We're ba-ack....

     Dreams.  Dreaming is a truly amazing concept when you get down to it.  There is so much involved in dreams.  They are such completed functions of the human brain.  There are four main types of dreams: Nightmares, Lucid Dreams, Recurring Dreams, and Prophetic Dreams.  Each is unique and utterly amazing to think about in its own way.  Now, we'll take a glance into the mechanics of each.
     Nightmares.  We all have them.  We all loathe them.  Those nights when we wake up abruptly, in a cold sweat, fearing for our lives or the lives of our loved one.  Nightmares are the embodiments of everything our concious minds despise: fears, anxieties, etc.  I've had countless nightmares about my friends and family dying....and in every circumstance, I am inadvertedly the cause of their death.  I may have given them something to cause an allergic reaction or not given them an full oxygen tank if we go deep-sea diving.  I never directly do the killing, but I always know it's my fault.  I've never experienced the trauma of losing someone close, so I don't know why I have these dreams.
     The next type of dream I'm going to cover, the Lucid Dream, reminds me of the movie Inception, where the main characters' job was to realize they were in a dream and plant something into the mind of the son of a corporate giant.  While I've never had this type of dream before, I certainly try.  However, it's been learned that when the brain realizes it's in a dream, it does whatever it can to wake you up because it doesn't like being in a hallucenogetic state.  Maybe I've had this dream before, but I woke up before I could think to remember it.
     Recurring Dreams are apparently quite common.  While I personally have never had the same dream twice, I can see why it would pose some significance to those who have.  The fact that your brain repitively comes up with these images might lead people to believe that the dream is predicting the future, or may have some other secret meaning.  Speaking of predicting the future, let me come to my next dream topic: Prophetic Dreams.
     Prophetic Dreams are dreams in which the dreamer seems to predict the future in a way.  It is theorized the humans piece together facts and information during the day and come to conclusions they wouldn't have in their dreams, conclusions that are going to happen.  There are five very important people in the world of dream studies.  John Allan Hobson, Robert McCarley, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler.