As I have said before, I don't think we have to, or are 'supposed to' remember dreams - at least not normally. But dream experiences affect us - they are remembered and make a difference to our behaviour.
This we can infer from those dreams that we do remember - we know that they have affected us, we know that they can alter our attitudes to people, places, events; our likes and dislikes, our apparently-spontaneous motivations...
Indeed, the effect of a dream may be most powerful when we do not recall the dream, and when therefore the influence it has can operate unchecked. Perhaps we specifically remember only those dreams that we do Not want to influence us; these dreams which we want to be able consciously to refute or resist in our awake life.
The basic experience of dreaming is that we leave the body and go somewhere else - the body remaining (pretty much) inert and insensible. Yet that place we go is accessed from-within. And that dream place is quite different in form and kind, from any place we experience in awake life.
In dreams the 'law of attraction' is seemingly at work. It seems that our emotions create the dream - it seems that our fears become manifest: we fear a tiger, then a tiger appears...
I regard this as an illusion. In reality the dreaming mind is attuned to the dream future.
This future-focus is at the cost of the dream past; which is continually dissolving behind us, slipping from our grasp. And it is the opposite of awake life - when we know the past (especially recent past) but not the future.
In a dream we live in the future; but in awake life we live in the past...
Consequently, in dreaming we lose the ability to think strategically (and make sense of the big picture) because we are thinking tactically: coping with the dream events are they arise, being aware of things that are just-about-to-happen...
(Is this the basic state of being a young child, or a paranoid psychotic with ideas of self-reference? Is it, indeed, the 'cause' of paranoia?)
So, the 'law of attraction' is Not because we 'attract' to us that which we expect; it is Not a matter of life conforming to our emotions...
Instead, it is that we know-in-advance what will happen; therefore our emotions respond to the future and prepare us for the future.
In dreams we already-know how we will choose, and what we will do. Because - for the future-orientated dream mind - we already-have chosen, we already-have done.
This is a negation of agency (free will) within the dream.
But the agency comes in the dream creation, our personal making of the dream, as we move-through the dream-world. Thus the dream comes-from-us - even though its components are given, and already-present in the dream world.
That is how we know the dream future; how we know in advance what will happen.
We comprehend our perspective on the dream world, and create-from-it our dream - by our agency - and according to what experiences we need, or would most benefit from.
