Duality

I have experienced many "paranormal" experiences in my life, almost the whole bucket-list, yet lucid dreaming is something which I have only discovered recently. It seems to have arisen organically, answering my conscious frustrations over the years as I have asked myself, how do I make progress in communication? In the "real" world it feels as though metaphorically I am behind a 20-foot thick opaque glass window when paranormal entities attempt contact or communication. It's been very frustrating, and I most often push them aside as if to say, "Yes, I know, you're bugging me, but what do you expect me to do?"

Now today it feels like lucid dreaming will be a major gateway and a breakthrough. The potential seems thrilling. I can't be too annoyed it has taken this long and believe that all things happen in their own time.

The feature of my first lucid dream recently was the strange complexity I felt. I was standing on the deck of a ship, realised I was dreaming, but the realisation came from me being an "observer" of myself. I was literally another version of me standing a short distance behind, watching. As the observer, I was also experiencing what the primary person (me) was feeling and experiencing, as well as what I was experiencing as the (me) observer. The primary me wasn't aware of the observer. The observer was the only one who knew it was a dream.

I seemed to be in two places at once with different levels of awareness. This actually, on reflection, seems to represent lucid dreaming accurately. My awareness of realising I was in a dream literally formed itself as a point of view figure in the dreamscape whose consciousness bounced back and forth between the two figures, including senses. The observer could be in two places at once and the primary me could be in one place, oblivious.

Overall it gave me the impression that in real life my consciousness exists both in the meta or non-local space, as well as possibly multi-versions of myself in various realities who probably believe they are the only conscious version. 

I am really excited now to explore lucid dreaming, to discover more about the nature of reality, and to also have contact with deceased people and animals I've loved, as well as non-human intelligences who have all previously appeared many times to me in regular dreams.

I have only had one further lucid dream where I saw my deceased best friend enter through a door at a party and I realised I was dreaming. I went up to him and he was very kind and comforting to me. We had a short conversation about his death and how much I miss him, before unfortunately I was awakened by loud noises in the real world outside my bedroom window! One of the problems of lucid dreaming happening in the morning.

My lucid dreaming seems to have evolved after years of experiences in the hypnopompic state, where I would awaken from sleep with very clear, rounded "knowing" of certain things, fully formed (and often complex) theories or explanations just "being in my head" at that moment of awakening.

As of today, dreams I'm having are trying very hard to show me that they are dreams and I am missing the oh-so-very-obvious cues every single time... which is humourously frustrating, with me thinking when I wake up, "How could I have missed that was a dream... yet again!?" (They just play out as ordinary dreams.) I hope soon to get the hang of that initial very important step... "Aha, I am dreaming!"