In dreams, you have the potential for full unlimited control! You can change the weather, freeze time, move mountains, shapeshift into creatures or other people, give yourself superpowers, visit any location, spawn any person or object, and even go to fictional universes. The list goes on! You can do anything in a dream. Lucidity is the first step, but lucidity is not synonymous with dream control. These are two different things! Lucidity strictly only refers to the awareness that you are dreaming, while dream control is its own separate mechanism.. You can be 100% lucid (aware that you are dreaming) without controlling the dream in any way.
An uncontrolled lucid dream will progress naturally in the same way as a non-lucid dream, though your awareness may influence the dream in some ways (for example, dream characters may acknowledge that their existence is your dream). Otherwise, there is no difference between lucid and non-lucid dreams. Dream formation operates the same way for both, whether you are aware or unaware of the dreamstate.
Dream control is its own separate mechanism from lucidity, which is based on the unique physics of dream formation (how your dreams are created, which is on an automatic subconscious level by default). Like a magic system, you can learn how to control dream formation consciously through training, but it doesn't come naturally to most lucid dreamers. Even natural lucid dreamers (who have been lucid dreaming for years, even decades) often suffer from poor dream control because they lack understanding of dream physics, which results in the perceived inability to control their dreams.
So whether you're a beginner to lucid dreaming or a natural who has been practicing lucid dreaming for years, this guide contains helpful information on how to work with dream physics and fully master your dreams on every level. As you will learn, dream 'magic' is rooted in the mechanics of how dreams form naturally, which are not naturally on a conscious level, but can become conscious if you understand them. Dream formation is not random. When you learn the underlying system at play, you will be able to not only predict your dreams, but change their outcome. There are several factors involved and your unique psychology that play a role, but the mechanism behind how they work is universal to all dreamers.
Interestingly, natural lucid dreamers (those who learn lucid dreaming on their own without techniques or guides) are often the most plagued by dream control issues. If you have not learned dream control and have not verified your experiences with other dreamers, you may fall into a trap of assuming that your experiences are universal for all other dreamers. This may lead to false beliefs about dreams. For example, thinking that blinking in a dream will wake you up (this is not true) or that monsters will appear in dream mirrors (also not true).
One of the fundamentals of dream control is repetition—when you experience the same scenario in a dream more than once, especially over the course of years, subsequent dreams will follow the same pattern through nothing more than learned habit. This is due to how we evolved to understand the laws of cause and effect in physical reality. If you put your hand into an alligator's mouth, you might get bit, so you'll tell yourself not to do that again. Good call! This ability to learn cause and effect serves us well in physical reality, but cause and effect does not exist in dreams. Sticking your hand in an alligator's mouth in a dream could result in anything. You could get bit the first time, but the next time you do it, the alligator could spit up a whole pepperoni pizza, or another hand could reach out from its throat and shake your hand.
Using dream control, you can choose which patterns to engage in. Spawning people by reaching into the mouths of alligators could be your special dream power if you choose. The more you get used to any specific pattern (through repetition), the more it will develop as an automatic dream sequence (your dreams will start to automatically follow any pattern you train yourself to repeat).
It's worth acknowledging that dream control is optional. Whether you're lucid or non-lucid, there's no rule saying you must control the dream. If you don't practice any forms of dream control, you can let a lucid dream unfold on its own. Dream characters will often act of their own volitions just like normal dream people, scenes will develop on their own without you needing to think about them, and scenarios will move forward naturally with or without your conscious direction. You can exercise as much or as little control over the dream as you'd like. You may be surprised by where these plots go! Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Uncontrolled lucid dreams can be great fun. Many advanced lucid dreamers enjoy sitting back and letting their dreams roam freely, only controlling bits and pieces of the narrative when it suits them. Completely uncontrolled dreams can lead to unpleasant experiences, but you can always change those parts and leave the rest if you like.
Dream control can be used to stop nightmares (which can translate to better moods in waking life). This is often stigmatized due to the assumption that we must allow our dreams to play out undisturbed. While it's true that nightmares and unpleasant dreams can help us process and cope with everyday stressers, letting them repeat indefinitely isn't necessary, nor is it healthy. Having them temporarily during periods of stress is normal and healthy, but repeating negative patterns endlessly after the source if the stress is gone isn't.
