Life as it is seems

Reality is perceived, and solely by the mind. I was wondering if we literally live multiple lives through one physical medium. I know for myself, I can get caught up in ruminating thought which affects me physiologically. Often I wonder if imagination is just a secondary, or tertiary, or whatever level, life plane in/on which we live. It's like the end of The Magic Mountain. Did he even go to the sanitarium or while he was lying, dying, on the war field, did he escape into his mind and live another seven years? Was he living at all in the physical world? When we sleep, who is to say that we are just dreaming and not living? Sometimes I think we may be most self authentic in dream, because the physical world allows for serious physical consequence and constraints. With that said, is living living? I've found I am happier when I'm in my mind, on occasion. There's a sense that we have the ability to travel in time through the mind, and are trapped in the present, cut off from loved ones "stuck" in the past. Is death freedom from this constraint? There is much loneliness and nostalgia for what was, and in the mind we have complete and individual control over everything: the past, the present, the future. In this physical world, we have no control, and the little control we perceive ourselves to have, may be an illusion as well. Maybe everything has been written, and we are living out our narratives as one reads a novel, line by line, page by page, etc. There are books and people that say we are responsible for our thoughts, and thoughts are often said to be one behavior that an individual has total control over. But do we? How is it that I'll be going about my day and a thought pops up into my mind, seemingly from nowhere? Why do I hear the ticking of my grandfather's clock in my left ear when I meditate and am solely focusing on my breathing? Why is it that I'll be driving to work, belting out a song and suddenly, I experience fear and irrationality from, again, nowhere? 

From meditation I've learned I am responsible for giving power and emotion to memory, i.e., reliving events and being present in that past moment, for memory is just a mental picture. For those that experience and feel the way I do, about ideas I've presented in this post, does that mean that we all have post traumatic stress disorder (if you want to put a label on it)? Is it a fact of life? Our first experience coming into life is traumatic, hence a newborn's cry. It seems to me that we are mere automata, life breathing (whatever that means...), but that we are brought into the physical world experiencing fear and it is fear (the most primitive form of change) that propels us through life. Fear, in a sense, is life in the physical world. So what would it be or to mean to live freely?