"After suffering a devastating stroke four years ago, Susan Brown was left in a wheelchair with little hope of walking again. Today, the 57-year-old woman has regained use of her legs and has begun to reclaim her life, thanks in part to encouragement she says she gets from an online virtual world where she can walk, run and dance.“
"Robert Salvatierra, long imprisoned in his home by his terror over going outdoors, has started venturing outside more after gaining confidence by exploring the three-dimensional, interactive world on the Internet."
"John Dawley III, who has a form of autism that makes it hard to read social cues, learned how to talk with people more easily by using his computer-generated alter ego to practice with other cyber-personas."
These waking-life dreams created in response to waking-life nightmares are recounted in a newspaper article ("Virtual worlds Can Help Users Recover from Health Woes,“ Rob Stein, The Washington Post, printed in The Denver Post, 07 Oct 07). The author goes on to explain that "Brown, Salvatierra and Dawley are just a few examples of an increasing number of sick, disabled and troubled people who say virtual worlds are helping them fight their diseases, live with their disabilities and sometimes even begin to recover.“
The virtual worlds described in the article have the feel of sleep dreams. "These increasingly sophisticated online worlds enable people to create rich virtual lives through avatars – indentities they can tailor to their desires: Old people become young. Infirm people become vibrant. Paralyzed people become agile. They walk, run, and even fly and 'teleport‘ around vast realms offering shopping malls, bars, homes, parks and myriad other settings with trees swaying in the wind, fog rolling in and an occasional deer prancing past. They schmooze, flirt and comfort one another using lifelike shrugs, slouches, nods and other gestures while they type instant messages of talk directly through headsets. Users say the experience can feel astonishingly real. Participants develop close relationship and share intimate details even while, paradoxically, remaining anonymous." These e-dreamers can nourish their daydreams of health and formulate dreams as goals and aspirations that, in turn, seem to facilitate change in their waking lives.
These vitual reality worlds are externally created dreams, e-dreams. They afford a venue where an individual can practice or rehearse thoughts and actions that are not readily available to the dreamer in her waking state. (Such practicing of desired life skills in the safety of virtuality is one of the primary values accorded to the practice of lucid dreaming.) As with all dreams, their ultimate value lies in incorporating what they have to teach into our waking lives.