This is mainly personal anedote but backed by some other stories I've heard as well.
I think dreams are an excited state the brain prepared for but didn't get the opportunity for execution, so when you rest it has to get rid of it somehow, and that is what your dream is.
So when you analyze the content of a dream, you are interpreting an interpretation of something that didn't exist. The only thing that exists is an anticipation.
Example
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For example, when I was young I had a vivid dream of rollercoastering over endless ocean. It was a very dramatic ride, the ocean spraying up on me every time I nearly hit it. The dream jolted me awake as the tracks ended and it catapulted me into a long fall into the ocean...
That same day I was at a playground and was with my very strict mother. I remember watching the older kids playing on the jungle gyms, scurrying across. I did nothing but watch them, without a conscious desire to participate in it.
But I think my brain/body was calculating every part of that exhilarating freedom, anticipating I would energetically join as a child would want to.
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The dream I had was so vivid it's the one I chose to make the connection here albeit less obvious. To the point it's odd to disconnect dream states and consciousness.
In summary, physical consciousness is elusive as an anticipation being a physical thing (a relative phenomenon). Maybe it's of a similar type of "negative image" the brain produces in dreams like I have a theory about, it doesn't operate in a vacuum so it has to produce something.