I think you'd have to be in the realm between la-la land and being awake.

Yes. Get a book at the library or look online at what is called "lucid dreaming." Here: Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming, resulting in a much clearer ("lucid") experience and sometimes enabling direct control over the content of the dream.[1] The complete experience from start to finish is called a lucid dream. Stephen LaBerge, a popular author and experimenter on the subject, has defined it as "dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming."[2] LaBerge and his associates have called people who purposely explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming oneironauts (literally from the Greek ονειροναύτες, meaning "dream sailors"). The topic attracts the attention of a diverse and eclectic group: psychologists, self-help authors, New Age groups, mystics, occultists, ufologists and artists. This list is by no means exhaustive nor does interest in lucid dreaming apply necessarily to each group. The validity of lucid dreaming as a scientifically verified phenomenon is well-established [3]. It may be classified as a protoscience, pending an increase in scientific knowledge about the subject. Researchers such as Allan Hobson with his neurophysiological approach to dreaming have helped to push the understanding of lucid dreaming into a less speculative realm. ==================== Reality testing Reality testing is a common method that people use to determine whether or not they are dreaming. It involves performing an action with results that are difficult to re-create in a dream. By practicing these techniques during waking life, one may eventually dream of performing a reality check—which will usually fail—helping the dreamer realize that they are dreaming. Common reality tests include: Read some text, look away, and read it again, or to look at your watch and remember the time, then look away and look back. Observers have found that, in a dream, the text or time will often have changed. Flipping a light switch or looking into a mirror. Light switches rarely work properly in dreams, and reflections from a mirror often appear to be blurred, distorted or incorrect. Pinching oneself or hitting an object hard. The acute pain usually cannot be felt in dreams. Another form of reality testing involves identifying one's dream signs, clues that one is dreaming. Dream signs are often categorized as follows: Action — The dreamer, another dream character, or a thing does something unusual or impossible in waking life, such as photos in a magazine or newspaper becoming 3-dimensional with full movement. Context — The place or situation in the dream is strange. Form — The dreamer, another character, or a thing changes shape, or is oddly formed or transforms; this may include the presence of unusual clothing or hair, or a third person view of the dreamer. Awareness — A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual sensation, or altered perceptions. In some cases when moving one's head from side to side, one may notice a strange stuttering or 'strobing' of the image. Cohesion — Sometimes the dreamer may seem to "teleport" to a completely different location in a dream, with no transition whatsoever. Though occurrences like these may seem out of place in waking life, they may seem perfectly normal to a dreaming mind and learning to pick up on these dream signs will help in recognizing that one is dreaming. Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) The mnemonic induction of lucid dreams is a common technique used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming, or to remember to look for dream signs. Because it is easy to master (almost everyone sets intentions frequently), it is ideal for those who have never practiced lucid dreaming induction techniques before. The MILD technique was developed by Stephen LaBerge, and is described fully in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Wake-back-to-bed (WBTB) The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to induce a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep tired and waking up five hours later. Then, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming, staying awake for an hour and going back to sleep. The odds of having a lucid dream are then much higher. This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a more lengthy lucid dream. However, the explanation that people may simply recall a dream more easily if they directly wake up from it has also been suggested. After having a dream during the night you usually immediately fall back to sleep (or don't "wake up" at all), and thus you don't remember it. If you want to remember a dream during the night it is best to get up and walk around for a second, or make an entry in a journal, log, or a sticky note. Wake-induced lucid dream (WILD) The wake-initiated lucid dream "occurs when the sleeper enters REM sleep with unbroken self-awareness directly from the waking state". The key to this technique is recognising the hypnagogic stage, which is within the border of being awake and being asleep. If a person is successful in staying aware while this stage occurs, they will eventually enter the dream state while being fully aware that it is a dream. Because one does not have to recognise a cue in order to induce a lucid dream using this technique, it tends to be more reliable than other techniques. There are key times at which this technique is best used; while success at night after being awake for a long time is very difficult, it is relatively easy after being awake for 15 or so minutes and in the afternoon during a nap. Users of this technique often count, envision themselves climbing or descending stairs, chanting to themselves, exploring elaborate, passive sexual fantasies, controlling their breathing, concentrating on relaxing their body from their toes to their head, allowing images to flow through their "mind's eye" and envisioning themselves jumping into the image, or any various form of concentration to keep their mind awake, while still being calm enough to let their body sleep. During the actual transition into the dreamstate, one is likely to experience sleep paralysis, including rapid vibrations, a sequence of very loud sounds and a feeling of twirling into another state of body awareness, "to drift off into another dimension". Also there is frequently a sensation of falling rapidly or dropping through the bed as one enters the dreamstate or the sensation of entering a dark black room from which one can induce any dream scenario of one's choosing, simply by concentrating on it. The key to being successful is to not panic, especially during the transition which can be quite sudden. References Lucid Dreaming (1985) ISBN 0-87477-342-3 by Stephen LaBerge. Lucid Dreams (1968) ISBN 0-900076-00-3 by Celia Green Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep (1994) ISBN 0-415-11239-7 by Celia Green and Charles McCreery Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (1991) ISBN 0-345-37410-X by Stephen LaBerge. Creative Dreaming (1974) ISBN 0-671-21903-0 by Patricia L Garfield Dreams and How to Guide Them [1867] (1982) ISBN 0-7156-1584-X by Hervey de Saint-Denys The Lucid Dreamer (1994) ISBN 0-671-87248-6 by Malcom Godwin Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep (1998) ISBN 1-55939-101-4 by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain (1988) ISBN 0-306-42849-0 by Jayne Gackenbach and Stephen Laberge, Eds.

I was once having a horrible nightmare where i saw my parents and little sister perish in a housefire and in my dream i was crying so much all the time and at one point i shouted "I DONT LIKE THIS DREAM I WANT TO WAKE UP" and I did, but then i burst into tears and couldnt sleep for the rest of the night.

Yes you can because you are making up everything that goes on in the dream unconsiously so when you think hard about it you can make something happen in your dream.

Every person on earth dreams every night – every mammal in fact. It follows then that something extremely important must be going on while we sleep and dream, yet in the industrialized world, the majority of people pay little attention to dreams, and sometimes shortchange themselves on sleep because it is perceived as lost time, or at best unproductive. How astonishing that we generally ignore this third (and possibly far more) of ourselves. An appropriate analogy to the grandeur of this mass misunderstanding is the incredible inertia in the middle ages against the idea of earth being other than flat until repeated point-blank evidence like Galileo’s observation of other planets and their moons and the journeys of Columbus and other explorers across the ocean proved conclusively otherwise. The challenge was that people’s everyday experience contradicted the idea of a spherical earth because nobody had yet gained perspective from outside of the system. Airplanes and especially photographs from space were not yet available, so there was little first hand evidence of a new paradigm that was quite a great leap beyond the old. Fortunately, people eventually began to come around, and the shift triggered an ensuing surge of exploration as the realization and acceptance finally dawned that our world really isn't flat after all. Dreams, in the same way, encompass yet another entire dimension of experience, a world as yet unexplored by most, where a fascinating sphere of activity awaits investigation and possible harvest for greater fulfillment in waking life. The challenge is again the same — common daily experience for the average person offers little proof of this other reality, let alone the possible value of this other dimension of experience, unless one can gain perspective from outside the 9-to-5 work day framework and a scientific purely-objective system. Dream related mental skills such as dream recall or dream interpretation and information on subjects such as the meaning of nightmares or precognitive dreams isn’t often taught in our schools, and the majority of our parents knew or passed on little about the value of dreams as we grew up. So it's no big surprise that many adults remember few or no dreams, and even more rarely contemplate or set out to interpret the guidance and mine the jewels of creative inspiration hidden just below the surface of consciousness in dreams. Basically, nobody told us or showed us how dreams can be extremely practical. The result of where this long-standing trend of disregarding dreams has brought society is that the current misguided concepts about the value of dreams are not only crucial misunderstandings, but also represent and even bring about a lack of connection with the subconscious and our own deeper nature. This artificial rift may indirectly, or even rather directly be the source for many of our current personal, cultural and planetary social, political, and environmental challenges. One solution towards rebalancing and integration on a personal and eventually a planetary level, is for each of us to realize and begin to investigate how our personal dreams, at very least, each night offer a direct means to explore inner reality and gain unique, undeniable experiences of deep personal value. Further, there is overwhelming evidence that they can be applied in many ways to improve waking life, supporting Shakespeare's age-old claim by MacBeth that sleep and dreams are the "chief nourishers in life's feast". Dreams do indeed offer opportunities for fun, adventure, wish fulfillment, creativity, deep personal insight and healing — and dreams offer all this at no cost and with no line-ups! Yes. Get a book at the library or look online at what is called "lucid dreaming." Here: Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming, resulting in a much clearer ("lucid") experience and sometimes enabling direct control over the content of the dream.[1] The complete experience from start to finish is called a lucid dream. Stephen LaBerge, a popular author and experimenter on the subject, has defined it as "dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming."[2] LaBerge and his associates have called people who purposely explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming oneironauts (literally from the Greek ονειρ οναύτε ς, meaning "dream sailors"). The topic attracts the attention of a diverse and eclectic group: psychologists, self-help authors, New Age groups, mystics, occultists, ufologists and artists. This list is by no means exhaustive nor does interest in lucid dreaming apply necessarily to each group. The validity of lucid dreaming as a scientifically verified phenomenon is well-established [3]. It may be classified as a protoscience, pending an increase in scientific knowledge about the subject. Researchers such as Allan Hobson with his neurophysiological approach to dreaming have helped to push the understanding of lucid dreaming into a less speculative realm. ==================== Reality testing Reality testing is a common method that people use to determine whether or not they are dreaming. It involves performing an action with results that are difficult to re-create in a dream. By practicing these techniques during waking life, one may eventually dream of performing a reality check—which will usually fail—helping the dreamer realize that they are dreaming. Common reality tests include: Read some text, look away, and read it again, or to look at your watch and remember the time, then look away and look back. Observers have found that, in a dream, the text or time will often have changed. Flipping a light switch or looking into a mirror. Light switches rarely work properly in dreams, and reflections from a mirror often appear to be blurred, distorted or incorrect. Pinching oneself or hitting an object hard. The acute pain usually cannot be felt in dreams. Another form of reality testing involves identifying one's dream signs, clues that one is dreaming. Dream signs are often categorized as follows: Action — The dreamer, another dream character, or a thing does something unusual or impossible in waking life, such as photos in a magazine or newspaper becoming 3-dimensional with full movement. Context — The place or situation in the dream is strange. Form — The dreamer, another character, or a thing changes shape, or is oddly formed or transforms; this may include the presence of unusual clothing or hair, or a third person view of the dreamer. Awareness — A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual sensation, or altered perceptions. In some cases when moving one's head from side to side, one may notice a strange stuttering or 'strobing' of the image. Cohesion — Sometimes the dreamer may seem to "teleport" to a completely different location in a dream, with no transition whatsoever. Though occurrences like these may seem out of place in waking life, they may seem perfectly normal to a dreaming mind and learning to pick up on these dream signs will help in recognizing that one is dreaming. Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) The mnemonic induction of lucid dreams is a common technique used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming, or to remember to look for dream signs. Because it is easy to master (almost everyone sets intentions frequently), it is ideal for those who have never practiced lucid dreaming induction techniques before. The MILD technique was developed by Stephen LaBerge, and is described fully in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Wake-back-to-bed (WBTB) The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to induce a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep tired and waking up five hours later. Then, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming, staying awake for an hour and going back to sleep. The odds of having a lucid dream are then much higher. This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a more lengthy lucid dream. However, the explanation that people may simply recall a dream more easily if they directly wake up from it has also been suggested. After having a dream during the night you usually immediately fall back to sleep (or don't "wake up" at all), and thus you don't remember it. If you want to remember a dream during the night it is best to get up and walk around for a second, or make an entry in a journal, log, or a sticky note.

There's a certain type of dream I have from time to time that's like a terrifying nightmare with no particular story. It's just an awareness that I'm lying there asleep where I am. I know I'm asleep and I can feel this incredible presence of evil or really negative energy that bares me ill will. My mission becomes, "Try to wake the hell up!" It's extremely difficult, but sometimes I can muster up the will to make a part of my body move or I can force myself to let out a kind of moan which wakes me. I saw on another forum that this type of dream is fairly common, so I was kind of relieved to know it wasn't just me. Another time I couldn't get myself to move, so I thought about my little sister who had died many years ago, and asked her to come to me. I immediately sensed this entirely different feeling of calm, and love which gently drew me up to wakefulness. I feel it was more than just a dream, but I have no explanation for it.

I don't know that i can control the dream itself, but I can say that I have in the past been able to control the emotions that I am feeling in the dream.

i imagine something i want to dream before i fall asleep and sometimes i dream it too, does that count? i have gotten better over the years...

Do you mean is it possible, or have I personally learned and am able to control my dreams without waking? I can't. I tried to learn the lucid dreaming technique of reading signs and looking away and then back again. You have to train yourself to frequently do this while awake to have it occur while dreaming, but it never worked for me. I have extremely realistic dreams, so much so that often I will remember things later in the day and have to seriously consider whether they happened for real--or not. I was once mad at a friend for something she said until I really thought about it and realized she would never have said such a thing. Scary how my mind made it seem so real.

Yes. And I've taught my six year old how to as well. Since our dreams are just a part of ourselves trying to communicate (or garbage-dumping the day's stressors), we are in charge of them.* I read a book in the 70's emphasizing the above and suggesting that we train ourselves, when monsters accost us in our dreams, to pull out a magic wand, point it at the monster and say "you are swiss cheese." ***POOF!*** This is obviously appealing on a child-level. My daughter thinks it's funny. And every now and then she will wake up and tell me that she "made some cheese last night." *Of COURSE, it is us and nothing other than us. No angel is whispering our dreams into our heads or anything.