Creativity Within Dreams

[Vexer]

Whatever the truth of this is, I'm honestly awed by it.

 

 

 

This is about the power of our minds to make things up.

 

You’ll have to read this next bit to understand my question. (Sorry).

 

 

In some of my dreams, there appear huge amounts of creative content. Things that I think, I could never make up, create, while I was awake.

 

What do I mean? I mean, in a dream I will be in a library where I can pick up any book and read it, and it all makes intelligent sense. I’m making up books, that I’ve never seen before.

 

Or, I dreamed an underwater ecosystem based on a tri-lateral body shape. Which made a lot of sense, as I was dreaming it. And just after waking, seemed to be an amazing feat of ‘realistic’ imagination.

 

And other examples.

 

 

Which do you think it is:

 

1) I’m a genius who’s creative ability mostly comes out when I’m unconscious?

 

2) In the dreams, I’m remembering things I’ve read or seen in real life? (But what about the tri-lateral sea life?)

 

3) Somehow, my brain is telling me “this is great!” – when actually there’s nothing there. It’s just a “feeling” that it's clever.

 

 

4) (your guess)

Edited August 4, 2012 by Vexer

[Lancewen]

Whatever the truth of this is, I'm honestly awed by it.

 

 

 

This is about the power of our minds to make things up.

 

You’ll have to read this next bit to understand my question. (Sorry).

 

 

In some of my dreams, there appear huge amounts of creative content. Things that I think, I could never make up, create, while I was awake.

 

What do I mean? I mean, in a dream I will be in a library where I can pick up any book and read it, and it all makes intelligent sense. I’m making up books, that I’ve never seen before.

 

Or, I dreamed an underwater ecosystem based on a tri-lateral body shape. Which made a lot of sense, as I was dreaming it. And just after waking, seemed to be an amazing feat of ‘realistic’ imagination.

 

And other examples.

 

 

Which do you think it is:

 

1) I’m a genius who’s creative ability mostly comes out when I’m unconscious?

 

2) In the dreams, I’m remembering things I’ve read or seen in real life? (But what about the tri-lateral sea life?)

 

3) Somehow, my brain is telling me “this is great!” – when actually there’s nothing there. It’s just a “feeling” that it's clever.

 

 

4) (your guess)

 

I don't generally remember my dreams, however, when my conscious mind is stumped, I can help myself solve the problem, by focusing on it as I'm going to sleep. The next day I seem to be able to come up with new ideas that I know my unconscious mind must have worked on while I was asleep. But would that be considered dreaming or something else?

[CraigD]

Which do you think it [the sense of extraordinary creativity in a dream] is:

My best guess is

3) Somehow, my brain is telling me “this is great!” – when actually there’s nothing there. It’s just a “feeling” that it's clever.

though I’ve had a few waking-from-dream experiences that seem exceptions.

 

I’ve long made it a habit to journalize my dreams – not all of them, but ones that I wake from feeling they’re worth it – so have gotten pretty experienced at recalling them, and aware of the vagaries and outright inaccuracies involved in the process. As a rule, when I’ve been able to carefully, accurately (I think – how to be sure of such a thing, I don’t know) and in detail recall a “great thing” from a dream, I find that it’s only a little impressive to my waking mind.

 

The exceptions I mention are less exceptions – they’re not anything more creative than I can be in waking life – than remarkable. These two come to mind:

 

This one is from memory, circa 1995 (it’s in a paper journal, so not easy to retrieve):

I’m in a pleasant movie, driven by an intriguing plot, good scenery and shot composition, sympathetic characters, strong dialog, etc. I am a character. Lucidly, I realize I’m beginning to wake. I tell this to another character, explaining that I wish I could make this movie in the waking world. He says “don’t worry – in 5 years or so, it’ll be possible for people to make computer generate movies using AI agent actors,” followed by some elaboration.

I woke thinking this was likely to be proven true, although time has shown otherwise.

 

This one from my journal, from 1/17/12:

Bouncing beach ball in office becomes game. Chasing in halls, people bigger than me, dozens on each side, overturning cube walls and shelves. A trick: re-righting shelves and walls, cleaning up, I slip out into service hall, walk toward exit, one of several.

 

But massive annular elevator-type doors materialize in hall, close, fade to disappear, leaving just a rock wall. As I approach, a door appears, opens, closes, disappears again. Next cycle, I and another (human form but not entirely human) get through, climb slick hard dark wood ramp to top, where a plaque shows lines from "Ozymandias", in archaic English.

 

Half WAKE, think about languages, how several translations must be near, and REENTER dream

 

... finding a metal-paged book, in Russian, the other's language. Upon reading, we both become black silhouette cutouts, are cast down next to plinth in desert, completing poem's tableau. WAKE, feeling frightful awe.

After finally, slowly completely waking from this emotionally intense dream, I recalled a song heard in it, and found I was able to recall it well enough to sing and play it. It was a rather maudlin, soft pop song, which, were it not for it having lots of “oohs” and “aahs” in its refrains (for some reason, I’m a sucker for such songs), I wouldn’t have paid much attention, let alone liked. After some internet searching of several short lyric phrases, I concluded it was, at least lyrically, original.

