A Few Control/General LD Questions

1. Can you change your location and plot of dream at will in a LD? Most of the dreams I hear people just "go with the flow", so to speak. I have specific dreams in mind that I'd like to have instead of just being lucid in whatever dream I'm thrown into.

2. How much can you control? I always thought you could just do whatever, but it seems not so...

3. Can you direct me to a good source for reliable stabilization techniques and scene changing techniques? All I know is when you want to change the scene, spin, and rub your hands or touch the ground when the dream begins to fade away. Are those correct? And if so, why do they work?

4. The only RCs I know are: count your fingers, hold nose and attempt to breathe, finger through palm, and questioning reality. Why are there specific reality checks? I thought you could do whatever in a dream and if you can do something you couldn't do in real life, wouldn't that be a good enough RC? We all know we cant summon people at will in real life, so if we could we would know that we're dreaming.

5. I was thinking about buying one of those dream control apps that aid LDs. I have an iPad (we got for free :P) and if yes, which should I try?

6. Dream guides. They sound awesome, how do you go about finding yours and what do they help you do? Do they also provide a sort of a look at your inner self if you ask them?

I have a lot of questions :P

If you could answer some it would be really appreciated. :)

I'll answer what I can based one what works for me. Just remember that different things work better for some people than others.

1) Doors are really good for changing the enviroment. I've used them several times to go to a different place when I didnt' like where I was. You could also try walking throuhg your nearest wall and expect the place you want to be is on the other side. As far as the actual plot of a dream...well, I've never tried doing that. There are situations I'd like to try and recreate but I don't have the experience to do it yet.

2) There really is almost no limit to what can be done. A lucid dream is the ultimate sandbox - You can go anywhere and do anything (Or anyone :p). One of the first things I did was learn to fly. After getting used to that I wanted to tackle bigger challenges. I soon learned how to levitate objects, pass through walls, and summon any object or person at will. Some imagination is required on your part there. For example, if you're trying to find someone but can't, pull out your phone and call them or better yet, ask the nearest dream character to take you to them. That worked best for me when just believeing they'd be around the next corner didn't work.

Other things I'd like to try include, as you said, recreating a specific scenario. There are situations I'd like to create and seehow I behave in them. I'd also like to try and tackle some personal fears of mine...things like...spiders and public speaking.

There are, again, no limits to what you can do. You'll just have to find some way to get to wherever you want to be. Just set goals during your dreams and eventaully you'll get there.

3) Just try to engage as many senses as you can. Rub your hands, look around and notice small details about your enviroment, listen to whats going on around you, and even smell the air. Taste is also a good one if you're in the right place. ;) Spinning never really worked for me and just made the dream fade away and it would either collapse, I'd lose lucidity, or both.

4) I think you're missing the point of reality checks. They exist because we need something solid we can ground ourselves to doing during our waking life so that when we're dreaming it'll still seem natural, yet the outcome will be different. You could just do them randomly throughout the day, but what they're really for is when you notice that something isn't right or you notice a dream sign. Hence the point of a dream journal - to recognize common themes in your dreams so you can find them in real life. Summoning people isn't actually all that easy sometimes. However, take the nose pinch reality check for example. That one exists becasue (The way I understand it), our breathing in our dream is what we are really breathing in bed. We can breath in our dreams no matter what because we can breat in real life, so when we plug our nose, we are still able to breathe and thus, must be in a dream. This is also why we can breathe underwater in dreams.

As for the rest...well...We'll need someone else to answer those.

Thanks for the answers, cleared things up a bit. Still wondering about those last two, and maybe some other answers for the first 4.

I'm a bit of a LD/DV newbie so take what I say with a grain of salt :cheeky: but from what I've read on DV and other LD sources is that your dream guide helps you master your dreams, your powers in your dreams, and your inner self. If you're a bookworm, a comparison could be Virgil and Dante from The Divine Comedy, Virgil being Dante's guide through hell in the same way that a dream guide would be your guide through your mind.