We don’t really know much about dreams. Sure people try to dissect them and look up their meanings but overall we don’t know where they come from. Also we don’t really know if they really mean anything. It’s up to the person that is experiencing them to define their purpose.
As a creative person, I see dreams as a portal to another realm. One that helps you discover yourself and the meaning of life. It’s where you can participate in making magic and living a life with no boundaries. In dreams, you discover thoughts and places that exist within you. It reveals things you didn’t know about yourself. So obviously I view dreams as a pot of gold and I work every day to help them cross the rainbow and rejoin me and my reality.
In this post I’ll talk about how to get yourself into that lucid state where you’re able to dream, how to capture your vision and how to make sense of it. After these steps you can incorporate them into your artistic medium of choice. Mine is writing and drawing.
How to dream
If you’re not a lucid dreamer this is for you. The below suggestions may help you trigger some awesome dreams.
1) Music – Pick a song. One that you love. Then try closing your eyes while you’re listening to it. And imagine that you are in a music video. Heck, you don’t even have to be in what you see. But allow the music to paint pictures. If it’s a song that played during a specific part of a movie then maybe that’s where the music takes you. You’re not trying to control the daydream. You just merely want to experience it and that means surrendering yourself to a level of disbelief.
2)Guided Meditation – One of the brilliant things that YouTube has to offer is it allows you to try a practice that is outside what we’re accustomed to. Meditation is not something I grew up knowing about and when I hear people talk about it, I don’t really understand it. The idea of sitting in silence with no thoughts crossing my mind feels nearly impossible. But what does seem possible and what I do regularly with love is a guided meditation. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube that afford you this experience.
In a guided meditation you close your eyes and the speaker walks you through different visuals that you need to imagine. Sometimes you’re in a crystal cave, sometimes you’re near the ocean or it’s something else. With practice, these images will become clearer and clearer. And the amazing thing about guided meditations is that sometimes you get to ask questions and the answers can be very surprising.
3)Movies – When you watch a movie you’re transported to a different time and place. Obviously. Allow yourself to become completely engrossed in the film. My favorite question to ask after seeing a movie is, “Who was I in that movie?” That question breaks the barrier between the movie and myself being separate. I allow it into my world and imagine that I’m one of the characters. That world then quickly becomes a reality I visit in my dreams.
4)Good Sleep – If you cannot sleep. You cannot dream. There are a lot of studies on sleep and what needs to be done in order to get a good night’s rest. A practice that I’ve currently been doing is to power down every night before I sleep. Once 8 p.m. hits I am off my phone, computer, and tv. For the next two hours I shower the day off of me, journal, and read. This boundary has allowed me to feel refreshed every day. Also, other factors that contribute greatly to your sleeping pattern are eating nutritious foods, not drinking caffeine close to your bedtime, exercising to release stress and daily I check in with myself to make sure that I’m putting myself first in this life.
5)Looking for it – Finally sometimes you need to look for your dreams. Sometimes you close your eyes and nothing happens. So what do you do? You try to imagine yourself or someone you fancy or an environment you’d like to visit. Sometimes you may look for an activity that you enjoy. Like maybe you’re a swimmer and you imagine yourself swimming in your dreams. Well, what happens there? You’re developing your skill while your sleeping and you’re enjoying your dream. Eventually, you won’t always have to look for your dreams but this is an awesome way to get started.
Catching the Dream
Horray you’ve had some awesome dreams. Well, what do you do now?
1)Journal – Writing down what you just saw and experienced is a great way to capture your dreams. However, you literally need to have your journal right next to you. Time and energy are everything in the early morning hours. The last thing you want is to lose your thought because you got distracted while you were looking for your book. Also, this is a moment to jot down random thoughts and images. Do not worry about articulating yourself in a clear and concise way. You literally just woke up and no one is going to read this but you.
The important thing is to write something down. Sometimes it’ll make sense and sometimes it won’t. But practice makes perfect. So don’t judge, just get it down.
2)Voice Memo – Let’s say you don’t want to write first thing in the morning. Not a problem. Neither do I. So use your phone. Every phone has a voice memo application. Take that baby out and tell it everything you’ve just experienced. This will be hilarious to listen to later and sometimes you’ll be able to write it down and create something that is truly inspiring.
These practices are meant to get you connected and aligned with your dreams. Just remembering a dream is an amazing feat so celebrate it by capturing it.
Bringing your dreams into your creative practice
Once you have an amazing dream and you capture its essence then you need to give it feet to stand on. And that takes a bit of creative exploration.
1)Storyboard – What finally allowed me to bring my visions into reality was the process of creating snapshots. I took index cards and drew each vision down. Sure it’s important to have as much detail as possible written into something like a diary but when you want to marry it with other ideas, you have to make it more accessible. At the end of the day, any vision or idea you have in life is coming from you and you have to define what the connection is. And many times they hold connections between each other.
After you’ve illustrated each vision, no need for perfection only you need to know what it means, spread them across the floor or a large table. Does one lead to the other? Did one event cause another to occur? Put them in an order that makes sense to you. This maybe the beginning moments of you putting a story together.
2)Speak the idea out loud – You ever realize how sometimes you write something down and you miss words? It’s because our minds are faster than our hands. Our minds aren’t always as naturally composed grammar abiding citizens and that’s a beautiful thing. Creativity is madness. It needs to be released and sometimes the paper and pen stifles our voice in a way our mouths could never.
Share your idea with a nurturing and trustworthy soul. If you don’t have one at the moment, no worries. Speak it out loud to yourself and record it. You’ll find pathways that are ripe for exploring.
Never Forget
No matter your dream or your creative journey, don’t ignore it’s importance. You were given that vision for a reason and it was not for it to die with you.
You know they say the richest place in all the world is a cemetery. It’s because of the countless ideas and dreams that never made it into reality. Isn’t that a tragedy? Humanity deserves to hear your vision and you owe it to yourself to fulfill your destiny.
Magic is not just for the land of Disney but for all of the world. It is your duty as a citizen of the world to be brave. And the amount of freedom and release you receive after completing such a vulnerable task will be more rewarding than any service you could ever perform. I felt like I had a phantom child for years. All these creative babies that were scolding me for not bringing them into this world. Now that I’m in the process of editing my first collection of stories I couldn’t be prouder of myself. And the funny thing is new babies are now popping out, along with some other I’ve been carrying for years.
Sometimes I feel silly with this building obsession to organize all of the visions I’ve ever had into some sort of story but then I think I do so much for others, why not do something for myself.
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