Can we control our dreams?

[Toad]

Do you guys believe you have some control over your dream? Listen to this.

So I start off with the power to fly. I'm zippin all over the place, a little new at it, so I was kind of stumbling here and there. But then after I land, I can't seem to be able to fly anymore. I keep trying and trying, but end up falling on my face.

Then this hot girl comes to me and smiles at me. She seems to know me. We start kissing (and other things). Then she tells me I still have the power. So I grab onto her and off we go zipping through the air again. Then after we land, we lie down on some grass. I cat passes us and starts hissing. All of the sudden this hot girl turns into a monster. Her face transforms into kind of a vampire thingy...really gross.

This is when I realize it was a dream and I start controlling it. I put out my hand and tell her to go away! Then she changes into my girlfriend. I swear I controlled this part! Me and my gf fly around the country side in europe and I tell her i'm gonna find a big house for us to live in. I feel more in love with her than ever.

We land on the grass and make out and right when I inserted my &$^% into her (#*#() I woke up.

What can this dream possibly mean?!?! I heard flying means that I feel that I am free from something in life. Freud would say that flying meant sexual release. But what about the rest of the dream?

I know I definitely had power over my dream once I knew it was a dream.

 

[flow]

It's called lucid dreaming.

 

[Toad]

Oh, so that's what's it called. Cool.

I really enjoyed this dream. Besides it being my first flying dream (which was fcking amazing), I think it really showed me that I am done with other girls and I just want to be with my girlfriend. I was much happier flying around looking for houses with my gf then I was making out with that super hot chick (which btw had the most awesomest set of boobs and ass that could swallow up a g-string). Plus the part where she turned all freaky showed me outer beauty means shit.

 

[Waterstiller]

We all turn into vampire thingies eventually.

 

[Toad]

We all turn into vampire thingies eventually.

What's that supposed to mean?

 

[Waterstiller]

I dunno. Just having a bad day.

 

[Toad]

Oh. Take some xanax. U'll feel better.

 

[Cryss Winters]

Oh. Take some xanax. U'll feel better.

You wont feel bad, at least.

 

[Cavallier]

I do experience lucid dreaming a lot. I first started noticing I could control my dreams when I was about 9. The dream I described in the Dreams and the Subconscious was a lucid dream in the end.

I had to work on developing control in my dreams. If I worked to hard at controlling the dream I'd wake up. So I had to control little things then move on to bigger things. I found that if I thought to hard about how I wanted the dream to go I'd wake up. Now, once I realize I'm dreaming in my dream I can control most aspects of the dream. Though, I have to actually notice I'm dreaming first.

 

[RubberDucky451]

I remember arguing with character in my dream that I'm dreaming. I was also able to wake myself up from a bad dream by physically lifting my eyes open in the middle of my dream.

 

[Aiss]

A few years ago, after I had first read about LD, I learned it and achieved a reasonable level of control. I'm unable to keep doing it for a long time though, because among other things LD (unless it comes naturally, perhaps?) requires sleeping regularly, and I'm usually sleeping too little and in random hours.

It's an interesting experience and worth learning IMO. There are many sites describing techniques used to control your dreams, but the basics are fairly simple: sleep regularly, write down your dreams and do reality checks often.

... I think I'm going back to it as soon as I'm forced to live in more conventional hours fitting in some sort of schedule again.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

So I start off with the power to fly. I'm zippin all over the place, a little new at it, so I was kind of stumbling here and there. But then after I land, I can't seem to be able to fly anymore. I keep trying and trying, but end up falling on my face. Then this hot girl comes to me and smiles at me. She seems to know me. We start kissing (and other things). Then she tells me I still have the power.

You can do it!

We land on the grass and make out and right when I inserted my &$^% into her (#*#() I woke up.

...oh well, better luck next time.
If you get too excited your heart rate will increase, this in turn starves you of oxygen and wakes you up, the trick is to stay calm and relaxed without falling back into unconsciousness.

Personally I tend to have horror dreams (not nightmares, one enjoys a horror dream, one cannot enjoy a nightmare) and as a result I know many tricks that enable me to have fun it what would otherwise have been a nightmare scenario. Depending upon how lucid I am it can be possible to do anything from manifesting superpowers to staying asleep through experiences which usually cause people to wake up; like falling off a cliff for example, most people wake up before impact, I make a successfully lethal landing, then pick myself up and continue on.

Do you ever drift in and out of sleep to the point that you can't tell when your not sleeping?

 

[Beat Mango]

like falling off a cliff for example, most people wake up before impact, I make a successfully lethal landing, then pick myself up and continue on.

Ouch...

