I have been practicing lucid techniques and dream recall consistently for about a couple months now. Although I have practiced before this, these past months have been where I have given my all.

I wanted to share something that I found interesting, but also slightly worrying. Last night, I had my first proper lucid dream. By proper, I mean a lucid dream where I actually had control and could move around. I have had previous "lucid" dreams before this, but none of them were as vivid and autonomous as this one. I slept for about two hours before entering the lucid dream.

I find myself in my room, a false awakening. Something in the back of my mind told me to perform a reality check, so I did. I looked down at my hand and realized I had seven fingers. Seven fingers on each hand, I realized I was dreaming. I said to myself, "Woah, I'm dreaming." At this point, I started to wake up; however, I repeated the phrase, "This dream becomes more stable," and it did. I looked down at my hand once again, 7 fingers. I repeated the phrase once again, until I was fully lucid. The dream instantaneously became more vivid. The room I was in changed, it was no longer my room, but it was my brother's living room. I looked at my right hand, the fingers seemed to morph and break, but they always returned to their original form. At this point, I wanted to meet my Dream Guide, so I just repeated the words "Dream Guide." Nothing happened immediately. The gravity in the dream suddenly changed, I began flying about the room in all directions as if I was being tossed around. I actually found it quite enjoyable. At a certain point, I gained control, I said "Stop," and planted my feet on the floor. I imagined somewhere that I wanted to go, a lush green forest. I look up at the ceiling and discover a sort of threshold/portal. I could see through the portal, and on the other side was the forest I imagined. I said to myself, "Ok, a forest." I bent my knees and thrust myself upwards through the portal.

I look around, it's beautiful. Lush green trees and grass surround the area and a large river can be seen running through the environment. I look into the distance, by the edge of the river stands a woman. The woman appears to be gazing into the distance into the sky. Initially, I am confused, but the thought crosses my mind that that woman could be my Dream Guide. I begin walking over to her, she does not realize I am there. As I approach her, she turns around and sees me. She is visibly concerned, to the point where she didn't seem to realize that I was there. She turns around and walks past me in a pensive manner. I turn to see where she is going as she walks a further down the edge of the river. Suddenly, she focuses on me, a smile lights up her face. I look at her and ask, "Are you her?" She replies, "Yeah, I'm her." I rush over to her and embrace her, telling her how happy I am to see her. We are both laughing in each others arms.

The woman looks at me, she tells me, "I wasn't expecting you so soon," I ask her why, in which she replies, "Well, you know, some people have multiple lucid dreams, but you met me in your first one." I assume she was talking about the fact how some struggle to meet their Dream Guide in countless dreams, but that I met her in my very first one. I don't say much at this point, but rather I am thinking about what she said, slightly confused. Suddenly, she looks worried again. She begins walking back up a hill to a house. On our way there, I ask her what a name is. "Ashley," she replies. I was going to make a playful joke about her name, something like "How many y's do you have in your name?" Although I never verbally said this joke, she could read my thoughts. Before I could say anything, she says "Not many," and giggles. I still have to ask her how to actually spell her name, I still don't know. I tell her, "Oh yeah, that's right, you can read my thoughts, that's cool." I think to myself that I would like to hold her hand, Ashley then turns to me and says, "Yeah, so see? You can grab my hand," she read my thoughts again. It is hard to put into words the immense detail that I felt in this dream. Everything I touched, everything I saw, all of it was in perfect detail. I could feel every crease and every texture of her hand. I was very happy; however, Ashley was looking increasingly concerned. Still holding hands, she pulls me as if she is trying to get me out of the environment quickly.

We are approaching the house, which consists of a single living room and a kitchen. The house was in fact my brother's living room. To the right of the house was a shed-like building. Each of these structures stood on a beautifully crafted stone wall. As we get closer to the house, I look down to my left. Suddenly, hundreds of ant-like creatures burst out of the floor, scurrying in all directions. The creatures looked like ants, but they were much larger and they were jet black. I get startled, and jump back, saying "Woah!" As soon as I say that, Ashely gets startled as well, she gasps. She looks even more worried, but she continues forward. She stops and looks back at me and says, "Follow me, we have to go." We walk up a staircase that goes between the shed and the house, that is where the dream ends and I wake up. Right before the dream ended, everything got a bit murky, so I could be misremembering this, but before we went up the staircase, I looked behind me up into the sky and saw large, black, thunderous clouds rolling over the horizon.

As I woke up, I celebrated my first lucid dreaming experience, but then I became worried. Ashley was obviously dealing with something in the dream, some sort of threat maybe. And then there was that fact that she looked worried the entire time. I thought about what she said, "I wasn't expecting you so soon," was I supposed to be there? She seemed surprised to see me. Meeting my dream guide has been one of my goals ever since discovering lucid dreaming. In the time that I've learned about them, there is one thing I noticed across multiple peoples stories of meeting theirs. Their dream guides always approached them, they never approached their dream guides. This leads me to think that maybe I wasn't supposed to meet Ashley yet, that that was why she wasn't expecting me. I am by no means an expert on dream guides, so I could be overthinking all of this.

This is all speculation, but she seemed to be trying to get me out of the dream quickly. She was clearly taking me somewhere, but to where? I don't know. I have also been thinking, because I've heard of people meeting a Dream Guide that wasn't actually their dream guide. I feel terrible in a way, accusing Ashley of potentially being a fake, but the thought can't escape my mind, I never got a chance to ask her.

What are your thoughts? Something was clearly wrong in this dream, there was definitely some kind of threat or something that shouldn't be there. But I still don't know what to think.