Dreams and the Rules of Reality

There are an awful lot of people out there who believe their dreams have meanings. Here's what dreams are: Brain chemistry.

Your brain produces chemicals that allow you to interpret and recognize the things you see every day. You respond to stimuli with a combination of various emotions.

The parts of your brain that didn't fire synaptic neurotransmitters while you awake still need to do so.

During sleep, your body normally becomes mildly paralyzed so you don't flail around. There are many non-obstructive sleep disorders that involve the inability to be still while you sleep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_disorder)

Then the odd chemistry released triggers emotional responses to stimuli that does not exist. It's still interpreted as stimuli so you think you are actually doing things.

The things you experience in dreams are often physically impossible or utterly absurd because the chemicals released during the day do so at the mercy of the rules of reality, but at night, any combination of chemistry is released.

Like cartoon characters versus characters photographed or filmed, the rules of reality do not apply to dreams. You get to fly, time has no meaning, people who should be thousands of miles apart are together, and so on.

Dreams can be interpreted to the degree that persistence of a particular emotion while dreaming can lead to an area of the brain that is having difficulty due to a tumor, clot, aneurysm or other illness.

I often have dreams of being in a huge house that has rooms, stairs, hallways, and even landscaping from several different homes that I actually visited.