When we have dreams with vivid imagery

Two nights ago, I had a strange dream. I don't remember enough of it to even try to interpret it. However, what I do remember were the vivid images of a totally fictitious place. I will give one example. There was what appeared to be a backyard-to-backyard alley or walkway in which one property had a type of large porch-looking glass enclosure. Initially it was a regular street with old homes, but my imagination changed it. It's like when a dream can have a duel-location. As I entered this enclosure, the late afternoon shadows coming through the windows were of a complex pattern. Are our minds able to create realistic imagery like that, or could this have been somehow adapted from real memories? I think it may be a bit of both.

Now, after two days, I seem to have forgotten how impressed I felt when I awoke right after experiencing the dramatic moving-picture-like imagery. The above image--especially around the base of the trees--gives some idea of how I saw the shadows. Double-sets of crisscrossed shadows! I do remember that much. Do our minds somehow "save" the things that we see; and are regressed in some form in our dreams? I can say that this place didn't really resemble any place that I have been in this life. A regular street with old homes and heavy trees somehow morphed into the back alleyway... but overall everything was a bit off from reality. Again, I think my mind fused together different aspects of fiction and reality.

I believe that our dreams are either 1) from ourselves; 2) occasionally from our higher-self or guardian spirit; and 3) communication from other spirits (usually friendly or related). This dream did have a purpose, but what impressed me this time and other times was the imagery. Can you think of dreams in which there where audible and moving people, places, and things that appeared real? Not "lucid dreaming," of which I haven't experienced, but fairly common dreams. One strange type of dream, which most of us have experienced a few times, is meeting and relating with someone... and then you wake up. The person... gone.

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