Oddly enough, there is a peculiar rule of thumb for orderly manipulation of awareness. That is, the more rational a person is in their normal frame of mind, the better they will be when their awareness has shifted away from their normal frame of mind.
This can be very ordinary. For example, there is a considerable shift in awareness when a person is going about their ordinary day, and when they are submerged underwater. This is extremely dramatic for a child when they first learn how to swim underwater, but with practice, being underwater is no big deal to an adult.
But a person who is very rational when out of the water will be able to adjust much faster and better to being underwater. The same ability to be rational has an equivalent in different states of mind.
That being said, lucid dreaming is astoundingly complex, by some accounts more complex than waking life. So there are almost innumerable directions someone can go with it.
And no, trying to define it in terms of religious understanding is pretty much a waste of time. To do so, I suppose, the Bible would have to be ten times as large as it is, and they had other, more pressing things to write about.
Granted, there are people of all kinds, and all religions, scared of the true unknown, and their opinion is that mankind should never venture into it, lest they meet up with something that growls and has sharp teeth. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And most important, just because you ignore something that growls and has sharp teeth, does not mean that it ignores you. Better to know if it is a tiger, or just an irate dachshund.
I disagree with this statement. It may appear as so to the individual themself, but the evidence is they are living in a fantasy world of make believe, which doesn't require rationality to create. In fact their awarness becomes duller as they seek these experiences, though they do not see it as so as 'they've deluded themselves.' Important to remember is a large part of their fantasy world IS 'the fantasy that they see more clearly'. When they actually begin to 'believe' this then all stops are gone and they've taken the bait............ In reality they are seeing nothing more than their own imaginations. The problem then developes for them in where does fantasy and reality begin and end. They no longer have the discernment to distinguish this.