I've been an avid explorer of lucid dreams since I was a child, and now I see them as a way to interact with my abstract/subconscious mind. Lucid dreaming has always been a nice retreat and a place to rest and recover, but I never found too much importance in what I saw and experienced until I had an unusually vivid lucid dream. The dream was set in a sort of underground civilization of people who looked similar to humans but seemed to have sharper or more exaggerated features, almost like elves in high fantasy. All I can remember is that they were hiding from these sort of beast like creatures who had driven them underground. However what really struck me in the dream was how vivid everything looked, as if it had an extra edge of definition - textures were more rich and pronounced, colors were brighter and more natural, and I could more acutely feel the various grooves and patterns of objects when I touched them. At one point I was captivated by a scarlet colored fur cloak that was hanging on a door, the hairs on the cloak seemed to be very subtly flowing and the fur had an amazingly soft look and feel to it, very much like the way certain fabrics looked when later in life I experimented with psychedelics.

After this dream my intentions in my lucid dreams became more serious. At first I was somewhat frightened by the fact that I could experience a dream that was more vivid and lifelike than waking reality. Later I wanted only to explore my dreams fully as I drew inspiration from the beauty and complexity that I saw. I have had several other dreams that came close to the level of enhanced detail that my first hyper-realistic lucid dream possessed, including one very recently that has motivated me to discover how I can achieve this state, and ideally how I can enhance all of my dreams to this level. I feel like I take a little bit of that clarity back with me every time I have one of these dreams, so I hope that I can master this experience and use it to achieve a wider conception of reality and of its many illusions.