Nightmares

Last night I had a nightmare. The subject of the nightmare is not really important, and it was like any other nightmare in that the terrifying scenario of the dream seemed completely real. And it was because it seemed real that I had to go through the terrible experience of feeling what it would be like if it really was real.

Of course, if anything terrible really does happen in real life, then we want a way out. We'll do anything to undo or mitigate the terrible events. The same is true of nightmare. When I had my nightmare, I wanted a way out. I wanted it to not be true. What seems curious about nightmares, however, is that there is a way out. It's all going on in my mind, and I know the nightmare is just a dream. But I don't have access to that during the nightmare, and I have to suffer. Who restricts my access within my own mind? In other words, how can nightmares happen?

Now, the simple response to this is to just accept that nightmares do happen. Who would deny that. What seems so strange to me is that every night we enter this field of consciousness in which certain parts our ordinary knowledge are off limits. So it's not that dreams are an entirely different world. They're not. It just seems that we can't have access to a few facts that are ordinarily extremely obvious.

Another response is to say that dreams are meant to force us to experience alternate realities or scenarios, and the only way that can successfully happen is if we temporarily fail to realize how things really are.