How to leave behind your perception of reality?

I am having trouble achieving a level of awareness where I am able to realize that the dream world is all me and I can control each aspect of it :cry: . I can do small impossible things and can tell myself in a dream that I can control everything but I can’t fly or influence the dream the way I would like. I can set the intention to explore the dream or talk to dream characters before going to sleep but when I do realize I’m dreaming, I go off and try to do everything though I am held back by my perception of reality e.g. Gravity. What kind of steps must I take in order to have more control over my LD’s. Thanks for any replies :smile:

As you will become more and more lucid in your dreams you will become more open to the suggestions of what is real and what not. After few mind blowing lucid dreams I stopped using word real because it doesn’t define what I am experiencing at this very moment because this right here could be easily the dream and it could feel the same way. So I ask myself what is real and what is not real.

I would still label this as over excitement. The moment you become lucid you are excited and you instantly forget what you planned to do before falling asleep and you wanna do all things, everything and then like that unprepared you try to fly and of course you are not able to do so because you are still on automatic mode of wanting to do thing. But if you calm yourself upon realizing that you are in a dream and if you put a thought into action, like flying you will succeed. Maybe not the first few times but later on you will. Just try to do what you planned.

Confidence is crucial and by remembering what you planned in WL your confidence will raise and you will become successful in your intent!

Good luck!

I’m curious…

For what do you want to control each aspect of your LDs? Do you have a specific goal in mind that will require omnipotence? Or do you want to control everything because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do?

I’ve certainly had LDs in which I’ve had awesome control. For instance, I’ve changed the directions of up and down, I’ve absorbed antagonists, and I’ve willed a landscape into creation. And, of course, I’ve left “boring” dreams for new dreams and I’ve done all kinds of flying and fighting.

But I’ve never found control as exciting as surprises. It’s the unanticipated adventures that are the most fun to me.

That said, I’ll share my personal dream control trick. I’ve found that controlling dreams calls for less effort, not more. To use a real example: once I was flying along and was met by a series of large stone walls. I made them dissolve so that I could get past. Since I did it repeatedly, I had a chance to experiment and gauge my level of effort. And I’ve since repeated the trick in other dreams. The easiest way to explain it is that control is not mental shouting, it’s calm mental conversation. It’s not shouting out with your mind: “THAT WALL ISN’T REAL!” It consists more of a casual internal silencing while you imagine something other than the wall, like a clear blue sky.

Obviously, that technique is dependent on—as db_FTS suggests—an inner relaxation. The easiest way to perfect it, for me, has been with flying. Since I fly so often in LDs, I’m noticing the value of non-effort all the time. I can fly more easily if I simply and calmly imagine myself moving through space than by flapping my arms or wishing hard.

But as critical as calm is a soft focus. This is why so many LD techniques rely on a quality of distraction and not intensity. When people want to change dreams, what do they do? They do something like finding a random door and opening it. Why do that instead of intensely willing the new dream scene? Apparently, that can be done, under certain circumstances (super-lucidity), but I would say that there’s a Watched Pot Never Boils effect in LDs.

A pseudo-scientific way of putting it would be: an information process slows when you observe it, analogous to how a computer might debug more slowly if you’re monitoring its progress.

The brain is not a computer, of course, but think about this: even in masterfully controlled LDs, the dreamer is not consciously creating each and every aspect of the new dream scene. That would be tedious! So what is creating it? Well, the mind is, the subconscious is.

Yet…subconscious is not non-conscious. The mind that’s projecting the imagery is not a soulless microchip. It’s aware and intelligent. It can talk to you (the dream ego) and can even oppose the actions of your dream ego.

Being lucid is not a blank check to control dreams.

That doesn’t mean the dream ego has to always be subservient; it means control depends, in part, on entering a confluence with mind processes that aren’t themselves meticulously controlled.

It’s a paradox.

Agreeing with dreamosis said regarding ‘Less is more’. I would wager it gets easier over time once you rewrite your ‘inbuilt expectations’ about how things are supposed to happen, but on the whole I’ve noticed that trying to god-mode in my dreams doesn’t work with my ‘skill level’. I can will myself to flying, but it will be hovering a meter above the ground. I can try to shapeshift, but I’ll just grow claws or something, and it won’t get much farther than that.

I remember a recent LD in which I encountered an alien invasion à la War of the Worlds, in which I tried to telekinetically deflect the balls of acid/plasma/whatever they were shooting at me, by willing them to move to one side or the other.
Despite me focusing harder and harder on it, I never moved them with any greater efficiency.

Finesse and a level head are probably the best things I can do to work on it.

To my credit, the balls which didn’t get deflected were sidestepped easily enough, so my dream-reflexes are a’okay. :v

You could try improving the integration of your subconcious with your concious, something I accidentally did, although it might wreck the MILD technique.