 

By my songwriting standards (which are pretty bad – friends know my songs mostly so that they can avoid hurting my feeling by telling me how bad they are when I play them), it was a pretty good one. Unfortunately, thinking I would get back to it later, I wrote its words and a few chord hints, not its notes in tab or staff form, then didn’t, so can’t recall it well enough to play it now.

 

I distinctly recall remember, with a typical amount of effort, this song, as if I had just heard it played in waking life, an mental activity very distinct from imagining an original song or poem. Of course, I can’t be sure the former, not the latter, is what actually occurred, but in no dream I can recall has a song or poem I recall from it been other than recognizable, or impossible to recall, the suggestion of a song/poem rather than an actual one.

[lawcat]

I vote for all 3 on this one.

 

Look, legit research suggests we use a fraction of full brain power. So you are a genius, albeit unrealized, yet.

In a woken state we are busy processing information for survival and trying to make sense of it, mind is not free to roam. While sleeping, mind roams freely through the depository of stored informatioin and makes connections. To that extenmt, parts of dreams are historical information.

And yes, some feel good--even if your dream is fooling you.

[Vexer]

Cool-dude Lawcat,

 

“…legit research suggests we use a fraction of full brain power.” Legit or not, I don’t think that’s the case. I think (quoting other legit research) that we use all our brain power all the time.

 

 

You wrote: “While sleeping, mind roams freely through the depository of stored information and makes connections. To that extent, parts of dreams are historical information.

And yes, some feel good--even if your dream is fooling you.”

 

Can’t argue with that. Thanks for the reply.

 

 

 

CraigD,

 

You opted for case 3: Somehow, my brain is telling me “this is great!” – when actually there’s nothing there. It’s just a “feeling” that it's clever.

 

I agree.

 

But I don’t get how what you wrote backs this up?

 

 

I meant, in case 3, that all my (your, our) apparent in-dream creativity, is bogus. It isn’t. It just feels that way.

 

I mean, there is NO real creativity in dreams. (I could be wrong, I’m just voting).

[Deepwater6]

I don't generally remember my dreams, however, when my conscious mind is stumped, I can help myself solve the problem, by focusing on it as I'm going to sleep. The next day I seem to be able to come up with new ideas that I know my unconscious mind must have worked on while I was asleep. But would that be considered dreaming or something else?

 

"Let me sleep on it" It's taken me a long time to make this a general rule instead of a cute adage in my life, but I usually find if it's a problem my mind can figure out on it's own it will be after a goods nights sleep. I'm inclined to think my mind has worked through the problem (if it did) because sleep removed the clutter of useless mental hitchhikers such as, what I forgot at the grocery store a couple of hours ago.

 

I'm not up on the latest data of brain power usage so I'm not sure if Lawcat's 10% or Vexer's 100% is closer to the accepted medical norm, but if I have a stressfull busy day my mind can't be performing optimally, or up to it's maximum ability percentage. That being said, I think Vexer's creativity is always there just unrealized as Lawcat stated. He may just wake up in the morning with a completely clean mental blackboard and some great inspiration from his dreams.

[Pincho Paxton]

Your brain is a quantum computer, and it computes randomly whilst you are asleep. Like Infinite monkeys it can randomly make sense. Your storage system is logical, and like a data tree it has logical connections. A leaf is green, and a leaf is green in a dream, the two data structures are connected. A starfish in the sea connected to 6 logical limbs, and limbs as a data structure connect to all limbs, and bipedal limbs, and millipedes. You may have seen War Of The Worlds, and so have a connection to trilateral limb structures. You are capable of using numbers, and capable of using the number three.

 

I can take a dream into new physics if you like. Time is to create pressure outwards to inflate particles. Sleep is to release that pressure, and deflate the particles. So your awake time creates pressure which has to be released. So you think backwards in a dream, and think forwards whilst you are awake.

 

I come across as strange, you think I am crazy. My posts should be dated 2020, then they would make a lot more sense.

[Vexer]

>> Your brain is a quantum computer, and it computes randomly whilst you are asleep. Like Infinite monkeys it can randomly make sense. Your storage system is logical, and like a data tree it has logical connections. A leaf is green, and a leaf is green in a dream, the two data structures are connected. A starfish in the sea connected to 6 logical limbs, and limbs as a data structure connect to all limbs, and bipedal limbs, and millipedes.<<

 

Hm, yes -good point. I have to think wider about possible connections.

 

 

>> You may have seen War Of The Worlds, and so have a connection to trilateral limb structures

 

Good idea, but this was before that. (I did read the children’s books “City of Gold and Lead”, which has war-of-the-worlds tripods. But my sea-world was, er a world more than that.

 

 

>>So your awake time creates pressure which has to be released.

 

Well, thanks for replying. I have similar ‘unconventional’ ideas about other things.