I was looking at the great site DreamViews yesterday, and I was a little discouraged when they mentioned 2-3 times that “some people will always have problems with dream control”, and I hope they are wrong about that.
I really want to believe that everyone has the potential to become frequent “LD’ers” and also have great control over their dreams, and I hope that DreamViews’ point was just that problem with control will happen less seldom for some people (in other words, even those people will have control most of the time).
What are your opinions on this?
Surely everyone should be able to master dream control and lucidity fairly well, since everybody dreams and lucid dreams are just dreams with awareness, which everyone can practice and improve during their waking hours?
Everything is learnable, including Lucid Dreaming and Dream Control. Some people are more naturally talented, some are not, but with enough effort, everyone can master both of these things. I wouldn’t agree with DreamViews at this point. It’s just like playing a musical instrument - you do not need to be talented to master it.
A good place to start learning how to control your dreams while lucid is this thread - [Dream Control Training Course)
Well, “Dream Control” is highly subjective. A lot of lucid dreamers don’t really seek to control their dreams per se, but only seek to direct their consciousness within the dream.
In LDs I have exercised great control. I’ve:
- changed the direction of gravity;
- conjured items for use;
- possessed the body of a dream character;
- changed dream scenery I didn’t like.
Yet, those dreams weren’t my most memorable or impactful. The best LDs I’ve had have been completely surprising to me. Being surprised by yourself is what makes LDs fun, in my opinion. Using them like a virtual reality program gets old fast.
Also, Dream Control isn’t very different from ordinary waking control over your mind. If you have difficulty focusing while you’re awake, you’ll experience a degree of the same thing in your dreams (although it is easier to focus while LDing). If you have a lot of unwanted feelings or thoughts while awake, you will probably have unwanted events and characters in your lucid dreams.
A lot of lucid dreamers talk about the Expectation effect, the idea that our dreams are created by our expectations and intentions. This is very true and can be tested pretty precisely in your lucid dreams (and just by analyzing your non-lucid dreams). But not all of our expectations are conscious. We have unconscious feelings, thoughts, beliefs and expectations that still affect our dreams (which affects how much control we have).
In general, yes, you will be empowered by the belief that you control everything. But if you really stop and think about it, you’ll realize that even in dreams where you called the whole scene into being, you didn’t consciously intend every color or detail. Your subconscious supplied the details.