I have been practicing my lucid dreaming recently, and have mostly been using WILD with wake back to bed. The strange thing is, all my lucid dreams so far have started in my bed room. I was under the impression that lucids were supposed to happen in more random places.

One of the reasons I think they start where they do is the fact that I learned about OBE's before I learned about lucid dreaming. My introduction to the topic was Nick Newport on youtube, and he mostly talked about OBEs. So when I first started, I expected to have OBEs and not LDs. However, I've never found the experiences I've had to be particularly "awe inspiring" or "amazingly clear". I also have had the ability to control thing in the dream, but not the environment, and go to places you can't go in real life. It was fun of course, but it never felt like anything I would claim "changed my life".

So, I thought, "well, I must be dreaming then, I probably wake up in my bed room because that's what my mind expects". Or so I thought, until one day I fell asleep in the library ( by accident, it wasn't a WILD), and I woke up (in a dream) in the very same library, in the very same position as I went to sleep. I thought surely this is an OBE. The thing was, however, I could still create stuff and control the environment somewhat. When I woke up from the dream, I reflected on it, and thought this still didn't feel quite "real" like I have heard OBE's are supposed to feel. "I must still be dreaming I thought".

I decided then that they are either only dreams, or that OBE's are probably just lucids that people interpret as being "out of body", that was until this one morning about a month or so back. I wasn't even trying to have a lucid or OBE, in fact, I had just given up on my last wild attempt. I got up for a few minutes and then passed out on the bed. I had not past out for five seconds when I immediately entered something like an OBE, it was extremely realistic. I got up for about five seconds out of my bed (in the OBE, or dream) when I felt a horrifying presence, I don't know what it it was, if anything, but it scared the hell out of me. I didn't see anything but I heard extremely heavy breathing, and felt something breathing on my neck, it was then that I woke up and gasped for air; my heart was racing. It was then that I thought, "wow that felt so real, maybe that was an OBE". I thought about it for a while but soon began to wonder whether or not it was just a regular dream, and the fear just made it more real. I don't know I haven't been able to duplicate the experience since.

So, what do you think? Am I having lucids or OBEs? Are OBEs obviously indistinguishable from regular dreams, or do OBE's and lucids feel basically the same? Do lucids usually start in the place that you feel asleep? How can I guarantee an OBE over a lucid dream, or vice versa. How can I turn a lucid dream into an OBE, or vice versa.