Posts Tagged ‘creativity’
A creative relationship with your dreams
If certain things are seen clearly from the beginning, then you can understand your dreams in a practical and useful way.
Firstly, you as a person are a tiny spark of consciousness, a little bit of self awareness riding an incredibly ancient animal you call your body. Remember that your body has formed from cells and genetic information that has gradually developed over millions of years. It holds that information in itself unconsciously.
If you are unclear about that take time to recognise that as a personality you are almost totally unaware of what is taking place in your body right now. You are not aware as personal experience of the huge history of evolutionary changes your being has gone through in order to become you. You perhaps have little conscious insight into the massive background of social, religious and family influences that go together to enable you to function as an individual and a social entity. Your self consciousness may not include awareness of how your present personality was shaped out of those influences. Maybe you do not know what the major life lessons are that confront you, or what your innate genius and passions are.
In general you are barely awake to who you are! But that is not unusual, most of us are in the same boat. Only here and there does an individual wake up and shine with light, love and creativity.
If you can accept that you are barely aware of your body and all you carry within you, that is still only part of it. You also exist in the midst of an incredible universe, a universe that we know most intimately in the processes of nature in and on our planet Earth. And how much of that interrelationship that you have with this planet and the universe are you aware of?
I am not asking you about philosophical speculations or beautiful poetry of idealism. I am asking about your day to day relationship with all that is around you and of which you are an integral part.
Is This Relevant to You?
If you think that is not a relevant question – not relevant that is to your daily life as a mother, worker, lover, student, business person – then stop for a moment and realise that without the universe you do not exist. You have no existence outside of it. You only exist as a totally embedded part of it. If you have no awareness of a life giving and sustaining relationship with it, aren’t you missing something?
Perhaps you are also missing an awareness of the intricate web of language, ideas, perceptions and drives that have meshed into what you are as a person. In some ways this is like owning a wonderful car or computer, and not knowing how it functions or how to use it well.
Remember that without the bacteria in your gut you will not adequately digest your food. Without the constant flow of food, water and air you will not exist. That flow depoends not on farmers and industrialists, but on the intricate web of bacteria, soil organisms, plant and animal life on this planet. And all that depends on the energy pouring from the sun as it dies. Like a love affair in progress, the sun and the earth together have given birth to us.
Okay, if you have come this far, let us take the next step. Sleep!
Your tiny spark of self awareness, existing as it does in the midst of this huge area of living processes that we call the universe, Earth, your body, the language and culture you express through, regularly slips back into its primal level of existence that we call sleep. In sleep we become completely unconscious – or at least, most of us do. Maybe at most we remember an occasional dream. Some people don’t even capture that. Their sleep is a period of total unconsciousness.
But for some that is not the case. They remember their dreams. Perhaps they even carry awareness into the world of sleep. In recent times this awareness of what is usually an unconscious world has been called lucidity, and if the lucidity occurs within a dream we call it lucid dreaming.
What remembering a dream and lucidity does is to extend your self awareness beyond the usual limitations and boundaries of waking life, and allow you to become more aware of the biological, sociological, racial and universal background, or underpinning, of your existence.
Take time with this because it is about something amazing that we all share. In dreaming or becoming lucid you are experiencing something of the usually hidden world of your body, of your mind, of your whole biological past, and life in you that lies beyond the frontier of your personal awareness.
The Wonder of Imagination
If you are among the few people who cannot ever remember their dreams, you are missing one of the great wonders of human experience. To dream is to discover a virtual reality so authentic, that the people we meet, the sensations we experience, the dramas we are involved in, strike to our heart as deeply as the events we meet while awake. In fact sometimes the memory of dreams may stay with us for years, more potently than many everyday memories.
The realm of sleep and dreams offers us a world so vastly different from waking, that our life may be enriched by happenings and realisations totally impossible otherwise. It has been said that travel broadens the mind. Dreams expand it far more. Without them, and without the act of imagination and fantasy that arises from such powers of the mind as dreams emerge from, we would indeed be impoverished. Without the process of mind that lies behind the inventive fancy of dreams, art, music, drama, literature and architecture would have remained starkly utilitarian. Imagination, in dreams or otherwise, is a divine power which lifts us out of today and transports us to yesterday, or to the future. Consider what it would be like if you could never remember details of the past, or think about what you would like to do in the future. Consider also what it would be like if you could never reshape in your mind or feelings, an event or words you have heard. There would be no comedy, no stories, no art, no drive to build something that is different.
