When we dream, the experience is often deeply involving. Frightening dreams make us awake trembling and sweating. Pleasurable dreams leave us with lingering desires. Certain dreams are forms of healing, a way for our minds to re-circuit and adjust themselves. No matter what, these dreams have no objective reality in our waking worlds.
Imagination is also a form of mental involvement. It is a way of projecting our thoughts into believable images to be contemplated and manipulated. We can play with our imagination, use it to inspire creative projects.
Both imagination and dreams are similar activities of the mind, yet they differ in the level of conscious participation that they permit. In the case of the dream, there is a total suspension of rationality and consciousness, so there is little or no direction possible. There is no mode of control. By contrast, imagination is a tool though which we can make our lives better, different, and creative. By cooperating with, we can achieve things we hadn't previously thought possible.
