I hate when this happens. Many dreams I've had seemed to reveal deep important life secrets only to washed away upon waking.

Hi OutOfBodyDude,

I hate when this happens too because you wake up feeling like something incredible has been lost.

Here's a quote from Bruce's Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook, chapter 1, page 7, about State-Specific Memory which means "The memory of an event is stored within the area of consciousness in which that event occurred".

Page 8:  "The dream occurred within dream consciousness, and that is the area of consciousness where the memory of the event is stored.  Waking up is the process of shifting your awareness away from dream consciousness to physical-world consciousness.  Once you're fully awake, it's difficult to remember the dream because your awareness is now located within physical reality, instead of where the memory of the dream is stored.

"If you try to remember that dream from a physical consciousness perspective, it's really tough.  If you want to remember more of the dream, you will need to find a way to shift your awareness back to the area of consciousness in which the dream occurred.  The Hemi-Sync Model of Consciousness provides a simple way to do that". 

Page 6:  The Hemi-Sync Model of Consciousness is "Once you can identify the feeling of any area within consciousness, merely remembering and reexperiencing that feeling will automatically shift your awareness back to that area of consciousness."