It’s the start of a new year and time for a change – although I’m still writing my third novel, I’ve also recently begun a non-fiction book! After the IASD dream conference in Bern it suddenly dawned on me that it was time to write the book I’ve been building towards ever since I did my PhD on lucid dreaming and the creative writing process. So there it is – I’ve started this book on the connection between dreams and creativity, and so far it is such fun to write, ideas flying towards me from every corner and a strong sense of enthusiasm and purpose which reassures me that I’m doing the right thing (I hope!).
I’m at the stage where I need reports of dreams which have specifically led to creativity. If you think you can help, and would like to see your own creative dreaming experience in print (you can be anonymous or not, as you wish), please get in touch. You can write to me here, or email me on phdcasestudies@hotmail.com with ‘Dreams and Creativity’ in the subject line and include a brief description of your dream and the way it helped you creatively. I’ll be in touch – thanks!
Your dream might be lucid or non-lucid, you might consider it an out-of-body experience (OBE) or a hypnogogic/hypnopompic experience (where vivid imagery, noises, or sensations such as dropping or swooping occur either as you drift off to sleep or just before you wake up), it could take place in the ‘void’ or ‘black winds’ of lucid dreaming, or in the state of sleepwalking… The important thing is that your dream has led to some form of creativity in the waking state, such as an idea for a new project, a new way of understanding a problem or situation, the improvement of a skill such as swimming or ballet, physical or psychological healing, or the creation of a piece of artwork, poetry, or music.
Clare
Hello!
A couple of scenarios have occurred in some dreams in my life that may apply to your studies. First I’ll quickly say what I’ve made of them, then I will address them for your interpretation.
It seems possibility is limited to perceivability, which may be limited to the stigmas that accompany the common coherent experiences we are used to. Perhaps the most effective way to assess (transcending is another deal) these stigmas is through dreams, as we at least heavily influence on their content (depending on which stigmas about the nature of dreaming you subscribe haha). Only an experience as personal as a dream might bring such an applicable technique to our attention.
At 4 years I was having trouble riding a bike, I had a dream one night I was riding a bike perfectly. I couldn’t remember the beginning or the ending of this action, instead only the process of riding. The next morning I was so excited to ride, and I got on my training wheel-less bike and rode it like there was never a problem. Now, I may even slightly agree with the devil’s advocate that this has little relation to creativity, but this may have a unique application of creativity through dreams. Perhaps I just got over a fixation or expectation that I associated with the experience of a bike ride. Perhaps the dream space is a place where one can access experience that bypasses the dialectic or syllogistic process of recombining what exists to something new. It seems this place can be approached as ones personal labyrinth, as one’s hunt for freedom accompanies the assessment and transcendence of the rules we may not have even recognized as governing experience, and thus branching to possibility. Quality of attention and what can be perceived as possible are not independent elements. The question of whether the dream experience is made entirely by one’s own mind, or is interconnected to something larger is an important controversy in this topic. Apparently I perceived this once inaccessible or conceivable experience, and got over it. But how this happened, is not sure. Is the dream space a medium that can make the morphogenetic fields and collective memories of species accessible as theorized by Rupert Sheldrake?
At 13 I learned the guitar. Twice I have had an experience in a dream where I was playing a preexisting song and awaken to find the notes I was playing in the dream corresponded to the notes on my guitar in this layer of experience. Again there was no process of learning that I recall, instead I just found myself playing these songs accurately. One other experience was a bit more unique, in which the song I was playing in a dream was not one that I have heard, but as far as I am aware is my own ( sure I may have heard an extremely similar or even exact song long ago, but I didn’t get that feeling. What’s more significant about these experiences is that I was never really comfortable enough on the guitar as far as knowing what notes and chords responded to what sounds -implying that I shouldn’t have been able to know how these songs were played, as I was not close to such a musical level.
