to increase consciousness and realness of the dream.
Then yesterday I was studying and felt really exhausted, hadn't really had enough sleep the night before. So I went to sleep and I think I must've immediately started dreaming. About 10 minutes in it suddenly occurred to me that my surroundings looked it was from a dream I had a while back. Then it just clicked that this was a dream. I remembered the hand rubbing thing and quickly started doing it, as the dream at this point was very hazy and my mind was wandering a lot, then I was suddenly jolted into what I think you guys call a 'false awakening'.
I was in my room except there were two girls there I didn't recognise and after about 20 seconds I worked out I must still be dreaming. The exact second this revelation occurred to me, the scene changed again. I was in the countryside somewhere and it all looked INCREDIBLY real. Gravity was very sligtly softer than usual but other than that it was flawless, and I was 100% lucid. It was unbelievable. I seriously questioned whether I was actually awake after sleepwalking or something. Immediately I decided I should fly. I cannot describe how amazing it was. After about 40 seconds of incredibly fast flight over a huge amount of landscape with not a spot less detail than real life, I came to a huge mountain and tried to increase my speed and control my direction a bit more to get over it. From then the dream quickly lost realness and I woke up.
There were two weird things though... although I was extremely impressed with the extreme realism and accuracy when I was flying, my feelings didn't accurately reflect the way I would feel if that happened in real life (I imagine my reaction would be something more along the lines of "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"). For some reason I was quite matter of fact about it. Is this normal?
Also, I was unable to exert much control when flying. I tried to stop a couple of times and was unable to. And also sometimes had to concentrate very hard to control my altitude, but managed to deal with my lack of control by deciding consciously that when I'm flying, clipping is disabled. Like you can do with the console in half life 2, so I would just fly through any object I hit due to lack of control. It only occurred to me afterwards that this was an odd train of thought. I think I gradually lost lucidity as the dream went on. At the beginning I remember being completely myself, with all ordinary reasoning intact, and by the end seeing some giant 3 story high pidgeons on the mountain and thinking it normal.
So after a google, I found this site and read through all your guides and read a few forum messages and discovered that my experience is somewhat unusual and that I seemed to have skipped a few steps. So my main question for you guys is what should I do next? Should I start from the beginning with dream signs and reality checks etc or should I just move ahead and work on dream control and stuff? Have I missed out on some important fundamentals by skipping steps?
