Hi All,

Over the past few years, I've learned to recognize when I'm dreaming (normally by detecting a nightmare) and forcing myself awake from within my dream (I do this by telling myself "force your eyes open" over and over again until I can pry myself awake.

A few years ago... I decided to take a chance and rather than wake myself, I wanted to see if I could have fun with the dream. It was a rather mild nightmare (someone had died or something like that) so I decided to start commanding (for lack of a better word) things to happen in the dream. I remember wishing myself to another spot... then I wished someone to be with me and then I remember thinking... hey! Wonder if I can fly... so I flapped my arms and slowly I started flying. In the first dream, for some reason I couldn't keep flying and I think I ended up slowly sinking to the ground. I remember waking up and thinking "this is COOL".

Since then... I've been able to focus on forcing a dream I could control only once... when I was getting ready to fall asleep, I'd focus on a pattern that I was looking at... usually the form of black and white pebbles... dim at first and then growing sharper as I continued to focus. Once the pebbles were sharply focused; I found I was floating above them and then I just started flying. I've only been able to do this once.

More times than not, I simply become aware that something is out of place (and again, more times than not it is a nightmare) and then I can kick off a dream I could control.

Well... last night I had the whopper of all controlled dreams. It started with someone telling me my cat was dead and I started to force myself awake using the pry my eyes open technique but for some reason, I decided to "test" if it was a dream (for lack of a better word) so... ummm... let's just say I commanded something I like After that... I found myself in a long dark hallway and I felt that my controlled dream was slipping back into a nightmare (sometimes they do that on me... more often that not I can force them back to something fun but sometimes, if I let the nightmare get to far along I need wo wake myself up)... anyway... I'm in the hall and it is long and dark with no doors and windows so I turn and face the wall and command a door and then instantly, just as it appears I walk through it into a blue sky sunny day. I remember thinking... wow... making that door appear was easy. So... since I like to fly and it was a nice clear day... I just started flapping. Honestly, this dream seemed to last forever and when I woke up... I knew that I could not possibly be alone in this odd little world of controlling my dreams... so as soon as I got up this morning, I googled "control my dreams" (or something like that) and found my way here.

I was really surprised to find that there was a website dedicated to this... I'll be surfing around here to try and figure out how to make these controlled dreams more frequent. I don't believe I've had more than a small handful (6-10 or so) in the past few years. If I had my way; I'd do this every night!

Anyway... just wanted to say hello and introduce myself. I'm very happy to have found this website and people who like doing this as much as I do.

Joe