An example of Free Will

Do you know whether you had entered a REM stage just prior to the brain's having lowered 'attention screens?' On a more detailed level, there is a great chance that one system (for example the presupplementary-premotor-inferior posterior parietal cortex to brainstem) 'communicated' a command to the 'sleep on' center in the way of an inhibitory function--thus giving a burst of beta waves (~14 Hz). There could be other reasons as well, however.

In this sense, I'd say yes, an act of free will--although not in the more specific sense that people usually think of such.

. . .- but I am sure glad it did all this - and it did it all on its owns.

LOL ! :a-ok:

I hear you !! And, . . . that's the way living organisms work, from the lowly amoeba all the way up to us ! (I mean, that's exactly how ever cell in our bodies work, you know?!) Good point !

It ticks me off because it seems to be like an internal clock that overrides the flow of a dream.

No, I don't feel free will exists even in the scenario you stated rich.

Although, richrf, the more correct term is not 'consciousness,' but rather conscious; and even then we don't usually apply it to non-neurons other than astrocytes.

You circadian clock work is tight, Holiday. But as for coming out of sleep, it's actually not that fast, unless one is already in REM stage...and maybe stage one too. (I'll double check that again)

I think our perception of time might be some sort of background stress, and appropriately it becomes an illusion in the emergent state as a part of our consciousness, that time should 'exist'.

Rich, how and why are explained simply by the processes of the brain. We ask ourselves why when it comes to the hard problem of consciousness, and it serves just as much purpose to ask why we are less aware when we are asleep.

When somebody is dreaming, the scenario is much more sporadic, less flowing it would seem.

If you can turn back on a kind of stress you would not lack while awake, then you could perceive the dream scenario perhaps in a way which made more sense, it flowed, there was more causality. More information is brought to the mind (whatever that means) from the brain.

Or is it that consciousness plays a mutual role with the brain, so being aware of your scenario/situation/environment helps contribute to the causality. I doubt it, or perhaps it's just superficial. Maybe spirituality is when it becomes more than just superficial?

Calling something an illusion, as if an attempt to discard it, provides no answer for me. It is there. I experience it. What is an illusion and what is not, is of no mind to me. One second I have a sense of time passing and in the next instance, all of that sense is gone. The whole sleep process happens in less than an instance. One moment you are a awake, and in the next moment you are .... AWAKE! Everything in between, just sort of happens. It just goes on, and on with no sense of time and space.

How does one know how others experience dreaming, or sleep without dreaming (if this even exists)? There are no observers other than the individual Consciousness. How does anyone know? We wake up. Some we remember. Some we don't. Maybe remember it all. Maybe none of it. It is like Life and Death. We go to sleep. We wake up. How much do we remember? There is no observers, other than ourselves.

Jung chose to use dreams as symbolic of our deeper Self, whatever that might be. I think that the more people investigate sleep, the more bewildering it gets, as long as you observe it, and not discard it as a mere trifle.

REM, circadian clocks are just words . . . It is simply something created by some humans who like to name things, thinking that this in itself solves the problem. Ahhh! I have a name for it. Case closed! Everyone likes to invent words to describe things. But they are just descriptiive, not additional information.

But richrf, are you stating that you do not understand the real referents that the terms symbolize? REM is a real thing, you know. . . not just some empty word, just as amygdala is a real thing. . . not just some empty word.

It's not really the mind that's doing this though.

Yes but your mind/consciousness is emergent from the brain. it's not like your "Individual Consciousness" wakes itself up.

Interesting ideas and wanderings of the mind. You do seem to not have much grip on definitions, which I'd really like to encourage you towards giving further consideration to, richrf. There is a difference between the terms 'mind' and 'brain,' 'consciousness' and 'conscious.' In order to carry on more meaningful dialog, would it not be best to more fully understand the referents for the terms that are being used?

What sets you off on your course of sleep, is not what we'll call mind. What causes the alpha and theta waves, the K waves and spindles that occur during the various stages of sleep will never, ever be learned about by simply contemplating the state of sleep during a day-dreaming moment under a shade tree on a summer afternoon.

Also, I might mention that nobody has past lives--regardless of what some have offered for evidence of such (other explanations win out). One prime reason for this is that there is this thing called evolutionary process, and this thing call genetic sharing. Now you may not have studied that much in genetics yet, but in time, I'm sure you will. I would guess that you'd know that you are recombination of exactly 50% or your father's and 50% of your mother's recombined genetic material from their parents. You, as that once in eternity combination--a build which makes your brain which has build (and is building) into your mind from which and with which consciousness is projected--have never ever been before, nor will ever be again (probably even if we see all as potential energy, even, it would hold).