Waking Reality

I seem to finally be over my ill stupor, and yet still my mind keeps drawing a blank on many of the topics I entertain myself in pondering. The only thing I can recall wondering about in the past week is where the line between dream and reality lies. I awoke this morning remembering that I was feeling much better and I don't need to call my myopic doctor again. The only problem with that memory is that it never happened. I just woke up. Is my subconscious mind trying to tell me something while I sleep, or is it just images formed during the process of 'rewiring' my synapses?

Do tell...

I notice I have the most difficulty with this when I'm ill or I've overexerted myself. I can't form thoughts as well a usual, my vocabulary drops significantly, and I find my self confused far more often. It makes me wonder if the reality we perceive is stored in our own mind, and what happens around us is just more input. So which part would be the 'real' one? Solid and tangible objects could certainly be construed to be 'real', but are they still the same thing if you can't see them, or feel them? A person without a sense of touch would not associate a Persian cat with being 'soft' or 'fluffy', so perhaps they would just associate it as 'white' or perhaps 'neurotic'. It all comes down to how things are labeled.

Labels are placed on the things we sense so that they can be sorted out in our brain for easier recall should that information be needed again. If everyone labels objects in their mind differently, then the comparative 'reality' is slightly altered. Things that one would associate as being 'frightening' could be seen by another as being 'fun'. Thus, even the tangible objects in our world are not always the same, except in our own mind. So the desire to learn and experience things is just a means of enhancing our own 'reality' with more data.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that dreams are the process of organizing the input recently received into relevant information for later use. Quite often, we don't even remember our dreams, because they're not actually anything new or recalled. Occasionally, we learn something from our dreams and create new information without even trying, and thus, we've added to our 'reality' while in the throws of an escape from the real world. A paradoxical thought to say the least.

Dreams are an extension to reality and to me this means that reality does not exist outside a living mind. Everyone lives in a different reality, which can be similar or greatly conflicted. This can lead to strong communities or war, depending on how the labels are placed. Something so simple becomes so complex, and vice versa. Or it could all be a dream, or perhaps a nightmare...