Fantasies are things we wish to happen, and more importantly, these stories invoke a feeling we wish to experience. Nightmares, on the other hand, are again stories, but that bring up feelings we wish to avoid.
When we think about such extreme storytelling in our own minds, it actually creates a cognitive, physical, and emotional response where we can create these feelings in our body momentarily. This type of emotional microdosing is what we hope or are afraid, depending on the context, but we draw out these feelings from our body for an instant during our storytelling.
The truth is we've always possessed these feelings in our self, since we're naturally whole beings.
For fantasies, we actually give ourselves a microdose of that which we truly desire: affection, affirmation, companionship, or something else depending on the person. Since we get an instant shot of that feeling, it can create desire to pursue that fantasy, but sometimes it doesn't. What stops us from chasing that which we want if it produces a feeling so positive?
It's fear. Fear that what you've created in your mind may not be attainable in real life. This causes paralysis, or can create another story: a nightmare that pulls you away from action.
Nightmares do a similar thing. It gives you a microdose of emotions you deem undesirable, and so we become afraid of the actual event occuring, thus stopping ourselves from action once again.
The reality we need to accept is that regardless of the story we tell ourselves, all these emotions already exist within us anyway and we already experience them too.
When you're actually microdosing on these feelings, you ARE experiencing them, even if the story is just in your mind. When you think of love and longing, you experience them. When you think of sorrow from loss, you experience it.
What’s left now, is to accept the reality of these small instances of our feelings. Understand we possess all things inside us and lean in further.
Act not out of fear, but of love. Act like we mean it. Act knowing we possess everything already and that we are complete already.