Imagination changes the shape of the world, penetrates its external solidity to transform its shape and its events into innumerable fresh experiences. Imagination sees the wonderful possibilities in a piece of rock, or some coloured earth, and with them creates art. Imagination discovered the submarine and the motor car long before scientific endeavour developed the technology to manufacture them. (4) Even people who appear to lack this divine power while awake, can in dreams spread wings of fancy and find ingenious dramatic creation while they sleep.
Even more than that I believe that Imagination coupled with belief can create a hell on earth, or a heaven here and now. It is what we believe as truth that creates our inner world. This is so obvious in dreams when people run in terror from the creations of their own imagination.
If you are someone who not only remembers, but soaks up the lush dimensions of dreams, then you already know that your visions of the night allow you entrance into strange worlds, new ideas, fresh and sparkling perspectives, as well as horror movies of your own creation.
So why not exercise your imagination by stepping into your dreams in a fascinating adventure.
Being the Person or Thing
One of the most important things about actually understanding your dream rather that interpreting it is to become the dream person or object – to actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream person or object is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. For instance the Devil in a dream is simply your own emotions and fears given an exterior image. And also Christ in a dream is the same thing. In doing this you can step beyond the imagery of the dream into direct experience of yourself in all its variety and wonder. The Christ for instance become an actual experience of the highest in you.
So do do this the dreamer next choose one of the characters or images in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of their dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream. So do not attempt to describe them an outside person, but the dream character.
In choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream above, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with.
Stand in the Role of Character or Object
The dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be a person they would close their eyes, imagine themselves as stepping into the body of the dream character and describe him or herself as the person they now are.
To do this it usually changes the way your body or feelings feel. As this is done notice any changes in how you feel as that person – or object – speak as them in the first person. Do not say, “I feel as if this person is …” but say, “I feel I am and am doing ..” As this happens watch any realisations or insights that arise and explore the person. Ask question of this dream character until you feel you have realised what is is of you that is being revealed.
I know it is difficult for some people to say ‘I’ instead of talking as if the dream character is someone else. But if you start claiming the dream image as your own in this way by saying such things as, “I am a tree” you will quickly realise you are talking about yourself.
Here is an example. The dream was of a railway station that was an old castle keep/tower. In using the magic word I, this is what he described himself as. “I am an old castle keep. I used to be for defense and repelling people, but now I can let people in and out easily.” The dreamer realised this was a really excellent insight into his character and the change taking place in him.
The Reality of Imagination
Because dreams, imagination and creative thinking or intuition occur in a vastly different dimension than everyday life, we need to take time to reassess it and our use of it. We need to recognise what we are in touch with when we imagine. I honestly believe we are in touch with the future when we have a new and creative idea. For often we are moved by what we imagine and we begin to put it into our activities, in music, art, writing or engineering or technology. Then if we succeed we are now in the future we imagined, for our imagination came before the reality.
Imagination doesn’t necessarily need us to sit and try, making an effort to imagine something. It often arises spontaneously and we catch it like catching sight of a beauty, an idea, a passing feeling of love. If we manage to hold onto the glimpse, then we can craft it and make it physically real, and that is a wonder that something so ephemeral can take shape and be born. But the truth as I see it is that imagination is real and solid in its own dimension, the dimension of consciousness or mind.
But there is another aspect of it that many people fail to recognise. It is that anything we think and believe often becomes a reality. I see those women and men who believe they have no talent, no future, no love, often live a life exactly like that. I know because for a period of my life I lived in those beliefs and was suicidely depressed. And at the time I was so certain that they were true it was extremely difficult to get past them. Yet it is all imagination, for what is truth? Well it can be anything you like – a dark and threatening thing that can lead to constant feelings of despair or failure – or a creative promise that leads into an effortless state of wonder and newness.
Of course turning the corner from darkness to light – or not even that for we live in a world of duality in which there is darkness and light, a daily experience. So learning to exist in the middle of the extremes is a workable way.
A day many years ago, a spent butterfly with tattered wings was trapped inside the window of my house. What happened was a great surge if imagination as I watched it.
I begin to pass
And see a butterfly
In the lowest corner
Still – as in death.
Its wings tattered
By its own earnest
Yet fruitless quest.
I pick it carefully
And place it
Stood upon the very brink
Of that great open void
Toward the sky.
Motionless still
I nudge it toward the space,
Either to fall lifeless
Or to have what life is in it
Called upon fresh.
It falls.
Like a leaf dropping
In the air.
And then it flies
Lifting me with it
On tattered wings
Already spent.
Up, and up yet
Against the dark clouds
Lit from behind
In mighty grandeur wild.
Climbing against sea and sky,
Daring across the wind,
Bold amid the unending
Impersonal immense.
