Alright, I’ve been trying to have a lucid-dream off-&-on for a couple years now, but I got a little more serious' about it recently & picked-up the REM-Dreamer. Last night I had a dream, and in the dream I came upon a situation and thought to myself, "Wait-a-second... This is unusual...? Am I dreaming...?" It registered to me as yes, I was dreaming, so I began to try and take control. I tried making my forearms glow blue. (Don't ask...) At 1st it didn't work, but after I really concentrated on it, I managed to get it to work. It ended shortly thereafter, (I think maybe cuz I closed my eyes in the dream to do something and I didn't use any of my concentrating’ techniques such as rubbing my hands or what-not…)
So my question is this: None of this felt' any different than a regular dream. I've heard so much about how vivid and realistic lucid-dreams are, but this had none of that.I've had dreams that felt real before, and I did have an instance about a year ago where I think I became lucid for a few seconds in a dream. I was on the floor of the back seat of a car, tho, and I think I was being abducted. I tried kicking the driver, my adrenaline shot-up, and I woke-up. I was trying particularly hard to have a lucid-dream at the time, and I was very conscious in the dream, and it felt really real’.
Is it possible I dreamed that I had a lucid-dream, or am I just getting unnecessarily philosophical here… 8op 
Or is it one of those things where `you’ll know if you have one’…?
Thanx in advance! 
u say u were concious
but had no control of the dream
thats as close as youll get to LD
but to LD u need to have control
i dont know what to call your experience maybe some one else ccan help
In my opinion it sounds like a LD with a low level of lucidity! If not it might also have been a FLD, sometimes it’s tricky to figure it out. The awesomeness and vividness of LD’s you’ve heard about are usually linked to higher levels of lucidity.
You can be lucid and not be in control! If you had planed to make your arms glow then that’s ok, but if after you woke up you though "where the heck did that idea come from!? 
" … well, I get crazy ideas when I have low lucids too 
Anyway, lucid, low lucid, false lucid… whatever it is remember it’s a success! You’re close! Keep practicing and try not to get too frustrated and you’ll get a vivid LD soon! 
That does sound like you were lucid. I had an LD once where I could do anything…
Except talk.
You DID realize you were dreaming, and that’s lucidity there. Many can’t differentiate because they feel like nothing really happened or weren’t in control, and think what you DO is an LD and not the fact that you know you can while dreaming. You were clearly temporarily conscious in-dream.
However, it’s possible you lost lucidity and then had an FLD when you were testing it.
Thanx guys. & I think you’re right, Mattias. I think it may have been a low-level of lucidity. I guess it never really occurred to me that there might be degrees of it. I always just kinda thought of it as an absolute; you either are or you’re not. But, yeah, I had definitely planned to try and make my forearms glow, so I’m fairly certain I was in control for that part.
So I guess I’m not understanding, Download, when you say that you had an LD where you could do everything except talk. If you’re lucid, & you’re in control, can’t you just…i dunno…will' yourself to talk...? How does that work, exactly...? Or say I become lucid, and in the dream I was having, I was in my house or something at the time I became lucid, and I decide I wanna go to DisneyLand, how do I go about doing that? I heard that saying to yourself, "When I walk through this door, I will be at DisneyLand," and then walking thru the door can work. Or spinning. I heard can increase lucidity as well as change your surroundings. Are either of those true, or is there a better way? Also, how do you affect the way things react’ when you’re lucid & in control…? If it’s sunny outside can I just say, “Nah…I think it should be raining,” & it will…?
Or, I’ve heard that things like light-switches don’t generally work well in dreams, and that you can use that as a reality check. But if I’m in the dream, and I’ve become lucid (because I intend to intentionally try the light-switch as a reality-check) aren’t I just willing' the lights to come on, so they will? Okay, I'm getting off-track here... lol Sorry. Just been [i]extremely[/i] interested in this, and have been for quite some time, so I guess I have a lot of questions, and I've never posted before. Am I even posting in the right section of the forum...? lol! This really helped, tho. Thank you. And while I wasn't able to repeat my previous low-level’ LD or become lucid again last nite, I will keep trying, & know for sure what to do next time.
I’m happy you’re extremely interested! 
That can take you far! 
doing stuff in LD’s can depend on a lot of things: confidence, fear, expectation, insecurity, your rational mind getting in the way, practice… About Download not being able to talk, there might have been a way for him to be able to talk, but the subconscious mind is ALWAYS above you, so if, for some reason, it doesn’t want you to talk, you won’t! 
It’s kind of hard to tell you exactly what I mean, you’ll just have to experience it yourself to understand it fully For example, some people can’t fly. They jump up in the air and fall back down, they yell “This is my dream and I want to fly” and that doesn’t work for them, but they get a jet pack and they fly fine! Sometimes you have to use some tricks like that.
Of course with practice you’ll get a feeling of how to control things better…
The “When I walk through this door, I will be at DisneyLand” works for many people. Not for me though I guess I’m not very confident when I say it. The thing is these things can vary a lot from dreamer to dreamer and from dream to dream. I’ve had light switches work fine in my LD’s. But in others they just don’t I’ve been able to teleport with spinning a few times. You just try different things (just like the LD induction techniques) until you start understanding what works best for you, what gives better results.