1) I've had many lucid dreams, before I realized what they were called. I got to the point where I realized I was dreaming and am now occasionally able to wake myself. In fact, I've gone off several times on tangents in my dreams, where I have entire segments of me trying to wake myself up. Sometimes I can largely control what's happening. Other times, I really can't control it, even though I'm sure it's a dream.
2) I've also had dreams where I had the illusion that *I* was separated from my body - astral projection. I tested it a little bit - to a very limited degree and convinced myself that there was nothing there. The *feeling* is overpowering, really.
3) I'm highly skeptical of precognitive dreams. I don't think people who have them are lying. I know very well how convincing and seemingly real some dreams can be.
4) I used to have terrible nightmares and was a bed-wetter till about 11 yo. I also used to be an insomniac. I had a recurring dream "start/finish" sequence that lasted for years:
Prelude: I'm walking up a staircase that seems to extend forever up and down. At each landing there are (I think) 4 doors. People are walking up and down the stairs and everyone seems to know exactly what they are doing, where they are going, and why. I'm in a tense and nearly panicked state, because I don't understand what's going on. There are people running past me going upward ... and sometimes there are people running screaming and terrified in the other direction. I'm really the outsider - or so I think. I keep trying to ask people how I got there and what I'm supposed to be
doing, but no one will even look at me. They're not like zombies ... it's more like I'm insignificant.
I get tired and need to take a break, so I stop at one landing and pick a door ... then the dream proper begins - usually this was a nightmare of soem kind, though I could seldom remember it the next day. Something would transpire during the evening ... by morning, I would once again find myself exiting the door and walking once again up the stairs.
As I approached my late teens the dream sequence changed. I was still on the stairs in the dream (I had quit bed-wetting at that time and while I was still an insomniac, I almost never had nightmares). Things were very different. This time I wasn't sure why I was on the stairs, but I had grown used to it. I just accepted that I was on the stairs and I felt very comfortable. Sometimes I'd see people running past me all panicked and I'd stop them and try to comfort them and calm them down. Before long there would be a small cadre of us, and we'd pick a door to enter together. But still, when morning came, out be exiting the door alone, and once again trudging up the stairs - no longer fearful or uncertain, but tired and accepting.
Nowadays I don't know if I dream much. For the most part I'm surrounded by scantily clad women (well, among those, at least who are clad at all). I only recall 2 nightmares as an older adult. I still occasionally have the astral projection dream - maybe once every two or three years. I haven't had the stairway sequence for ages.
