On nightmares & lucid dreaming.

There are many things that I am fascinated by.
Lately I've been putting a lot of thought into the dream world;
particularly lucid dreams & nightmares.
One of the things I keep thinking about is how hard it is
in a dream to become consciously aware you're dreaming. This idea,
called "lucid dreaming" is something that many never experience. There is
an entire subculture of people who practice lucid dreaming &
an even larger group of people who seek to discern the meaning
behind what they experience while they're asleep.
[If you're a super nerd, check this out.]

Along with thinking about lucid dreaming,
I've been thinking a lot about nightmares. While it's
difficult to become aware in a dream of your state of consciousness,
I've found that after a nightmare, there are times for me when it
is nearly impossible to become convinced that what had 
just happened wasn't, in fact, real. I absolutely hate the feeling
of waking up and spending hours emotionally exhausted
by something that happened while I was asleep.

I think I've been thinking so much about dreams
because I have no ability to bridle what goes on in my mind sometimes.
I've been working on controlling my thought life 
in the waking world & while I can "practice" lucid dreaming,
[nerd alert]
I can't always know what, if any, bigger picture lies behind them.

Try as I might to make sense of them all, I'm starting to understand
that sometimes it takes work to let dreams remain just that:
dreams.

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