So, has anyone else tried lucid dreaming yet? Or rather, knows about means how to encourage it? I heard about all sorts of stuff ranging from Tibetan tea to shamanistic drumbeat music while you're dozing off.
For me personally, the most promising approach (mind you, I've never done this myself) came from a radio interview, where someone explained he trained himself to ask whether what he experiences right now is real or a dream every twenty minutes. And strictly so, complete with a phone alarm.
This eventually becomes so habitual that you're also starting to ask yourself whether your current situation is real or a dream even when you are dreaming, and hence breaks the barrier between passive and lucid dreaming.
It's too bad that the dream itself apparently does not like that and will try to pull you back into passive dreaming via all sorts of distractions (and apparently electronics of any sort tend to malfunction inside a dream). But if you can keep up, you basically can look down into your own subconscious and discover stuff your brain conveniently filtered out for you.
Another interesting part (and easy way to check if you're currently dreaming) is to look at any surface with something written on it, look away, and then look back on it again. If you're dreaming, the text should have changed, even if only subtly - words may have changed, individual letters may be crooked or upside-down, and so forth.