Creativity and Dreams

Being a creative person, I’ve often wondered if my creativity has anything to do with my dream life.  It makes sense that it would, especially if you believe dreams are born in our subconscious.  In fact, if all dreams are born in the subconscious, then they should mirror the personality of the dreamer.

What if someone has a dream that doesn’t fit their personality?  For example, what if a highly creative person has a dream that lacks creativity?  What if a college professor, with many decades of school under his belt has a dream that he’s a bus driver, or a plumber?  If he believes dreams are literal, he’s in a mess of trouble.  If he believes dreams are metaphoric and born in the subconscious of the dreamer, he’s confused.  You see, we all dream of work related things so often that if we assume it’s our brains working to try and solve the problems of the day, then we don’t know what to do with dreams that deviate from our assumptions.

Here’s what I’ve discovered as a creative person who studies dreams.  If my dreams were limited by my own creativity, I would get bored really fast.  In fact, I cannot count the times I’ve woken up from a vivid dream and marvelled at how everything about it far surpassed my own creativity.  It’s happened so much, in fact, that I find myself thinking how much higher the creativity that shows up in my dreams is from my own.  What seems like the simplest of short dreams have the most creative elements in them.

One time i dreamed i pulled a red apple out of my ear and took a bite out of it.  My first impression was that it was symbolic of food for thought.  Then, as time passed and I became more experienced with dreams, I realized that the metaphor meant my thoughts would bear fruit good enough to eat. In other words, wholesome and fertile thoughts would become nourishment to me.

The bottom line is simply this, our creativity is limited as human beings, but when it comes to dreams I see no end to creativity.

So what does this all mean in the grand scheme of your dreams? Well, for one, it means that you’re not in control of your dreams, even if you’re a lucid dreamer.  Frankly, this is a very appealing idea to me.  If I were in control of every dream I had, there would be no intrigue or mystery.  Worst of all, there would be no surprise.

If you’re a creative person, I challenge you to take an objective look at your dreams, (as objective as you could be), and compare your creativity with the creativity you see within your dreams and honestly ask yourself if you have ever come up with such clever metaphors.

EB

Photo credit: h.koppdelaney / Foter.com / CC BY-ND