Hello there. (Sorry this is a bit long, but I feel I need to move past this stage to move on.)

I explained some of my experiences with meditation on my "newbie post" on the newbie area, but want to post some of it here to hopefully have more responses from LD 'pros'.

I've been meditating for about ten years and every night in bed for the last two years I "watch myself go to sleep" - I track the changes in my consciousness as I fall asleep.

In both of these practices I experience a phenomenon I myself have labeled, "Dream popping": that is, an image of a dream pops into my head. One important point to note: I VIRTUALLY ALWAYS believe that the dream popping into my head is just me - in a relaxed state - remembering a dream I've actually had in the past.

On a couple of occasions I've been able to "half explore" (not lucidly) the dream environment - I can take a mental walk say, 100 metres in one direction, and either look back in the direction I came from or continue to look in the same direction. At this stage I find more of the dreamscape unfolding before me, but once again, I experience it as remembering parts of a past dream and not lucidly exploring a new dream environment.

What's occuring here? Am I close to stepping into a lucid, or am I just remembering dreams I've had in the past?

(NB: I have read the tutorial discussing Memory Footprints, but I found the description to be a little ambiguous.)