Allowing your nightmares to be needlessly relentless and excessive is like allowing a dog to panic at the door every time a visitor comes over. As humans, we're aware of things that dogs are not privy to (we're lucid while the dog is non-lucid). Using our lucidity, we teach dogs not to panic in response to friendly guests. The same process takes place when we use our awareness to teach ourselves not to panic unnecessarily when there is nothing to be stressed about.
Dream control can bring a great deal of joy and positivity to your life by training you to feel safe in your own mind. After all, if you can't feel safe in your own mind, how are you supposed to feel safe in waking life? You cannot escape your mind. Even when you are awake, you are still experiencing your inner world at all times (in this way, you are always dreaming).
Lucidity is recommended for control, but is not required! Non-lucid dreams can be controlled as well, usually from outside of the dream using incubation techniques. Lucid dreaming gives you the ability to control dreams in real time with instant feedback from within the dream, but any dream can benefit from waking incubation. Skip to the incubation section of this guide if you're interested in controlling non-lucid dreams.
The most obvious way to control lucid dreams is through straightforward commands such as directly telling a dream what you want. For example, you can snap your fingers to spawn a dream character, point at a bird in the sky to turn it into an airplane, become invisible just by thinking it will happen, spawn an apple into your hand, or look up and fly away. These straightforward means of dream control can work quickly and effectively simply through intent and expectation, knowing that you're in a dream and can therefore do whatever you want.
Straightforrward commands can be very effective. They work best when the dreamer is unencumbered by underlying fears or doubts or when a task has already been repeated in dreams before (the more you do something in a dream, the more it turns into a habitual expectation (and therefore comes naturally to you). For example, if you routinely fly over mountains in your dreams, then you will most likely keep doing it (unless you make a conscious decision not to).
Sometimes straightforward control gets overpowered by natural dream formation, resulting in the attempted command to fail. For example, spawning a giraffe on land is more likely to work than spawning one in water. Underwater giraffes can be spawned(it is a dream, after all), especially if spawning underwater giraffes is something you trained yourself to do repeatedly. However, dreams naturally form based on associations that make sense, and underwater giraffe don't make the most sense. Even though anything is possible in dreams, your mind naturally clings to patterns of associations that make sense. You expect water to be wet and for giraffes to not be swimming in it.
Cnfidence is a key component to straightforward commands. With unbound confidence, you can overpower any association. Having good experiences with successfully controlling your dreams is a good way to train your confidence, allowing one success to lead to another. On the flip side, lack of confidence can lead to a vicious cycle of failed attempts at straightforward commands. You may repeatedly snap your fingers and find that nothing happens. One of the ways you can fix this is to
If you still struggle with straightforward commands and feel as though you cannot control your dreams no matter what command you use, it's recommended that you stop attempting straightforward commands and work on other methods of dream control instead. Strengthen your confidence with other methods of control, then come back to doing commands. This may take a single success or multiples, but it will set you up for longterm success with commands. Even though failing to control your dreams isn't a permanent problem, feelings of frustration and lack of control can manifest in dreams as failed commands because that's how your dream processes frustration and perceived lack of control.
Schemas are frameworks of associations between concepts in your mind, similar to a spiderweb. You are the spider crawling across the web, moving from association to association. As you move through your dream web, you spin more webbing. Every place you travel in the dream becomes a reinforced route. New connections can be made, or older ones can be reinforced. This is how dreams form and evolve into a more cohesive reality (dreamers naturally develop more common themes in their dreams the more they engage the dream life, which can lead to natural development of lucidity).
Schemas as an excellent stepping stones in developing longterm dream control skills, as you build your own web the way you want it. Developing your schematic associations makes straightforward dream control easier and more automatic. So if you're having any issues with straightforward control, learning how to use schematic associations can help! This is part of how longterm dream control skills are developed.
So how do dreams form naturally? Lucid dreams form in the same way as non-lucid dreams, first of all. There is no difference in the fundamental mechanics of dream formation. It's only the dream contents that might differ between lucid and non-lucid dreams, and your ability to control things in the moment.
