Vigil vs Lucid

 Here I will explain the two states of consciousness I often times speak of.

The first, the vigil state, is the state of wakefulness we experience after a night of sleep. It is the state we are in right now. We are aware we're not sleeping. We're awake in the vigil state.

At night when we go to bed and fall asleep we leave the vigil state and enter the sleep world. Most of us have our consciousness so asleep that when we "wake" up, meaning when we return to the vigil state the next morning, we have no recollection of our activities during the sleep state.

Sometimes we remember events from the sleep state and we call them dreams. These dreams are just memories of what we experienced in the sleep state while we slept.

The second is the lucid state. This is the state of consciousness we enter when we are in the sleep world and we are perfectly conscious that we are dreaming. When I'm consciously awake and aware that I'm in the dream world I will use the term that I am lucid. I'm in a lucid dream. Or simply, I become lucid.

I'm awake, but my physical body is still in bed asleep. Yet I'm consciously aware that I'm in a state out of my body. When my lucidity ends and I return to my physical body I will use the term that I have returned to the vigil state.

This should clear up some confusion between me saying "I woke up and found myself lucid," and "I woke up and found myself back in my bed."

P.S. Having a vivid dream is not the same as having a lucid dream. In a vivid dream you're still asleep and dreaming but you have a vivid recollection of your dream when you wake up in the vigil state.

In a lucid dream you're consciously aware that you're awake in the dream world.