Long Term Memory Question

So what I unerstand form everything i have read is that when we go to sleep our long term memory shuts down and all the memories we have from dreams are stored into our short term memory which is somewhat unstable and unreliable resulting is forgetting our dreams easily.

Now my question is, if our long term memory shuts down like i believe it does how does our brain access our old memories to create our dreams? or how do we access memories when lucid in order to complete a certain task.

maybe there i just a kinda one way road block we cant put memories in but we can take them out...

Any thoughts?

I am just going to assume that the long term memory doesn't shut down.

If that isn't the case, then maybe you have thought about that memory from time ago, and brought it back into play. I don't know. Just a guess.

You do have access to your long term memory in dreams. I used to have a recurring theme in some dreams, for example, that was caused by an incident that occurred when I was only three. I also sometimes dream of people that I was at school with (even though that was decades ago. I think we need to distinguish between conscious and unconscious memory. If you have a lucid dream, then because you are conscious during it, it goes into your conscious memory and so you remember it CLEARLY for ever and a day afterwards (hence the term LUCID dream, lucid meaning clear, of course). However, because you're not conscious during ordinary dreams, the memory of those doesn't go into your conscious memory and you forget them (unless you continue to consciously think about the dream as soon as you wake up).