 

[wadlez]

I first learnt of lucid dreaming in a movie called "waking life" which is a tripped out movie about dreams basically (done in this weird style of animation). A scene of the movie described deliberately waking up in dreams and controlling them, and said that you could get better at this through practise. After learning this I looked up more techniques on the net and read more into it.
The first step to waking up in dreams is to stop and conciously check if you are dreaming while awake, routinely do this everyday. Checking is mainly conciously asking yourself if you are dreaming and looking around you, but there is also a few tricks out there, like trying to turn lights on and off.
If you do this correctly you will eventually check to see if your dreaming while asleep, once you have established you are dreaming, spin around in circles on the spot really fast (sounds crazy i know, but it works). You will basically be awake in the dream after you do this. When you are lucid dreaming you may feel think that if you concentrate on something too much you will wake up, this is actually not the case and it is actually better to focus on objects as much as you can. While in the dream look at something carefully and focus on the small details, really examine the object, this helps maintain the lucid dreaming state.

I have succesfully done this twice, it was awesome and an experience I wont forget.
The first time I did it I freaked out for a little while when I woke up as everything felt the same as it did when i was dreaming (I was also in my house in my dream, so that didnt help).

 

[Berkeley]

I have been able to lucid dream even before I knew the term or that it was possible. I don't even remember the first time I did. I just realized, "hey this can't be real, I must be dreaming." However, I can't control everything in the dream, maybe I should try harder...

I usually realize I am dreaming and make tiny adjustments to the dream that work to my advantage. The last lucid dream I had, I was in a warehouse and I had a huge feeling of deja vu, either I had just had this dream or in my dream I thought I just had this dream. But either way, I realized I was having the exact same dream as I had earlier. So all of a sudden these ninjas come and start chasing me, but I realize its a dream so I just jump like super far away.

Oh, I used to only have sexual lucid dreams too. Like I would realize I was dreaming so I would find the nearest girl next to me and start having sex.

 

[Enne]

When I was younger I used to have lucid dreams before I knew what they were. I had a lot of nightmares, and at some point I just decided that I didn't really NEED to wake up screaming (loud enough to garner my parents' attention), so since then I've had a tendency to ride out nightmares. And prefer them since they're easier to remember.

 

[dents]

I've read a lot about lucid dreaming over the years, but it's something I'm afraid to mess with. Science is still iffy on this, but it does seem like our dreams serve a purpose of some sort. What is lucid dreaming defeats that purpose and you get less of something important every night?

Besides, I imagine it's much easier to just do drugs if you really wanted to "see things".

 

[Berkeley]

Drugs you can think you see things, or you can see things sometimes. But dreams, you can control things. It is way more trippy. Isn't something called DMT released while you sleep? And if you were to take a DMT tablet in the day it would give you a hardcore trip. (These are all things I have hear word of mouth) It's possible dreams are just a super hardcore trips from the DMT that your subconscious remembers.

 

[Enne]

I've read a lot about lucid dreaming over the years, but it's something I'm afraid to mess with. Science is still iffy on this, but it does seem like our dreams serve a purpose of some sort. What is lucid dreaming defeats that purpose and you get less of something important every night?

Besides, I imagine it's much easier to just do drugs if you really wanted to "see things".

That's a good point. Perhaps the small details (usually all most people can manage to change w/o being fully conscious) are as symbolic as the major overtones.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

I wonder if hypnosis could be used to affect one's dreams...

 

[Reverse Transcriptase]

Drugs you can think you see things, or you can see things sometimes. But dreams, you can control things. It is way more trippy. Isn't something called DMT released while you sleep? And if you were to take a DMT tablet in the day it would give you a hardcore trip. (These are all things I have hear word of mouth) It's possible dreams are just a super hardcore trips from the DMT that your subconscious remembers.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt.shtml
So yes, DMT is produced in your brain during sleep, but only in tiny tiny amounts.

To orally take DMT you need to combine it with MAIOs (another drug). Native South Americans prepared two plants (one that contained DMT, one that contained MAIOS) together in a brew they call "Ayahuasca". The person making the brew (who was usually the first-rank shaman-person) would take some amount, judge it's strength, and then give it to everyone else.
You trip for hours.

DMT can also be vaporized and inhaled. This provides a ~20minute trip that can be incredibly intense. I haven't tried it... yet.


But the real question is: Can we control Toad's dreams?

 

[dents]

But the real question is: Can it control Toad's dreams?

From what I've read about DMT (Strassman's [crackpot] book), probably not on that. My roommate in college did DXM pretty often and he swore he had full control of reality in his head. I was out of the "trying to see stuff" phase by then so I never partook. Easy enough to obtain if you are adventurous though, just gotta make sure it's the right type of cough syrup.