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When I was little I used to have some lucid dreams, but I didn't really think much about them at the time. Later, I stopped having lucid dreams.

A few years ago, I kept waking up in sleep paralysis. And when it happened I would do one of two things. I would either force myself to wake up, or I would fall back asleep, and I could move my mind into a dream and be completely lucid pretty easily.

Well, then the whole sleep paralysis thing stopped. And I kept having dreams about this person I know. They were very pleasant dreams, but never lucid, and I missed the lucid dreams.

So I started sort of obsessing over lucid dreaming. I would read about all kinds of techniques. I kept a dream journal. I paid insane amounts of attention to every little detail from my dreams. I started checking if I was dreaming all the time.

And I started lucid dreaming again. It started out kind of slow. I'd be in a dream, and I'd realize I was dreaming, but most of the time I would wake up pretty quickly, or the world would sort of fade out.

So I started paying more attention to details in reality. Keeping my mind focused enough on my surroundings so that in my dreams it will be able to hold my surroundings in place. I'd stare at pictures and objects until I could recreate them fully in my mind. Every detail, every texture. And my dreams did become more vivid. I wasn't having many lucid dreams at that time, but I remember at one point I was in a dream and I noticed it had "better graphics than real life". I didn't become lucid in that dream, though. (It was quite an interesting dream, though. Something had happened and my mind was repressing it, and I was a complete emotional wreck. We were in this like... place where people lived secluded from the rest of society. It's hard to explain what it was like. But we had this little house. And my boyfriend was sleeping on one of the beds. And I asked this other guy if he'd be my protector. And I made combat boots appear on my feet, but I don't think I really had combat boots, because everyone else seemed to not see them. And then my brother had this fake knife and I was crying because he was acting like he was going to kill kittens. But my protector had gone to sleep too. But the guy I liked in 4th grade was there and he was still awake. And he sneaked the kittens out the back door when my brother went outside for a few minutes.)

But anyway... I kind of went off topic there. But my dreams at that time were really vivid. And I actually had a lucid dream, but I woke up fairly quickly, but it was vivid. But I found if I kept my eyes closed and didn't move, and visualized something from my dream I could reenter it. So I did that a few times. Sometimes it worked, sometimes whatever I was visualizing would change. Like one time the ladder from the playground in one of my dreams turned into a brick and I found myself in an old museum.

But then I would stop dreaming for weeks at a time in between dreams. So I just stopped trying, and I started dreaming again. And now they're almost always lucid. Another strange side effect, I am aware of my thoughts as I'm falling asleep, and I actually remember thinking things as I fall asleep. I'm going to have to remind myself to try and focus them and see what happens. Most of the time, my thoughts as I fall asleep are disconnected and random. There are spiraling shapes and random words and objects and ideas are connecting in my mind. It feels kind of like a tornado and I'm catching glimpses of things in my subconscious rushing around.

I think if I were to try to focus those thoughts more and try to focus my lucid dreams on things other than people I find cute then I could use lucid dreams for some kind of spiritual journey.