The Dream World

By: Nicholas W. Clark

Introduction:

Dreams. The place our mind chooses to go while we sleep. The adventures our sub – conscious longs to live out in the real world. Dreams are the single greatest thing our mind is able to do and yet they are all mostly forgotten. Now as I’ve said, most dreams are forgotten by morning but sometimes they are not. Sometimes dreams stick around, now of course you’ve probably had a few dreams that you could remember for about a day afterward, but if you were able to count how many dreams you’ve actually had and didn’t remember, That number would be much greater. We remember some dreams because they were so bizarre or so interesting, that it caught the attention of  a part of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or the DLPFC which is in the region of the brain that facilitates memory, so we remember the dream.

Now, though you might think that dreams are just plane and simple, and nothing more than a bit of imagination, they’re not. Indeed there are many different things a person can achieve through dreams, like vivid dreaming and astral projection.Astral projection is a phenomenon in which the conscious mind moves into the astral body to experience things away from where the person is sleeping. It is known by few how to actually go about achieving Astral Projection, but it is still being researched today. Although, it is known by many how to achieve Lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a different phenomenon in which a person is aware that they are in a dream.  During Lucid Dreaming the dreamer is able to control the dream as well. Ways you can achieve lucid dreaming are as follows.

1. Mnemonic Induction to Lucid Dreaming or MILD
2. Reality checks
3. And Dream Awareness

        The first method is simply executed by telling yourself that you are going to know that you are dreaming over and over  again out loud. This method helps because you often dream about  whatever was fresh on your  mind, so your sub conscious  takes those sentences

 you said as you were going to sleep and creates a dream about you knowing that your dreaming, which in turn allows you to achieve lucid dreaming. The second method is very self explanatory, all you have to do is stop during various moments of the day and ask yourself  “Am I dreaming?” Then proceed to look for inconsistencies in your environment that wouldn’t work in reality, if you find anything wrong then you are dreaming.

        So I have taken these various sciences and theories and turned them into a short sci-fi novel known as The Dream World. This story follows the protagonist Matthew who is struggling through college and wishing for some sort of escape route. But he might just get exactly what he has asked for as one night during a dream a mysterious figure speaks to him, telling him that he will escape and that all of his worries will be over soon just as long as he comes back.

        Will Matthew accept the mysterious voices offer or will he refuse and live his grueling life as if it never happened?

1.

        “Not again!” Matthew scolded himself. He had just received final exam grade back, he got a C. He was in his Junior year of college and if he kept up grades like these he wouldn’t get his degree. He was in what others might have called a downward spiral of self pity, or a state of depression that he was never going to get out of. He was miserable, nothing was going right for him, his life had been going so well up until recently. In the last year and a half he has lost almost everything, his part-time job, his long time girlfriend,