Creativity – Doorway to the Wonderful Fire
While staying in London with one of my sons I had the following strange dream and experience. In the dream I was a young man living in Italy. The surroundings gave me the impression of it being during a period several hundred years ago. I was walking through the streets of a town. As I did so I was thinking about the liver disease I had and about my plans to move to another town where a learned doctor lived that specialised in liver complaints. I wanted to not only be his patient but also his student, to learn what he knew about liver illnesses.
As I walked I started to sing Ave Maria – I believe it is Gounod’s version. My singing was beautiful, exhibiting wonderful voice control and expression of emotion. I am not sure of the sequence of this but there was a building I was looking at. People wanted to have the building restored but could not raise the money. So I had painted a huge mural on the building depicting scaffolding covering the house. This attracted public attention and interest in the house, and so money was raised. I realised that I was not just an artist but also an architect and musician.
It was on this thought, and with Ave Maria still sounding its lovely quality that I realised I was dreaming and became awake enough to observe and think about what was happening. I realised that as a musician I had very great ability as a composer, and decided to compose an ‘Ode to Mozart’. No sooner had I decided this than the music poured through my consciousness. So much so I heard it as if listening to an orchestra or record. The music soared and moved in a wonderful expression of human vision and transcendence. As this occurred I could observe the process of creativity or composition, which was spontaneous to an extraordinary degree. It appeared that by asking for or seeking the composition I had opened a window in my mind. Through it I could observe a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it was all that has ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought was in it alive and vital. My ‘Ode to Mozart’ drew on this unfathomed depth of being. I knew as I observed this that the music itself, although precise and clear and Mozart’s own work, proclaimed the human ability to leap beyond boundaries into this immense and apparently limitless world of experience – to allow the mind to soar and fly, to move beyond its own conceptions and rejoice.
I wanted to test this amazing ability and asked the huge mind how I could compose ‘modern’ music. What followed was like being instructed. The thoughts arose as if I were being told, that music was a reflection of basic life processes. Using the example of a simple life form in the beginning of evolution, such as a single celled creature or a crystal, this was like one note sounding over and over. After doing this over and over for infinite repetition, the process of life stumbles upon or manages a slight change in itself. This is when the single celled creature develops other attributes and moves toward multiplicity of cells. This would be like the playing of different notes over and over. Then maybe another basic process has learned to play three different notes, and if these two meet they play a more complex music together.
To this meeting was added theme upon theme until an orchestral music was built up, and I was told, “This is your body, with its many different processes playing together.” Or it could be likened to society in which so many opposing ‘themes’ in the end form a whole.
Fatherhood At Its Best
By Belden Johnson
A man loving himself and his future children enough to heal himself of his past wounds before he chooses a woman to conceive with.
A man nourishing himself by choosing a good woman and committing to a consciously-loving relationship into which to warmly welcome wished-for children.
A man nourishing his woman by speaking total truth, by taking 100% responsibility for his reality, by supporting her highest good as well as his own, by co-creating equally with her the safe nest of home and family.
A man who tells his 8-month pregnant wife how beautiful she is.
A man who creates lullabies to sing to his baby in the womb.
A man who also wants a home birth with a midwife and is completely present during the labor and delivery.
A man who protects children, male and female, from genital mutilation and sexual abuse.
A man who chooses to work half-time so he can parent half-time.
A man who changes all the diapers.
A man who dispenses with diapers and becomes the Permanent Pooper Scooper for as many years as it takes.
A man who loves skin-to-skin contact with his babies.
A man who welcomes a family bed.
A man who carries his baby in a Snuggli or a Gerry-pack.
A man who plays the piano with one hand while holding his baby with the other.
A man who kills his television and reads his children stories.
A man who wrestles with his children and always lets them win.
A man who coaches coed sports teams for his children and, when they ask who won, tells them that whoever had fun won.
A man who creates an alternative schooling for children who need it.
A man who will gladly teach and gladly learn.
A man who listens.
A man who says it’s okay to cry, or be afraid, or angry, or excited.
A man who can cry, be afraid, and be angry without violence or blaming.
A man who knows that he is the caretaker of Divine Souls who come “trailing clouds of glory” from God who is their home.
A man who celebrates his children’s differences from him and encourages them to become whoever and whatever they wish to become.
A man who, when the time comes, can let the birds fly the nest and bless them on their way out into the global family.
A man who fathers all children and weeps for the fatherless.
These images are true and real. Such fathers are now among us.
Bless them and their fatherhood!
* Report of the Fatherhood Vision Circle, Ninth International Congress of APPPAH, San Francisco, California Dec.6, 1999. You can reach Belden Johnson at johnson@gv.net.