Lucid Dreaming and Creativity

Dreams are a great source of ideas and inspiration. They  let us live through emotions and experiences we may never have otherwise as well as engage in an art we’ve never tried before. We can be painters, singers, dances, poets, composers without ever having held a brush in our hands or knowing anything about music. And this experience is as real as any waking experience. Numerous works of art we still admire were inspired by dreams, such as works of William Blake or the famous story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Dreaming and Creative Process

A creative person knows  how often the solution she was looking for comes in a dream. Sometimes an idea or a feeling we experience in a dream may become a basis for a work of art. On the over hand, it happens  that a project we are working on ends up as a subject of a dream. Even in sleep we keep working on it.

I’m sure you have dreamed sometimes of spectacular pictures or heard music and poetry in dreams. Sometimes it comes as if from nowhere but it is entirely your creative act.  The dreaming mind, uninhibited by by the rationality and censure of the waking consciousness, produces new bold and original combinations of images, words and sounds.

It seems, like the dreaming state is a great laboratory for a creative person. In dreams we work with the best media available – our subconsciousness, which is the source of all creative ideas.

However, even if we do create in our dreams, we often forget the pieces of dream-art in the morning. Or they don’t make any sense out of the context of the dream.

Creativity Applied

I’ve heard music, a very beautiful melody. I didn’t know where it was coming from and suddenly I thought what pity it was that I won’t remember it in the morning. This very moment I became lucid and realised that the only way to remember the tune is to remember it as a song. So, still dreaming, I’ve started to put together words. I’ve never composed anything in a dream and now was amazed how words gather and combine themselves in most unexpected but strangely fascinating way.

When I woke up I’ve had a curious little song in my possession that helped me to remember the beautiful melody from the dream for me.  I should add, I don’t play any instrument and have no musical education at all, let alone composing music.

There were additional benefits to my act of “in-dream” creativity. The song described some of the events in my dream and also mentioned the name of one of the characters, so I could recall the rest of the dream. It was too long and complex to remember most of it otherwise.

The state of lucidity in dreams gives us a lot of possibilities for self- and dream-exploration. It’s a great tool of self-development and spiritual growth. But so is creativity.

Dreams and art are made of the same matter. An act of unconscious creativity in dream can induce the state of lucidity; lucid dreaming helps to turn it into a conscious creative process and to remember the experience. Which means, we can create at night with our eyes closed.

Don’t forget, however, that creativity influences our dreams too. It seems like the process goes both ways: dreams may inspire you, but the more creative you are when awake, the more “creative” your dreams become. Also, you are much more likely to create in a dream when you are used to be creative. (Writing for this blog, for instance, gives me additional motivation to explore and experiment with my dreams.)

Creativity is the best gift of Mother Nature to us after the ability to dream. So dream, experiment and create, awake or asleep.

(Note: Posted by MindValley in exchange for my post on their site)

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