Dream control while not lucid.

Most of my dreams are normal dreams where I don't really have control over myself or surroundings. Sometimes while having a normal dream everything will become extremely vivid and I have complete control over my actions but I don't realize I'm dreaming until I wake up. It's pretty much exactly the same as when I become lucid, I just don't realize I was dreaming until it's done. It's really cool but a little frustrating as well when I realize I could have taken the experience much farther.

I don't really know where I'm going with this but do any of you experience this?

Yea, I do on occasion, I can't help but wonder if we really do have control...

It could easily be that in some vivid dreams, we are tricked into thinking we are in control...

During dreams, I seem to act normally, or as normal as I could given the situation, if a dream was very vivid, I could easily think that I was really in control.

I know what you mean ... youre thinking... damn if i knew it was a dream i prolly would have taken advantage of this situation or that situation and so forth.. i would have done this differently etc..

the truth is the reason we do thing in dreams is because its controlled almost completely by our sub-conscious... so the thing you do in your dreams are almost 100% of the time the things you would actually do if you had control whether you want to admit it or not.

I believe lucidity should not get mixed up with this experience. Lucidity would be another level of dreaming. Controlling where you are, who you see, what you want to do (fly, swim, run, teleport etc).

Yes lucid dreaming means knowing its a dream and so forth but controlling your actions and the environment around you takes a lot of practice!

A few nights ago I had a great dream in which I had FAR better control in than any lucid dreams or attempts I've ever had. It was outside of a mall in a huge, near empty parking lot, and very sunny in the middle of the day, and I was running very fast down a strip of artificially planted grass beside the lined up trees. As I was running, I had the urge to turn into a little running quail, and I somehow knew I had the capability like it was common nature, so I transformed into a quail during running, and I felt my legs now tiny, skinny and running very light and close to the ground. It was such a realistic feeling of being a small creature, and I effortlessly switched back and forth between human and quail. Then, I had the desire to fly while I was a quail, so I stretched out my wings and took off the ground, just like that, soaring up to the top of the lined trees and then descending back down again, as if I was a little too timid to really fly away. Then I imagined flying extremely high up, to the top of the world as if to the very ceiling of the ozone layer, and I actually felt overpowering physical sensations of flying up so high, getting a little light-headed and having some vertigo, in an exhilarating way. I wondered about using these techniques for whenever I get a lucid dream. :roll:

Oddly enough, that night before I went to bed and had that dream, I tried constantly repeating a meme that I would remember to know when I was dreaming, until I finally fell asleep (at least that was my goal).

So I know exactly what you're saying. Every time I've become lucid and would try to fly, I'd think too hard about it and could only run and then fall on my face. My dreams would easily dim and become dull and nothing would go how I wanted it to, even though I knew it was all a dream. I'm terrible at dream control while lucid.