Huh. Reading OP, it seems I do some of the steps as a habit since childhood. Spend a year sleeping on a couch and then after getting used to it, adjust back to sleeping in a bed again when you regain it, and fighting forces of habit formed from both surfaces. That kicks you into Lucid-gear immediately as a force of habit, since you fidget like mad, and readjust as you fall asleep (or while sleeping; flopping back and forth and fidgeting, from lying on back, to lying on chest, according to a time-lapse recording I did when doing some research).
When in a Lucid state, does anyone ever have recurring themes, nouns or verbs (Or Involuntary Totems; much like in Inception, except in a sense, it's a part of you only you can recognize as a self-identifier; I suppose, in case you're being possessed or something, or maybe sleepwalking, and your body's on full-autopilot.)? For example, One of my many involuntary "totems" always involves some variant of my town, or one of 7, now 8 people (3 of them I already mentioned previously; the girls from the crazy-ass nightclub dream), that I think I might be interacting with psychically, because they have free will in these dreams; in other words, despite lucidity, they won't listen to my override commands via In(tuitive) Control.
Furthermore, they seem to have similar controls, though different delivery methods, and are total ball busters while at it. Any dream involving them will only lead to mayhem. Thank goodness we aren't accounted for all the collateral/physical/psychological damage we cause in our worlds. Having god vs. god battles is fun, especially with these nut jobs. Basically, it's like playing games with other kids in recess during school, except we're all adults. Although, that hasn't stopped us from changing our ages to kids again, and having a more genuine experience, except with our imagination manifested as part of the reality. I mean, imagine being told that we're hit by a fireball, and now we lose; and we respond by pulling something out of the ground, and chasing them with them running away and trying to pull something else out from hammerspace.
Now, in Meatspace, nobody sees anything, and the kids (or adults acting like kids) are gesturing the stuff and the actions involved; however, in Dreamspace, replay the same scenario, and I got burned, pull an Fullmetal Alchemist, and transmuted myself a gun from the ground (clapping my hands, and pressing on the floor for a moment, and then pulling a gun almost as tall as myself from out of the ground), and am chasing the person that fireballed me, and they pulled out a treasure chest out of nowhere, and are looking desperately for something to counter a BFG9000.
I've had my town turn into all kinds of things, but it always had a similar build to how I would navigate my town normally everyday. The fact I can consistently navigate this town, regardless it's format, is in itself a sort of "totem" for me. Familiar, yet sufficiently different. Actually, that's my main recurring theme overall I've noticed. I mean, even controlling aspects of my dreams in full-lucid, plays out like I was playing a game, using cheat codes, or hacking the code directly as I play. The control schemes are familiar, but the application is a tad more different. It seems my controls and databases/databanks/memories/etc. are more like a point & command interface with fractals as my visual interface, giving me exactly the info I need, as well as compressing it and tossing it to other Lucids; kinda like memory sharing.
Seems like I can reference some posts relevant to topic:
My own experiments with Lucid DreamingOther Lucid Dreamers / Post-Lucid Contact ∟Earlier post than above:
First Contact... In a long-ass time.EDIT:
Wow... Looking back at the posts and their timestamps, the message has been consistent the whole time, to present day. My patience has been getting rewarded overtime; including getting really vivid dreams again, and some waking lucid dreaming is returning too (There's more, but this is more relevant). Something tells me there's gotta be more to this field, and there's either not enough thought put into it, or enough thought had been put into it, and it has been locked up for being too dangerous or something. Based on experience, waking lucid dreams are interesting; just keep in mind the totems (It sets apart the dreamer/artist from a babbling psychopath), and you can tell the realities apart. Think of it like imagination set to 11, or alternatively: Hallucinate on cue and override it immediately. Funny enough, I've had that going on since before I did any drinking or drugs. Back in the day,
I was a crackpot without requiring either one. Oftentimes, I was mistaken for autistic (probably actually was); I was just not interested in someone or something, and found the inside of my mind more interesting. A true case of 'shutting-in'; I go out still, but I stay inside my cozy mind.
EDIT EDIT:
Speaking of the above, I did my own research on the 'waking lucid dreaming' (Or more like being awake while asleep; or auto-pilot meets sleep mode), and I think it really could be a means of psychic communication or application if harnessed properly. I mean, recurring people, familiar places, at times, that can be revisited (even remotely), and even amplifying your senses to account for what your mind can render, weight balance and mass, and so on. Nothing Freddy Kreuger-ish yet; so no cutting things up with a blade only I can see and feel, and yet can cut things with in meatspace (which could make for probably one of the most useful Swiss Army Knives ever, with no mass at all to it either).
See why I said earlier why this could be dangerous? What if your mind could make things real (while reality fills in the blanks), if possible/necessary (have fun pulling one over with non-euclidean stuff)? Hell, what if that was it's own uni-/multi-/meta-verse?