Can we control our dreams?

You gave best response to a really interesting response. I would like to elaborate on that one to the extent I read about dreams. We have a database of emotions and sequential course of actions in our brain. We also have database of inputs that prompt such emotions and actions. Now, when we watch things in the daytime, and even during the evenings, there are many things that get recorded without our knowledge. Such things may even be recorded by our brains from books, or television images. We can also visualize what is told to us. However, we do not act upon hundred percent of each image presented before us. Its like in a marriage we focus upon the bride and bridegroom, and not on bride's friends, or bridegrooms friends. That is the conscious mind. Therefore, in every situation, there is a central and most important factor based on which we act or think. The peripheral images also prompt action...when linked to our databases and emotions. Therefore, you might have seen yourself climb stairs or step down stairs several times. You never think of yourself gliding the stairs because the database links are not programmed to show you that. Likewise, you dont see yourself flying down those stairs...though you might see yourself fall, if you have ever seen somebody fall or you yourself have fallen or you have heard or read about somebody falling from stairs. What our mind is trying to do is, make sense out of the image data it has and ask your subconscious...do we need to retain this, is it important? If not, lets discard. That is why there are many dreams we forget because some sequence is presented to us like a film, and we find nothing important in it. But the dejavu sequence is something that we might have seen in one such cleaning rounds. Yes, the images can create a sequence of actions that might happen in real life. Its a probability. In our so many dreams, and so many images ...the probability or probabilities exist in everybody's lives. Now, coming to controlling our dreams, it depends upon what you want to control. The fear factors and emotional factors that have been burnt in on your brain's CD, cannot be altered easily. So that aspect is hard to get rid of. However, if you fear falling from stairs, you can do one thing...climb the stairs, and get down a few times without falling. That gets recorded and fear factor can be overcome. Likewise, if you fear dark alleys, dont take a walk after dusk or early in the morning before sunrise. Or take a few walks along with some happy go lucky friends such that you dont notice the dark alleys or they cease to look fearsome. You fear snakes, then go to some snake park, spend some time watching them being handled, learn that their poison can still give you time to save yourself...spend sometime listening to such things, and even meeting survivors of snake bites...

I can't remember any dreams which I had controlled. All I had experience was waking up in the middle of the dream and when I went back to sleep, the dream continued on and on.

Are you sure you are not just daydreaming? If you really could control your dreams, I am sure you will dream what you have been hoping in real life. Hey, maybe if you can control your dreams, you may as well make it real. I seem to forget my dreams the moment I wake up. Maybe you could do a manual, then we can all learn to have nice dreams. Seems you are gifted.

Yeah I belive strongly our dreams can be controlled by us when we are at a very awaken state and have the will power to change them in our mind you can dream and htink of what will happen next and than it happens something similiar but according to that dream. It´s all about our sub conscience and our will and everything we got deep inside of us that we don´t think or maybe realize we´re thinking about it

from my own point of reference, dreams are the things we think about or things that gives us pressures for some time and gives us stress which in some point we bring it to our sleep and our subconscious mind still think about even we are asleep physically. So I do believe that we can possibly control want we want to happen in our dreams,well of course scientifically, but that's hard to apply.There is a special way to do this by following some formula and settings,mind setting,and a corresponding studies about this.Wonders of science. Good topic though.

Never happened to me..if I could be able to control my dreams, well I would not die as often as it happens in them :D

I believe that we can control our dreams partially, but not all. There many types of dream. Some are the results of what we experienced during day time and it just reflect what we went through all over again. Of course, the ending won't be exactly the same, usually it tend to replay the result that we wanted it to be. For example, during the day, we said something wrong accidentally in a conversation with our friends. At night, dream about the same situation again, but we might not repeat the mistake made earlier. This could be part of our subconscious mind and conscience playing the tricks to correct our mistakes made during earlier time of the day. This type of dream are more likely to be "controllable" through our subconscious mind. Besides, we might also experience some dejavu phenomenon in our dreams. We dream about some moments in life, which takes place shortly after we had the dream. This sounds strange and could hardly be explained. The interesting part is, friends around me claimed that they do have the same experiences as well. This kind of dream is not meant to be controlled. It might be just a premonition kind of phenomena. Other that those mentioned above, there are dreams that are so vivid that they are mistaken as our real world experience. We might be too obsessed with such dreams until we wake up and realize that they are nothing but dreams. However, most of our dreams are vague and could be hardly remembered. If we do not recall it the moment we wake up, it will just simply fades away and could never be recovered. I believe random dreams could hardly be controlled.

