Thank you for writing this. I'd heard people talk about levels in lucid dreaming before, but I had never actually read anyone outlining and describing such levels. I haven't had a lucid dream since I was in my teens, but my dreams as a child all used to be lucid. I used to be able to turn it on nearly at will. The only "level" I could say I passed was where in my lucid dream I would inevitably come to a cliff and I could feel an overwhelming urge to jump off, but I was scared. Almost always I would summon the courage and jump off the edge. As I was falling I would feel a terrible condemnation of my action coming from the universe, almost as if I were receiving some kind of massive karmic backlash for ending my own life (even though it was only a dream) and I get the feeling I had offended against the universe. I would never feel it when I hit the ground, but would often see a giant skull and crossbones flash before my face, which was the "signal" from the dream that I had hit the earth.

Other times when I was into my late teens my courage failed. Once I dreamed a man came down from the stars and taught me and two other people to fly. We practiced at first by rising only 10-15 feet at a time. It was all based on emotion. If we felt free and confident and full of a sort of effervescent joy that we had to allow to bubble up in us, we would rise. But as soon as we had self-doubts or fear we'd become leaden, falling back to earth.

One time I flew across a desert landscape and eventually got to a city. I flew up outside some 30 storey apartment buildings and across a giant billboard advertising Disneyland. I ended up landing on the roof deck of the tallest building and spending some time with some people sitting at a card table there. Then, when it was time for me to fly away again, to my great shame I had lost my all my confidence, and when I went to the edge of the roof to step off I was too afraid of falling. In humiliation I ended up having to ride the elevator down. I was earthbound.

Would love to learn how to do this again. I fear that all of the chatter and bother and mess of my waking life will prevent me from having the sort of clarity mind necessary for lucid dreaming.