A Quick Question.

Why are we sometimes EXTREMELY surprised to find that we are dreaming?

Why does it thrill the mind to know that what happens every night—multiple times—is currently happening?

We dream every night. But are we aware of that during dreams? Mostly no. So times when we are getting lucid are rare (at least in the beginning) and contrast to what we experience since we are born, so no wonder it can surprise us. Not to mention that the purpose of dreaming itself is still a debate.

I think there could be some kind of “mind awakening” condition/adrenaline rush that is similar to seeing something scary.

As the LDer becomes more experienced, it should be less surprising, which is actually something good, since the surprising effect can cause the dreamer to wake up.

It does seem that lucid dreaming is the only time we proactively experience dreaming—most often, we seemingly experience them as memories.

Sometimes, when these two methods of perception merge, one feels like he’s transcribing his memories as they form.

you will find out that the more LDs you have the less surprised you will be. I´ll be honest though, even after 15 years whenever I have an LD I still get excited… not suprised, but excited. I believe you will never loose the excitement, but you have to learn to control your emotions otherwise you will be waking up all the time.

Not necessarily.
It is very possible to be conscious and aware - in the moment, in a non lucid dream. The definition of a lucid dream is not simply “consciousness”, or even “awareness”, but very specifically aware of one detail, and that is that you are infact inside a dream.

It is possible to be experiencing the moment in a dream at the time it’s happening. This happens to me very frequently, and the only thing that seperates those non-lucid dreams from my lucid dreams are the fact that I was unaware i was dreaming.

Infact this happens so often, that for the longest time when being first introduced to lucid dreaming from external sources, i believed that i was lucid dreaming nearly every night, all the time. I kept bouncing back between believing that I was, then was not. It took some time to understand that there really was no difference other than the acknowledgement that I was dreaming, rather than trying to live out this life in another reality.