Hi @omnithumbs, I appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic and thoughtful comments.

One of my favorite things about my day is to to meditate on my thoughts as I fall asleep. It's so fascinating to watch them unravel from being reflective and cohesive into being random, abstract, and dream-like.

In my sleep and dream yoga practices, it has been interesting how mindfulness of "thinking" has helped me understand meditation on much deeper levels. It takes me more time in waking life to induce these states in meditation to this degree, if at all, but I know that both my waking and dreaming meditation practices have an enhancing effect on each other so of course I am not siding with a preference for meditation in one state over the other. They both have value and purpose in tandem. : )

I like how you notice emotional things that you tend to suppress comes up rather easily at sleep onset or while asleep, and agree with you. I think it says something about how we relate with emotions in general, and there is a lot to be learned from what the imagery and thoughts we observe the mind to create in these states.