It has not happened often since I started posting here, but it happened last night very strongly...I had a lucid dream and took control. Monroe Institute-level shit. I'm a bit late in reporting it, because I never thought to on this site. I was on a flat surface surrounded by people I did not know, all spread out over the surface of a football field. It was a kind of twilight setting. To my right, I saw the horizon as the football stadium allowed. All of a sudden, the full moon swooped in from left to right and settled in that view over the stadium, and then just faded to nothing. Then I looked up, and saw multiple full moons at various points in a straight line overhead (Normal size now that you would normally see in the sky), stretching from horizon to horizon. Some of them had colored patterns on them. For some reason, when I get to that point of seeing more than one moon in a dream, I have learned that that is my trigger to know I am dreaming. The trigger prompts a "Dude, this is not real" response, and so I did what I always try to do in that state. Try to fly. My method of trying to fly in the lucid state is to jump as hard as I can from the ground, and then keep going up. It worked! It worked for about 5 jumps, was getting higher and higher, but then I was pulled out of the dream from hearing the sound of rain outside, and other noises. That is fun shit, man. It is really funky to have that experience.
When I was a kid I used to have very vivid flying dreams. I'd take a running start and be off flying. I would zoom high and low, around trees and buildings, and then land on my feet and start over. I haven't had many of those in a long time, but every so often while meditating I go off into a dream like state like when I was a kid. The most vivid dreams, actually nightmares in the more recent past, although 10 years ago now, was when docs prescribed anti depressants. Holy f***, pure night terrors, scared the crap out of me, and wife said I would be screaming and moaning. I got off that crap, and really leaned into meditation.
Were they the SSRI class of antis? Vivid dreaming is a known side-effect of some of them. Too bad yours was nightmares.
That's pretty cool. Another cue is looking at one's hands to awaken within a dream. There's a branch of esotericism that claims developing this skill is advantageous upon death, having more choice and agency in the "space in-between lives."
Indeed, I have heard of this. The idea was if you can see your hands you know you are dreaming and can go Lucid, if you cannot you stay in the uncontrolled state. Something like that. Have you ever had the fucked-up experience of dreaming while in a dream? Holy shit it is nutzo. You are in a dream, and you then think you wake up, but then realize you are still dreaming, and then REALLY wake up? That has happened to me more often than the Lucid taking control-type dreams, but not by much.
Yes, they were, and definitely not a good experience for me. I kind of went off on the doctor about it at one meeting and he indicated it wasn't uncommon.