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Lucid dreams – Celia Green

I find it very hard to imagine having a lucid dream and not remembering the fact on waking. Certainly when I had my lucid dreams, the first thing I thought of on waking – and thought of with great excitement – was the fact that I had had a lucid dream.
The lucid dream is so completely discontinuous with the rest of the dreaming state that the memory of a lucid dream is more like a memory of one’s past waking life, and to the subject it feels as though it has the same authenticity as any waking memory.
Of course it is possible that a very short lucid dream, or one that never becomes fully lucid, might not be remembered. But I have had ‘bad’ lucid dreams that never became properly stabilised as lucid that I nevertheless remembered with interest on waking up.
My memory of ordinary dreams is in striking contrast to my memory of lucid dreams.
I very seldom remember any of my ordinary dreams by the time I have got up. I feel that to remember them I would have to make a deliberate decision to write them down as soon as I awoke.
This is of particular interest in view of the fact that the stuff of the lucid dreams appeared to me indistinguishable from that of ordinary dreams; in other words my lucid dreams were just like ordinary dreams except that I was aware that I was dreaming...............

My memories of lucid dreams seemed to be indistinguishable in clarity and reliability from my memories of a waking experience in which I was equally interested, or to which I was paying equal attention.
Sometimes one’s attentiveness does not seem to be fully in focus during a poor quality lucid dream, and memories which result from this are comparable with memories of a rather uninteresting waking experience..................

 .............I realised that my aim was to prolong this lucidity, but at the same time the continuation of the search for the relevant book was clearly leading back to non lucidity. I realised the two aims were incompatible and decided to sacrifice the book and focus on maintaining lucidity. This did not seem too difficult so long as I did not give attention to anything else, but it did seem to require the whole of one’s attention to be occupied in this way