is control as hard to obtain as lucidity?

I'm just now beginning to get my brain trained to have LDs when I want them, although it's taken at least a couple months of focused work and about a year of on and off attempts (I used to smoke weed a lot and that pretty much shut down most of my attempts). I'm at a point where I can fly all I want and explore my dreamscapes which is ridiculously mind blowing and awesome. Now I'm wondering about next step of controlling them - i.e. summoning objects and characters, changing the dream scenery, using superpowers, etc...for example in an LD I had this morning I wanted to summon a monster to fight and a sword in my hand to fight it with but it my attempts at "willing" them into existence had as much of an effect as they would in RL. is getting this type of control over your surroundings in a dream about as hard or harder as it is to get lucid in the first place? are there certain methods that work reliably? is it all just a matter of practice and believing in yourself?

The key to dream control is expecting it to work, if you don't it just wont happen. you may also want to check out kromohs dream control thread, and no, It should not be as hard as lucid dreaming itself, or I don't think people would think lucid dreaming is fun.

I always found control is so much easier than getting into actual lucidity. usually im thinking about so many things i forget to do a WILD. But when i do remember, control is the easiest part.

I think getting frequent lucidity is almost exactly as difficult as getting good dream control, but it's a different kind of difficulty. While gaining lucidity frequently mainly requires persistance, with some creativity and experimentation required to find the method that works for you, improving control is almost all experimentation and creativity, although perstistance is of course still necessary.

The most important thing in gaining dream control is to try many things. If you just try one method over and over again, each time you fail you will become more uncertain of it, lowering the probability of it working more and more each time until there's basically no chance of it working. So, when one thing fails, try another.

Also, while you learn to control your dream with your mind, trying to do things entirely through willpower is not the most reliable way, at least not for most people. For example, if you're trying to summon something, try visualizing it as realistically as you can where you want it to appear while willing it to exist, or imagining it being under the ground, being forced upward to where you want it to appear, or imagine a patch of air in the shape of the object that you're summoning solidifying and becoming the object, or something else like these things. Whatever you try, give it time to work, because the longer you give it to work, the more likely it will.

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Whatever you try, give it time to work, because the longer you give it to work, the more likely it will.

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I never thought of it that way. Hopefully it should help! =)

No, control is much easier. DILDs are hit or miss. Control is just remembering (and understanding) that the entire environment is just your imagination.

Yup control is a lot easier to get down than the actual lucidity aspect of the whole thing.

Well I have to say that I am the opposite. Getting lucid was much easier than control for me. I feel like I am really just getting the hang of it recently, and I'm still not very good. Lucids were almost too real or something--I didn't feel like I could control them anymore than I could control things IRL. I'd think I'd try to pull something out of my pocket or whatever, then when I'd try and it failed, it felt about as silly as if I tried that IRL--like how did I expect that to work? There's just a little mental trick of "knowing" that it will happen that I've just mastered (well not really "mastered" but I can get it to work sometimes.)

So hopefully you won't be like me. But even if it doesn't happen right away, it will probably get easier, so don't give up.

for me personally control is much easier, and even more easier at times when you are not completely lucid

when I am completely lucid, it's harder for me to do things that I know are not logical. for example, a lot of people will tell you that you can do anything in a dream if you believe you can do it. well in a lucid dream you are more self-aware and in a more logical state of being. So for some people, this just means that while they are lucid they have to work harder at tricking their own self-awareness and logic

some of the more illogical things for me are being someone else in a dream. when I am completely lucid I am so self aware, I'm me! so its virtually impossible for me to be someone else

were I to role play as another, I'd have to drop a bit in self awareness and thus lose some lucidity