Over several years, I have noticed things and developed this theory. Often I wake up and it feels like nothing is good in the world. Everything is gray and colorless, and I am usually shaky and depressed all day. The apparent cause seems to be a bad dream. In one case I dreamed that the doctors were treating my father for cancer by amputating body parts until nothing was left of him. In another case I dreamed that I was tearing open my cat's rib cage with blood splattering everywhere, and I suddenly realized what I was doing and felt terrible for hurting my cat. Dreams like this cause me to be extremely depressed all day long.

However, sometimes I become lucid in my dreams, and I am aware that there are external beings controlling the script of these dreams and playing the lead roles. I think of these beings as demons or imps or something - even though I am mostly an atheist. When I'm lucid, I can watch the dream play-out, and it doesn't hurt me like it normally would. I had a lucid dream like this last night where I was delighted to see my father as I remember him when I was about 12 years old and he was in his mid 30s. I started to hug him, but then his legs shrank gradually until he was a distorted silly-looking person with normal arms and 6 inch legs looking up from the floor at me with his arm outstretched to hug. That dream would have hurt me, except that I was prepared for something like this to happen, because I was lucid and knew that this was only a demon pretending to be my father in my dream. My father's face vanished, so that I could see this was not him. The demon was a little embarrassed to be discovered, but I shrugged and smiled at the demon to tell him I was not angry.

So that's my theory. Any thoughts?