I have a fairly vivid imagination, so my dreams can be pretty intense. That can also make nightmares a force to be reckoned with. Luckily that has rarely been an issue since elementary school. When we are awake, our conscious mind is processing inputs from our senses, but when we are dreaming our conscious mind is processing inputs that are being synthetically generated by our subconscious. So what is our subconscious doing when we are wake? (Besides breathing, blinking, monitoring our circulation, and thing like that, which it is still doing while we sleep.) If we could access the power of our subconscious mind when we were awake, that would be amazing.
When I was younger, I used to remember most of my dreams quite well after I woke up, and can still recall some of them twenty years later. One time in 8th grade, I dreamt an entire day in great detail. I went to bed on Monday night, lived an entire Tuesday in my dream, and then woke up assuming it was Wednesday. It took me until about noon to realize what happened, trying to reconcile my memories of the last 24 hours with the events in my dream. Our subconscious is very powerful, but can be deceptive.
Then there was a period for many years when I never remembered any of my dreams. This feels like not having dreams at all, but I hear that people almost always have dreams, whether they remember them or not. In the last few years, I frequently am aware of what I was dreaming when I first wake up, but most of the details fade within a few minutes. That is a crazy phenomenon, since even now I can recall remembering them, but even if I focus on consciously replaying them after I wake up, they evaporate quickly. In most other ways I have an excellent and detailed memory, but dreams just slip away.
I have been having many long intensely detailed dreams over the last few weeks. I don't remember what they were about, but I recall being very impressed when I wake up, with the scope of what I dreamed. One aspect I do remember, that has been different than in the past, is that I have occasionally been conscious of the fact that I am dreaming, while it is happening. I had heard other people describe that experience in the past, but couldn't really relate to it. In at least one instance where I realized I was dreaming, I put my subconscious mind to the test. I focused on the details, and sought out complexity, to push things to the limit. In the one specific dream I can recall this happening, I was shopping in a store, so I went to the toy section, to see what my subconscious mind would populate the shelves with. I found Lego sets of full scale power tools made out of Technic pieces, which is actually a pretty good idea. It is said that our conscious thoughts only occupy 10% of our brain, so I guess I figured out one of the things that my other 90% is up to. In the past, I have come up with solutions to highly technical problems I faced at work in dreams.
There are a lot of ideas out there about interpreting dreams, but they all hinge on being able to remember the details. I have no doubt that God has spoken to me through dreams on certain occasions, but those are rare. If he has been trying to tell me anything recently, I haven't remembered enough to get the message. But that is okay, he can communicate with us in other ways.
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