Had an informative dream. I was outside a house and I had dementia. I was getting accosted by visions. I decided to try and use my will to affirm to myself that the visions were not reality. This worked and they immediately disappeared and I began peacefully waking peacefully through a garden. But then I started noticing a repetitive rasping noise. After maybe a minute or two it occurred to me that the rasping was breathing. The moment this thought passed through my head my awareness was catapulted into a new reality, I was suffocating while staring up into the sky at the stars. Not because anything was blocking my throat but because I was holding my breath. This feeling of suffocation was unlike anything I'd ever experienced in a dream, it was so intense. I immediately began hyperventilating and catching my breath, like someone who just almost drowned. I fell over and could only concentrate on my breathing before I woke up.

This experience made me realize that there is a very fundamental connection between the act of breathing and the act of being real. Somehow when I banished the visions in my dream that caused me to begin holding my breath. And then once I was forced to begin breathing again, awareness naturally latched onto that verb and transformed reality accordingly.