Dreams are Life Experiences

Imagine that a drug had been created that can erase specific memories. Memories of childhood abuse may thereby be effectively erased.

I think everyone has the intuition that this would fix little. Survivors of childhood abuse would continue having difficulty establishing trust and forming intimate relationships. They just wouldn’t know why.

Dreams operate in the same way. Events take place that you think are real while you are experiencing them. You fear. You have glee. You react. You are changed by the experience. You might well dream again of the same theme. Months later, you become aware of habits and prejudices have formed. The difference that you have forgotten or discounted your dreams, so you come up with more plausible explanations.

Dreams are life experiences. They are to be approached with the same seriousness as waking life experiences. Maybe more, because your dream environment is much more reactive to your predilections than waking life. Virtuous circles are possible, which can lift you out of ordinary dreaming. Vicious circles are also possible.

Imagine a magical circus tent which has magical stalls at which every vice and every virtue is catered to. This is the dreaming world in its most neutral form, but in practice, one tends to develop particular and limited haunts. This is not how to exit the tent. One must work out a trajectory, by trial and error, that leads to the outside. This implies that your personal dreaming world is not to be sampled randomly, nor by haunts, but by deliberation and application. This is why dreams are to be taken seriously as life experiences.