Everyone understands the unique logic of life experienced while dreaming. And it IS life, of a sort, fully tasted and felt. If we remember physical sensations, even if they were in dreams, they must have been real, right? What's to say this isn't a form of life? In the logic of dreams, there's a perfectly rational explanation why you're tying your sneakers at the big presentation you're giving to the Board of Directors. You understand why you carry around your laptop in a pizza box. It makes sense why your high school best friend's car is parked in front of your house. On it's roof. Now.
Dreams have their own logic.
As everyone knows, capturing the substance of dreams can be as elusive as capturing a handful of air. The imposition of waking stimuli overwhelms the gossamer strands that tether dreams to our physical lives. Some make themselves more persistent than others in our conscious memories. Some come flooding back into mind when we least expect it.
If we usually see ourselves in our own dreams, what can they possibly tell us in terms of creativity? If we only see them as reflections of ourselves, probably not much. This is not to undervalue them, but instead to say that unless we're paying closer attention they won't amount to much more than fuel for understanding our own feelings. But if we allow ourselves to try and to believe in the solidity, the realness of these interior images, they become powerful, informative palimpsests.
Allow yourself not only to experience the newness, the imaginative, and thoroughly unexpected states of being in dreams. Allow yourself to notice details, too. What are the little things you remember from your dreams that you leave out when you're telling somebody what happened? What were you wearing? What was the music playing when you passed by that peculiar shop with the bright, green light? What did you smell? Why where your fingers so cold?
Dreams often concern unexpected, unexplainable juxtapositions. They challenge us, tease us, defy us to understand them. Some return again and again, and one wonders if these should be regarded as banners unfurled against the midday sky. Some hover just above the borders of memory, dipping beneath the surface of our own awareness only to reemerge periodically like messages in a bottle bobbing on the sea.
Suddenly you have it: ocean waves, banners unfurled, midday skies, bare feet in deep emerald grass. In the space of dreams, raw materials for your own creative flights come to you while you sleep. If ever there were a rich mine of creative ore ready for refinement, this one costs you nothing except your own willingness to pay attention.
More on dreams of a different sort next week.
--MS
PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.