How I miss LD opportunities, it's getting funnier and more frustrating

I had already made a thread about this "problem": http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...o-control.html

Now things have gotten funnier: My dream characters know it's a dream too. So imagine this, everybody in the dream brings up the same thing, everybody says this is a dream including myself, yet I don't remember I have the ability to control. In a recent dream I had, I was on a bridge in a car with a dream character, he was driving. He decided to drive the car off the bridge to the sea and see how it fees to drown inside a car. Then we started laughing so hard. I told him I knew we were dreaming too and said I did not need/want that kind of an experience. Anyways, it was impossible to change his mind. He drove the car off the bridge. The car hit the water and we were still laughing our heads off. (I don't know why it felt so funny and fun) We opened the doors and swam to the surface. Yes, my dreams almost always have happy endings because deep down, I'm controlling, somehow. I feel something but it's very hard to explain.

An example, in an other dream I was in an elevator and the cable was about the break. The elevator started shaking. I told myself: "Now all I need is to focus and not let this thing fall, with mind power." See, again, an happy ending but a weird way of dream control which is not really control. And no, I don't act all magical in my daily life, that's not why I'm getting these dreams. I don't believe in stopping elevators from falling using mind power. :D

I don't know what I should be doing. I'm doing plenty of auto suggestions before bed and I can set the setting, events, characters and can set whether I want to know I'm dreaming or not. But auto suggestions don't seem to be helping when it comes to control. "In-dream realization plus control" is a rare thing for me. But in my opinion, those are the best lucid experiences there is something special about them, they feel truly magical.

All thoughts and suggestions are appreciated!

Hey there,

I can relate. Over the years I've build up a sort of 'awareness' of dreaming like you describe. It's usually present in some form or another (changing small things and avoiding unpleasant things), but actually getting the full clarity full consciousness kind of lucid dream still takes effort.

Some things that help me:

- Having a clear dream goal. Knowing what I want to do can make a huge difference between taking active control of my dream and just passively going along (with changing a thing here and there but without full blown control). It takes a while for a dream goal to seep through into my dreams though. For me its usually a week or two of actively telling myself my dream goal before I will remember it in my dreams.

- Using recurring elements in my dreams as dream cues. Even though I might already be somewhat aware of dreaming before I hit upon the dream cue, they can still help me get from that passive awareness state to an active consciousness state.

- Trying to remember the feeling of having a full control lucid dream. Not just telling myself that I want to lucid dream, but trying to remember what it was like to be there in that moment and then tell myself I want that again.

Maybe some of these might help you too. All in all, I'd consider your 'problem' to be a positive one. You've a clear increased awareness/consciousness in your dreams, which means you're already halfway there. Just need to figure out a way to go the extra mile :)

-Redrivertears-

My experience is similar to yours figurefly but you know what these guys here are amazing and im going to keep working towards lucids that are as good and better than real life cause it will happen again and again with practice. :) What are your dream goals? You don't have to tell me but im just saying it cause im going to work on a few dreams I have had before and enhance them.

My thought: Take a deep breath.

In the examples you gave, you demonstrated lucidity and control is an indirect way. There is some disaster, but you gain an awareness to some degree and it all turns out fine because you expect a happy ending. It seems that perhaps you want to engage your dreams with a bit more agency. In other words, to engage the dream with more direct immediacy and obvious control.

To me, it seems you already have the talent to become aware and to "supervise" a dream. That is, to have some greater understanding of the scenario and guide it, through indirect intention, toward a conclusion that has it either redeeming, or at least logical, or at least pleasant.

What I suggest is to stop and take a breath. More deeply, the idea is to stop the narrative. It seems that your dreams are following a narrative that you can bend but not halt. So try halting the narrative and just take a moment to experience being present in a moment by taking a breath. That cultivates agency. Once you connect with that agency, the realm of control of the dream opens up to your whole imagination.

Are you familiar with the idea of schemata as they relate to dreaming? If you haven't already, you should give this thread a read: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...ur-dreams.html. It sounds like the "lucid dream" schema you have involves a lack of control, so in order to gain dream control you will have to go outside the schema that you have built out of your previous lucid-dreaming experiences. This can be done, for example, by framing the things you are trying to do in terms of what fictional characters can do. As you have more lucid dreams in which you are able to successfully exercise dream control, your "lucid dream" schema will become modified to no longer include lack of control, so lack of dream control will become less of a problem.

Thank you so much guys for the help. I'm working on it and making progress :content: