When is a Dream Just a Dream?

There will always be side-effects when gaining anything. There is never a good without it's bad nor bad without it's advantage. Everything that presents itself is nothing but another opportunity to be taken advantage of. Without too much detail one thing I just did not expect when I figured out how to control my dreams was that there are two types of dreams. The every night kind where your brain is trying to figure something out and then there's something I guess best described as true dreams.

Normal dreams are a mess. What you have to understand about dreams is that they are exactly like everyone fears the world is really like. Existence only exists in front of you. When you look behind you everything that was in front of you goes away until you either think or look at it again. Sounds fun probably until you have that realization while you are dreaming about someone you care about. If you are not looking at them they do not exist and by looking away you cause them to cease to exist. It took me years to get over this and recover enough to turn my head while dreaming. Well one more thing I figured out was how to jerk myself out of a dream. I don't recommend it because you pretty much lose any recovery gained from sleeping.

If you are reading this you are still not likely to be aware when you are sleeping. It takes something hugely traumatic or dramatic to even begin the process. For those who make it this far the rewards can be huge. When I dream normally I have complete control over what happens and even accomplished some programming work. Of course I had about 15 minutes to get it down before I forgot everything. There's the rub. No matter what you do during these dreams you're going to forget 90% shortly after waking up, even if you try to right it down. Eventually I stop using my dreams to keep work. At this point I pretty much live out whatever fantasies must guys would have. There's a problem with that as well.

The way memory works overlaps with dreaming. Most people go to sleep and their brain puts together a dream to try and help figure out whatever is giving them stress. Let's say that it's something at work, an ex-girlfriend stalking you, a speeding ticket, a concert coming up at, and the $5000 car bill just hit your credit card. Without a directing hand the dream you have can be convoluted but at least when you wake up you have some stress relief caused by some hope of an answer you will never know or make sense of being somewhere in your memory. On the other hand when you have complete control of the dream everything seems so easy:

You go to work after a nice sleep. Once you get there your boss says the problem has been solved because the new employee is taking care of. Out of curiosity you walk around to find out who it is and it turns out to be you ex who is buried by a 3 tons, literally, of paper work that would have been yours. She is going to be so busy that she can no longer stalk you. With nothing to do you call up the police officer and tell her that instead of paying the ticket she is going to sleep with you. So of course she does. While you're having sex the band shows up and gives you a personal show. As they leave they pay $10,000 for the honor of performing and then you pay off the mechanic.

Sounds great right? Not really. When you really do wake up this dream will pop in your head. Because it is even slightly based on reality it will confuse you for a brief second. Now you have these vague thought that causes you to look at all the cubes for your ex and the mechanic to call you later on to tell you that you did not in fact pay him off yet. Reality is going to start falling part around you unless you pull yourself together. It will not take long to figure out that your dreams really need to be completely nuts for your sanity to remain.