If the mind is powerful why can't we control our dreams?

We can. It just takes practice.

Uber’s right. It takes skillage. I’ve got a friend whom does not have an account and he does it.

You can, it just takes some focus. Also, realize that you can have more than one dream each night, so what you remember when you wake up is just that current dream.

I can. I do all the time. In fact, I have some “say” in almost every dream I ever remember having. And it really didn’t take “practice” or “skill” or “focus”. I’m pretty sure it’s natural for some people…

Look into Lucid Dreaming.

whoa.. cool! everyone but me seems to master this already, care to elaborate? :)

Also, the actual function of your dreams is to help your brain process, organize, and store information you’ve gathered throughout the day in order to make it useful for the future. So of course there is kind of a preset “storyline” for what is going to happen in your dreams every night. I’ve only ever been able to alter that as it’s happening, not necessarily decide beforehand what I’m going to dream about. In fact, I’m pretty certain that it’s been said that we dream about the same subjects all in one night, the multiple dreams you have are just different parts of the brain processing the same information.

Some can. I have trained myself to lucid dream when I want to, it just takes practice. Also, have you tried listening to Binaural Beats as you sleep? It can change they way you think of dreaming, and works as a kind of “training wheels” for lucid dreams.

Hmmm. I need to try that sometime Arp. Good idea.

@Arp thanks for info! I’m intrigued! Geez, this site is impressive, so much to learn and discover! thanks a lot guys!

Another little trick for lucid dreaming that ive heard works, is whenever you walk through a door touch the door frame and ask yourself “am I dreaming?” Think about it for a minute, the obvious answer you will respond to yourself is, no, no im not dreaming. Something weird always happened to me after that, like my vision readjusted to the world around me. The idea is to get yourself into this habit of touching doors and asking yourself if your dreaming. You will then eventually in a dream walk through a door and ask yourself if your dreaming, and yes, yes you are. You’re now lucid dreaming. Have fun :)

@uberbatman that sounds like a really effective tactic. I am always aware in my dreams that I am dreaming… and it would make sense if a person that has never had a lucid dream could realize that they were in a dream, that they could build on that.

A simple answer to this would be: because there is no survival advantage to doing so. The human body and mind are not a logically designed entity, it is a random collection of capabilities that happens to work, the rest is just left over. Things that aid survival stay, things the hinder survival disappear, and things that have no effect on survival may or may not stay. Controlling dreams probably has no direct survival benefit. But I suspect having them does. Read studies on sleep deprivation for insite into what the effects of dreaming are on the mind.

@uberbatman Another technique (The one I used at first) that works surprisingly well is to write the letter “A” for awake on the back of your hand. Whenever you see it, ask if you are awake. Once you get into a habit of this, eventually you will do it while you are asleep, and realize that you are dreaming. The first time I realized it, I got so excited I woke up :P

If you do it often enough, eventually you won’t need it anymore. Like I said, these tips are just training wheels :)

@Arp – Ha, that happened to me, too. I tried out some techniques for lucid dreaming and the one and only time I did it successfully, I got so excited that I woke myself up. Damn it. :P

We can’t even stop breathing. The unconscious mind handles 50 megabit of input per second. Now compare that with the conscious mind trying to control thing. At most a humble 50 bits per second on whatever you focus on.