I was dreaming this morning, quite a lot because i had 12 hours of just hanging out in bed. i had an experience i have never had before: i had a dream in which i was sort of guessing the whole time whether i was dreaming or not, but never actually went lucid. then upon waking, i actually made a conscious decision to go back to dreaming, and become lucid. but instead of going back into the dream world where i had just been (a college dining hall with a bunch of my friends), i was just in my room where i was sleeping. it may be notable that there was not a single moment between beginning this dream and being lucid: the dream began as a lucid dream right from the start. i decided to walk downstairs to eat ice cream (i just added a discussion about this as well).
this is quite different from other lucid dreams i've had for a number of reasons: one, i usually have to be in some crazy place to be able to realize that i'm dreaming and thus go lucid. so of course just hanging out in my room does not count as a crazy place. two, and this kind of follows from one, but anyways i have never began a dream lucid from the start, i always have to dream for a while before it shifts.
when the dream ended and i woke up, i decided i wanted to try it again, and i went back to sleep, and immediately entered another lucid dream, where again i was just hanging out at the house. i decided to leave and fly around the neighborhood and find pizza to eat. so again, this dream is different than other lucid dreams for the same aforementioned reasons as the first.
do you think that these are actually lucid dreams or perhaps are more accurately described as out of body experiences? i don't know much about this. but it seems like since 1. the whole 'dreams' are lucid right from the start and 2. the 'dreams' begin with me being right where i sleep, almost as if i am just rising out of bed, these experiences are something special in a way that other lucid dreams are not. any ideas about anything are greatly appreciated.
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Sometimes I start a dream out of body and then actually go into a dream. It happens that I know I am not asleep, but I am not in my body either. These dreams are called transformational dreams or shamanic dreams where the dream travels outside the dreamworld, or the dreamer takes something from the dreamworld into the consensual world(if you wanna call it that), such as consciousness.
I think you entered your dreams through out of body experiences, rather than sleep.
I've had some very intense things happen in this sort of state, so I'd say this is pretty mild. It happens, and I'd say just try to appreciate it and don't try to take advantage of it. I always think of these things as tests. Are you willing to simply accept the gift of the experience or are you looking to control it. The dream will always shrink from ego. Try to think of it simply as a gift. Things will unfold further on their own.
i think that these experiences are BOTH lucid dreams AND out-of-body experiences, because in my experience all that dreaming is is experiencing yourself outside of your physical body. but the way i perceive the out-of-body experience with my physical brain is through the translation device that is my brain so that i can make sense of the experience in a symbolic 3-dimensional representation that makes sense to my brain.