Ever had a dream so vivid that you would swear it was real? You wake up and you are confused as to where you are and what you are doing? These vivid dreams occur during a period of sleep called the REM cycle. It derives its name from the rapid eye movement that occurs during this cycle. If you wake up in the middle of the dream cycle you are more likely to remember some or maybe even the entire dream, albeit the dream may fade quickly from your memory unless you write it down. If you wake up after the dream is over you might not even be aware that you were dreaming at all. However, most of us have, at least one time, awakened in the middle of the night aware of what we had just been dreaming about. Sometimes we even think to ourselves, "I’d like to tell so-and-so about this dream tomorrow." Occasionally we remember enough of it to relate the details to whomever it was we wanted to tell, but more often than not, unless it is written down immediately, the dream quickly fades from memory.

I’m sure many of us think it would be a great thing to remember all of our dreams, but research has shown that this would make it difficult to discern between what is reality and what was merely a dream. In deed, sometimes dreams are so vivid and so real that if you remember them you believe it is a real memory. When you speak to someone else about this dream as if it were reality, you receive a bewildered expression or response because that person has no idea what you are talking about. Eventually you may realize it was just a dream. However, the mind is a strange thing. It may have filed this particular dream as a memory that you will always perceive as reality even when others tell you it never happened. If this difficulty in deciphering what is real and what is dream already occurs occasionally, think of how hard it would be to know dream from reality if we always remembered our dreams and never forgot them.

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