When I was younger and had nothing better to do, I did a lot of reading on the internet about parapsychology. Mostly I read about astral projection but I did read a bit about lucid dreaming. I never was able to achieve either and that was a little discouraging.
Once I hit my later teens, I had bigger priorities such as partying and girls. 
I had forgot about most of what I had learned, but in the back of my mind I always thought about it.
It wasn’t until I watched a movie called Waking Life that I really started to look into this a bit.
It started with a reoccuring nightmare I had (this happened before I saw the movie). I’d be running through my parents house in the dark trying frantically to turn the lights on. Of course, that doesn’t really work in a dream. The dream would scare the hell out of me and it started to happen often. It got to the point where as soon as I couldn’t turn the lights on, I would think to myself that I was dreaming and then tell myself to wake up (and I always did).
I didn’t really understand the significance of this at first. Not until I saw the movie and then I understood why I could never turn the lights on.
This lead to my first real lucid dream. Interrestingly enough it contained a false awakening as well. I woke up in my dream and went to the hall and I thought just for kicks, I would see if the lights would turn off and of course, they didn’t. I got all excited about this and woke up.
After this one, I started to do some reading on lucid dreams and learned more about reality checks and about staying asleep. All this reading lead to a couple more. The next one I had, I used the spinning technique to calm down a bit. And I found that rubbing my hands together helped too. I got to try a few things like flying and looking at my hands and reading.
I still didn’t get to sleep for long though. I woke up, just to fall into another lucid dream, then woke up and repeat. It got annoying cause I was really tired and the lucid dreams were keeping me awake.
One thing I did learn is that a light switch can work, but only once or twice. In one dream I turned the lights off, then turned them on so someone could see, then when I tried to turn them off again they didn’t work and that’s when I knew I was dreaming.
It had been a few weeks since then, but I did have one the other night. This one was the most realistic one I’ve had and i had the weirdest reality check. The dream was I was watching hockey. Living in Edmonton, I am a big Oilers fan. Well I was watching the Oilers play against nashville. Then I remembered that the playoffs are on, and edmonton didn’t make it and nashville is out. This is when I asked myself if I was dreaming. I tested it by levitating a little. The I spun around, looked at my hands, checked a mirror and woke up. This one was different because in all my other dreams, it wasn’t much of a surprise to realize I was dreaming. It was like when I figured it out i thought to myself “well that makes sense cause everything around me is so weird”.
But the last one was different. Even when I figured it out, I still had a hard time to believe it.
Anyhow, my biggest problems that I need to work on is staying asleep, and cleaning up my dreams. I seem to get all excited when I realize I’m dreaming and that seems to wake me up. And what I mean about cleaning up my dreams, is that when I realize I’m dreaming, things go all sketchy. Nothing seems to flow anymore. it’s almost like I’ve got so many thoughts racing through my mind, I can only randomly pick out a few and that’s what I see. I want to learn how to concentrate better in my dreams so I can experience more.
But yeah…
Sorry for dragging this on. This is still fairly new to me, but so far I’m loving it. I just can’t wait for my next one. If anyone has any tips to build on what I’ve explained here, please let me know.
