Hi thesleepinginsomniac ! Welcome to LD4all ! 
It’s generally easier to be unconscious that conscious ! Don’t practise at all for a month, and you’ll see the results. 
Perhaps you can also change your sleeping position.
About making your experience better, it would have been a good start if you haven’t read Castaneda. Great books indeed ! But all the Castaneda’s readers I know have had their best nightmares due to them.
I think that we have to doubt about some of their assertions. Do you remember the shared dream Castaneda had with La Gorda? They faced a tiger : Castaneda was afraid because he believed his dream to be “real”, since La Gorda told him “It’s just a dream”. Probably, Castaneda and La Gorda didn’t receive the same teachings about “dreaming”, though they were both teached by Don Juan… 
or Castaneda misunderstood something ! 
What you believe about dreams is what builds the “physical laws” of your dreams. So, if you believe you’re perceiving the waking reality through them, of course, you’ll be unable to modify your dreams. And of course, if you believe the 7 foot tall girl in a blue dress to be an “inorganic being”, it will be frightening.
I’ve met a lot of such “allies” in the time (in DILD’s). Now I changed my mind about what they are : just DC’s. A lot of WILDers meet such characters, they’re common during “sleep paralysis” too. You just have to realize you’re in a dream, that nothing can harm you and say to them “Hi ! How do you do ?” or asks them why they are here, etc.
Castaneda said : “Fear is the first natural enemy a man must overcome on his path to knowledge”. I feel it finds its obvious explanation when we try to dream lucidly. 
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This discussion continues here → Part XIII
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