This is more controversial, but I can’t not add it for such a topic. I’ve had several dreams involving other languages. I know no other languages, so I cannot confirm the credibility, but they sound extremely accurate as those other languages (spanish, french, and russian). It really felt as if I had access to some other knowledge that I otherwise could not claim. I only add this experience because I’ve heard of several similar experiences, especially within people learning the language that they hear in which the level is much greater than theirs at the time, but enough context for them to understand. Unfortunately I hadn’t the context to understand. Or perhaps at the time I did understand, but not within the limitations of my own experience I can’t remember it.
If possibility is limited to our ability perceive those possibilities, and are ability perceive a possibility is limited to our own schemas, then perceiving new possibilities is as simple or complex as transcending those schemas. So the first step would be to ASSESS those schemas. I became interested in the limitations of experience upon my first few lucid dreams, and the controversy of desire as it accompanies. You hear things like “you can do anything you want,” and so of course I ask, “what do I want? What dictates my desire? What are the schemas of experience? Certain ones I have assessed are causality, the limitations of senses, and logic. So I decided to set out to explore these limitations, as I perceived limitation as the prerequisite to coherent experience. I think that isolating the qualities that one designates as schemas is important. Combining gets complicated. So only once have I had a lucid dream since then in which I remembered this. I chose a sense, sight, and began to explore. to be without sight, to see multiple things at once, to see something from more than one point of view, literally. A schema of sight might be a point of view, something like “all-seeing,” is not easy to conceive.
The existence of shared dreams, of which I have had one, may bring legitimacy to the idea that we are not the sole creators of our dreams, but instead have a heavy influence, and are something truly beyond ourselves, which has the funnest implications on creativity yet.
I would embrace a response, a question, or a request to elaborate on something.
Thanks,
Wes Case
One night I dreamed a beautiful man stepped out of the darkness, his black, elegant clothes cut from the night itself. Smiling, he walked up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “For a story.” Approximately three weeks later, I woke up one morning, reached for the pad and pen I always keep by my bed quickly began writing the first few pages of a new novel I had not planned to write (Eternal Blood, a paranormal romance.) At the time, my husband and I were staying at a Residence Inn while we looked for a house, and the last thing on my agenda was beginning a new novel! But I had no choice, the first pages literally flowed out of me, as if that dream kiss was a seed planted inside me that broke through the metaphorical soil that morning and began growing.
Another example is that when I was deep into my fictional biography of Hatshepsut-Maatkare, the female pharaoh, I dreamed with a beautiful woman with a golden complexion who was wearing a long and light-colored sheathe dress such as an ancient Egyptian noblewoman might have worn. I was walking through a lovely town located high up in the clouds and it felt so nice there it alerted me to being conscious in a dream. As this woman approached me, I felt I knew her. She walked right up to me, her face level with mine, and pressed her mouth against mine for a long, wonderful moment. She told me I was doing very well but that I that I could do even better. She handed me a necklace, on which hung an irregularly shaped piece of silver in the center of which shone an amethyst (my birth stone) shaped like an eye. Her companion then took my hand and led me into a building on my left, at which point I began waking up.
After that, in a crucial moment in the plot, I had a revelation as to an event that may have occurred in her life-time that could have played a part in why she was able to assume the role of pharaoh.
Hi Wes,
thanks so much for sending me your dreams. I think you’re right that dream creativity has some unique applications such as learning to ride a bike, perfecting sports skills, healing, and many more. We can only speculate as to how it all works and what the exact nature of dream reality is, and in the meantime we can pay attention to our dreams, explore them lucidly or non-lucidly, and have fun learning more about them.
I’ll be in touch again further down the line when the book is further along, to check how you’d like to be referenced etc.
For now, thanks again for sharing these inspiring dreams with me!
Happy dreaming,
Clare
p.s. I’ve had similar linguistic dreams to the ones you describe, I speak five languages and dreams have helped me improve my accent or simply the flow and rhythm of the foreign language.
Hi Maria,
thanks for these lovely creative dreams, I will be in touch via email!
Clare