At critical times in dreams, your faculties may become enhanced or limited. These include mental, as well as physical faculties. Suddenly, you find a great wealth of knowledge to resolve a problem, or acquire a skill to do so. Other times, you suddenly lose certain abilities.
Acquiring
The amazing thing about acquiring knowledge is that it is generated in your own mind in the dream. If upon waking the process used to solve the dream problem was logical, you may want to contemplate problems in your waking life that resemble the dream problem. Your mind may be accessing problem-solving skills that you have already eliminated from consideration, or never thought of in the first place.
What was the nature of the skills you received? Were they logical, practical, or completely impossible to translate into waking life?
Losing
Of course, you may forget something or lose some faculty just as easily. In dreams of this nature, your insecurity about appearing incompetent is working its way through your awareness. In the physical realm, the loss of ability might be sudden weakness or loss of a sensory perception such as sight, speech, or hearing. Sudden weakness may result from actual body awareness in dreaming, as sleep paralysis affects motor abilities during the REM state.
Dreams concerning the loss of other physical skills, such as operating a car, throwing an object, or performing a job-related task may reflect a loss of memory or oversight of a particular detail concerning a problem plaguing the waking life.
Who is with you when the skill evaporates? What are you trying to accomplish?
How does this event correspond to your waking life?
