Very exciting progress- what do you make of this

[Edenjack]

I was hoping to go to the afterlife zone or experience astral projection

[CFTraveler]

The thing is, that a dream is an astral projection that is happening in your subconscious, and if you project from a dream (you are already projected, the trick is to go from a private 'area' to a collective one) you will not feel any different than a regular dream, except that there is a distinct feeling of going from one place to another (sometimes there are delineation marks, scenery changes, or phase-shift changes that are felt, like traveling through a tunnel or something similar) and the knowledge that this is not 'regular' dreaming, but knowing you are 'somewhere else', a dream or an altered state.
So what you call 'experiencing other dreams' could have been an astral projection.
When you said you lost lucidity, do you mean you forgot you were dreaming and acted as in every dream, as if everything was normal, or something else?

[Edenjack]

I guess I was hoping for a tunnel experience and increased clarity and better yet the afterlife, I did fall back into dreaming and just carried on the dreaming as I usually would.
It was just a dream that went no where. sigh
I will persist

[CFTraveler]

Tunnel experiences are not the only way you can transition into a collective area. Most of the time they signal that you are having a third-eye projection, but this is probably not a rule.
The method of flying away fast is good, but try doing it at an angle with the intention of getting to the void (starry void) and maybe you can have a more 'traditional' astral projection by directing yourself to one of the stars, looking for a grid pattern, or simply thinking of your body to find yourself in bed with vibrations, and then exiting to the real time zone for an OBE.
Unfortunately no projection is "cookie cutter", all are different and you can't expect to have the same identical projection as everyone else.

However, achieving lucidity in a dream is a big thing, and if you can continue to do so all kinds of experiences are possible.