Occasionally, I have realized that I was dreaming and have tried to control the outcome of the dream. However, more frequently, I don't realize that I'm dreaming and can get very upset at what happened in the dream.

Every night I tell myself a story in my head to get to sleep. It is something my Dad taught me when I was a kid. He said when he woke up with a bad dream in the middle of the night he would finish off the story in a good way in his head before going back to sleep. So, I figured that if I just went ahead and told myself the story in my head before I went to sleep that I would just skip the bad dream part. Sometimes I will have a nightmare or two. But, not that often. Unless I'm in a bed other than my own.

hi..!! as far as i have known we can not control our dreams when we are sleeping. dreams begin when we are in deep sleep which can not control it.

yes.. I agree that dreams come about our desires.. We do shape our dreams.. The reason why we dream is complicated.. This can only be understood by understanding true power of brain.. This is tough.. Who knows it might also solve whether souls are present or not!!

The dreams we all dream at night when we are asleep are not the same as the dreams (goals) we have for our personal future. I doubt btw if everybody has a dream (or more) if it comes to our future. It's possible to change/control the dreams we have at night especially if you face your life/problems/thoughts at day time. Same with the dreams/goals we set for ourselves/our future. You just need to be aware of it and work on it. If not nothing will change.

like inception? I think yes if you concentrate and think about the scenario in your head and playing it over and over... it is mind conditioning. since dream comes from subconsciousness. NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS, JUST A THOUGHT AND COMMON SENSE. ...... but what is your purpose?

There is no scientific study that we can control our dreams but for me dreams is the product of what we are feeding to our mind before we go to sleep.

Experts say that we do have the ability to change the outcome of some dreams. I have done it myself but usually end out waking up before I see the results I wanted. It's funny you should mention this because I was dreaming about Easter eggs the other night. They were cartoon-like (probably from an on-line game) so that's not weird. What's weird is that I woke up. The idea of waking up is to get out of the dream. I went back to sleep and dreamed about the darned eggs again. So I woke up again. And then I went back to sleep. And I dreamed about those stupid eggs again. I couldn't believe it. That never happened to me before. The whole purpose of waking up is to get away from the dream but I just couldn't escape it. I guess it's a good thing I wasn't dreaming about vampires or something else scary.

I think some dreams can be controlled and some dreams cannot be controlled. I do have dreams. I dream about different things.

I tend to agree with the Sigmound freud theory cause most of my dreams are the representation of my unconsciousness mind I can not control my dreams cause sometimes I am not really aware of my unconscious mind think if you can control your dreams, maybe you are good in controlling your own mind and feelings

I think, to follow on from a mylot conversation I was having with someone else, that our dreams give us what we need. So at one level it could for some people be unconscious desires, but another interpretation, from jung, I think, is that we meet our missing parts of ourselves in dreams Though those two aren't ccompletely incompatible, as to find our lost selves might be quite a common human desire. I'm not sure, I think everyone's experience is difference. I am curious though whether you feel comfortable in real life just making jokes, or whether you are a bit self conscious about it? as then it might be your subconscious self telling you that making jokes is ok. I find writing my dreams down quite interesting. Though I had one weird dream the other day that someone I sort of know had a message for me, and when I woke up there more or less was a message from him in my email box, though that's quite complicated. I quite like the idea that there is something mysterious about dreams, as life would be very boring if there were no mysteries in it, and dreams are a good place for them to live.

I think that some people may be able to do that, but that's a minority. I've never maganed to do that - maybe my power of thinking is too weak :D.

No, but according to my psychiatrist, many dreams represent your repressed feelings. Dreams represent something that happened in your childhood that was very disturbing to you. Because of this, it comes out later in dreams but it is usually expressed in a vague way. For example, I have many dreams where I get lost. This represents my insecure childhood which was too painful for me to feel as a child.