As you enter a dream, your mind will automatically come up with scenarios that lead into each other scenarios through your personal associations and expectations for how reality works. For example, if you see a dog, you'll expect the dog to bark rather than talk like a human. Barking dogs are common. If you had a dog who didn't bark much or at all, a dream dog might bark less for you than someone else's dream dog. Your dream dog could even talk like a human if you're engaging in a certain way that brings up a potential talking dog schema (such as starting a conversation with the dog, being in a setting that reminds you of a talking dog movie, or by simply knowing that you're in a dream in which dogs can talk). Your dream dog might be likely to talk more if you watch a lot of talking dog movies, versus the less talkative dream dogs of a person who doesn't watch talking dog movies... Exposure to the association reinforces it. The dog could also neigh like a horse if you're exposed enough to that association, but barking (and even talking dog) schemas are more common for most people than dogs neighing like horses.
To use schemas for dream control, get to know yourself and your own personal associations. With that knowledge about yourself, take advantage of your current environment or something that you already have control over. For example, if you want to spawn a favorite food, but it won't automatically appear in your hand with straightforward control, you can walk into a restaurant that serves that food and find it there. Because dream formation is based on associations and expectations, you'll be likely to get what you want by walking across that schematic web.
Here's some more examples:
- To spawn a specific person, call them on the phone, invite them over, or lure them with their favorite activities.
- To change your location, walk through a door, climb through a window, hop on a bus, or turn around a corner.
- To fly, turn into something that flies (like a bird) or raise your fist into the air like a superhero.
By working with your mental associations, you can naturally move along the web of your dream. It helps to take notes of schemas that you notice already being in your past dreams, as you can use these thought patterns and observe the outcomes. Getting to know yourself on this deeper level is a learning process, and also translates to waking life thought patterns. Schemas in dreams are the way our minds think and process information, so you can learn many things about yourself and change those thought patterns permanently through lucid dream control. You can remove undesirable patterns by disengaging from them, and develop new schemas by practicing repetition of the desired associations.
Click here for the complete schema guide.
Cause and effect don't actually exist in dreams the way we're used to in waking life. It's a great tool for schematic association, but disregarding cause and effect, and the laws of time as a whole, is another powerful way to master your dreams.
There's no such thing as past or future in dreams. Everything exists in the present moment. You've probably heard this before in religions, philosophies, or spirituality—but it applies to dream control in a literal way. So, for even more powerful results, assume the reality you want in the present-moment,
Just like how cause and effect in dreams doesn't exist the way we're used to in waking, future events also don't exist in dreams. One of the most common errors made by beginners is to apply dream control onto future events, which will never actually happen because there is no future experience. Experience exist moment-by-moment in the present time. This can cause a dangling carrot effect in dreams, with the desired outcome being in the wrong time, and therefore inaccessible.
Phrases like I will spawn a carrot or I will fly come with underlying implications of a future-oriented mindset. You imagine that something will happen at any moment in the future, instead of assuming that it is happening right now in the present. This is a subtle detail in phrasing, but the underlying mindset is profound and has powerful influence on dream control.
So make sure your mindset is geared towards the present, not the future. If you want to spawn a carrot in your hand, use a present-tense mindset such as There IS a carrot in my hand right now. rather than There WILL be a carrot in my hand—because you don't exist in the will be, you exist in the right now. Right now is where you want the carrot to exist.
Disclaimer: You can still use I will and there will be phrasing. The phrasing itself is fine. It's the mindset implications underlying the phrasing that benefits from being present-tense oriented. Changing your phrasing to present tense can help align your mindset, but just aligning your mindset with present-tense itself works too.
Dreams can also be controlled via planning and dream incubation while awake. This is best done right before going to sleep, but it can also be done any time throughout the day. One of the best ways to incubate dreams is through mnemonics, using the same process as the MILD technique for lucid dreaming. But, instead of using MILD to cause lucidity, you can use it to cause anything to happen in dreams.
Waking incubation is recommended for control of non-lucid dreams, since they can't be controlled in the moment like lucid dreams can. It's also recommended to reinforce lucid dream control because schematic associations can be reinforced at any time, even while awake.
There are also ways of planning recurring dreams called persistent realms, providing you with long-lasting dream control spanning multiple dreams.
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