Lucidity

I've been wondering about this for a while, particularly whether or not it's an exclusive experience:

Every single dream I've ever had (remembered) has involved me in some way. I am not watching myself interact, but interacting and seeing it through my own eyes. On quite a few occasions, my "character's" eyes will become blurry and handicap the visibility of the rest of the dream. Not only are they blurry, but I can't keep them open. Not yet is the dream lucid. Consequently, I "think" I'm blind, unexplainably tired, or going crazy.

I once proposed to a professor speaking on dreams that this was a trigger my brain created to help me realize the dream. In other words, a lucidity trigger. He argued that the very definition of lucid is to know one is having a dream. It is contradictory, then, to say my brain knows it is a dream while I do not. How could this even happen? Well. Perhaps through the development of childhood perceptions, I have always thought my mind and brain to be separate entities. Since that psych class, I've seen them as one; the mind being a result of neurological firings. Easier to understand, yes, as well as easier to believe. I have not fully come to this realization, as the validity of my beliefs has never been a major concern. Nevertheless, I understood the professor and began to question this characteristic further as it became more prominent.

The professor did not have a good explanation for these happenings, as they are so person-specific. It didn't help either that I had such a difficult time explaining them. He dismissed the question, perhaps thinking it unworthy of other students' learning time. How unfortunate.

So. Any thoughts? Any questions? Is it a result of shaken sleep patterns? A brain's cue provoking awakening? ..Am I crazy?