Greetings everyone.
Last night I used a brainwave generator for lucid dreaming before i went to bed, and after using alot of different audio files, i got the most results from this. my dreams were soooooooooooooo vivid. i had like 5 very interesting vivid dreams, 2 of them i became lucid in. I will describe one of them, but if you aren't interested in my dream and only want to help, i appreciate it,scroll down to the last paragraph.
One of the dreams I was lucid in I was trekking in what appeared to be a desert, in my mind i felt like it was the middle east. i knew i had to be dreaming. so i closed my eyes and thought of flight. and yet nothing happened, i did not fly. i tried to will myself to astral project..... nope. when i opened up my eyes (in dream) i did however find myself in a darkened part of the desert, with a sandstorm blotting out the sun. at this point i encountered an old shaman, i asked him his name, and he said he was called Beak. Beak instructed me to sitdown and relax as we had a long journey. Beak then spoke of some shaman herbs, and pulled out a pipe. he lit it, took a puff, and passed to me. I was feeling pretty comfortable with Beak, and felt a great deal of friendship coming from him. So I felt comfortable enough to ask Beak (thinking back to the movie waking life) How does it feel to be a character in a dream?
He said "Really? I wasn't aware I was the dream" soon after this a big fat bearded man chased after us and i woke up.
anyway, my question is, why could i not fly or project....
So I become lucid and then what? How do I control my dream to do what i want to do?
First, that's a great experience you had! Very nice indeed. :)
Secondly, let's look at your consciousness during that experience... because that's what I see as the key for defining your experience as a "lucid awareness" or "astral awareness" experience. Can you describe how consciously aware you were? You obviously recognized that you were in a dream, that's great! Next, did you know where your physical body was at that point? Did you have the same "waking consciousness" then that you have right now while reading this?
When I first become lucidly aware in my dreams, I stop what I'm doing and focus on one aspect of either myself (ie: hands) or my environment (ie: a big rock on the ground in my immediate area)... I stop engaging the environment and the things going on around me. This has the effect of focusing my attention just that little bit further so I don't get dragged back into a "dream awareness" (aka normal dream). Next, I ask myself some simple questions. Personally, I ask four questions out loud:
"Where am I?"
"Where am I going?"
"How did I get here?"
and "What am I doing?"
This act of questioning yourself and your surroundings brings forth your critical faculties and opens your full waking conscious awareness. In effect, you're now astral projecting. There's no need to return to your body... no need for classic "separation" sensations. When you're dreaming, you're already "out" and in the non-physical, it's all about bringing your conscious awareness forward.
If you wish to go to somewhere in what people call the RTZ (a physical world projection), you simply have to just visualize the place or person you want to visit and you'll go there. This does, however, take a bit of practice, but I'm sure you'll get it.
I keep all this information on my website, here: http://unlimitedboundaries.ca/2010/09/01/how-i-convert-a-lucid-dream-into-an-astral-projection/
Dream control is a separate factor from being Lucidly Aware or Astrally Aware... in a normal dream, your subconscious does all the control without any conscious effort on your part... actually, it's so effortless, you don't even realize you're doing it, and that's the basis for the dream reality. You think you're fully awake and simply going about your day or engaging in the scenario believing it's normal. When you're lucidly or astrally aware, it's a bit harder since your subconscious mind is pushed further and further into the background and has less direct control of the non-physical environment... I can't really tell you 'how' to control aspects of your non-physical except to say that you need to visualize what you want to change and it should manifest. If it does not, then you'll need to figure out why... as you probably have a belief that you can't do it because, well, really... who can "change their environment"? That belief needs to, at the very least, be pushed aside.
Goodluck! :)