10 Steps to Lucid Dreams
Step #10: How to Control The Limitless Lucid Dreamscape
Here's a classic example of a question from a newbie lucid dreamer:
"I was lucid and I knew I was dreaming. But when I tried to fly, I couldn't lift off the ground, not even by a few inches. My dream refused to respond no matter how much I wanted it. Why couldn't I fly when I really wanted to?"
- Amanda, UK
If you've ever had a similar experience, you'll know how frustrating it is to be lucid, yet unable to control your dream.
What is going wrong here?
Well, it almost always boils down to one of two factors:
Lack of Lucidity
Lucidity - or consciousness - can be a slippery devil. If for one moment you forget that you're dreaming, your ability to control the dream is diminished.
That's why it's so important to perform steps like dream stabilization (which I revealed our last lesson).
Indeed, sometimes you become so preoccupied by distractions in your amazing dream world that you can forget you are dreaming altogether.
Sounds crazy? It's really not.
The sleeping brain presents an entirely separate state of consciousness. There are different rules at play. Memory, language, cognition and self awareness all function differently. So it's not hard to forget you're dreaming if you don't remind yourself regularly.
As a direct result, you can accidentally pass control of the dream back to your unconscious dreaming self. This is the part of you that produces all your normal dreams (and continues to co-create the experience even when you're fully lucid).
In Amanda's dream, her lucidity was weak and her unconscious mind had other intentions for her dream. Flying was not on the agenda.
Unfortunately, when you're stuck in this semi-lucid limbo, the unconscious mind tends to win over. You must maintain focus in lucid dreaming - a mindset you can entrain every day while awake.
This is something I cover in great detail in my interactive lucid dreaming course.
The Expectation Principle
Your underlying mindset defines the way you actively control your dreams.
If Amanda was fully lucid, then the problem was she didn't truly expect to be able to fly. She had no confidence. In the back of her mind, her learned experience of gravity in real life blocked her ability to fly in her lucid dream.
All she had to do was genuinely expect herself to lift off the ground.
Note: expecting is different from wanting. It's like the difference between hoping you'll get a pay rise and knowing you're getting a pay rise. Confidence in an particular outcome means there is no doubt in your mind. And that makes dream control possible.
It also helps to voice your desires out loud. "I'm taking off into the air now."
Once you perform an impossible reality check in a lucid dream, it is much easier to expect other impossibilities too - like breathing underwater, teleporting across vast distances, and running through walls.
You can have a lot of fun finding out what’s possible.
Here are some other ways to control your dreams using The Expectation Principle:
- Change the scenery from a desert to a tropical rainforest - by turning away and expecting it to look like your desired location when you turn back.
- Travel through time 65 million years by stepping into a time machine and expecting to greet friendly dinosaurs when you emerge.
- Summon dream figures or personal heroes by saying to the dream "I'm going to meet Lara Croft around the corner" and truly expect to see her when you look.
- Find any dream object by reaching into your pocket and expecting to find it, or drawing a crude picture of it with your finger in the air and expecting it to come to life.
Ready to Jump in With Both Feet?
I hope you enjoyed this free e-course on lucid dreaming.
These tutorials are just a taster, so you can see what's involved. If you want to commit to learning lucid dreaming and reaping the myriad real world benefits, be sure to sign up to my full training program, the World of Lucid Dreaming Academy.
My interactive course includes 30 detailed tutorials to help you induce lucid dreams as well as in-dream challenges and uses for your new found skill. I'm so confident I can impact your dream life that I offer a 100% refund guarantee if you don't love it.
To the sweetest of lucid dreams...
Rebecca