Lucid Dreaming

Some people say that they get their inspiration from their dreams. The ordinary person can't control when they have an inspirational dream, or even when they remember their dreams. The ordinary person can't, but a lucid dreamer can. The idea of lucid dreaming comes from the desire to have control over an experience that may not happen in an ordinary lifetime. Lucid dreaming, or conscious dreaming, is when you know that you are dreaming and can control the events that happen within your dream. It gives you the ability to explore your creative mind and utilize it in ways you literally can only imagine. Lucid dreams give you the opportunity to live out your most far-fetched fantasies, practice important life situations such as giving a speech, and help stop nightmares. They also can be used for personal or spiritual exploration, and have a very strong connection to aesthetics. With that said, can lucid dreaming be considered "art?"

The imagination is a powerful thing, and without it, there would be no means for creativity. Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." With the use of our imagination, we are able to create a better world, and use our minds at their greatest capacity. Our imagination is essentially the base of our creativity, and it is always important to put it to use. Lucid dreaming is an incredible phenomenon that is a great way to get intact with your inner creative mind. It is a skill that can be learned with diligence and discipline and is a great way to work the brain while sleeping. A lucid dreamer can explore worlds beyond their wildest dreams by tapping into that inner creativity. If you can imagine it, then you can literally make yourself dream something completely out of the realm of this world, and that in itself is what makes this idea so potentially aesthetically pleasing.

Aesthetics deals with the nature and expression of beauty, and people have the ability to actually go in their mind and create something completely out of this world. Lucid dreamers can express themselves in ways that they may not have the talent for in "the real world," and may be inspired to cultivate a skill that would aid them in creating a mastered work of "art." An artist might use lucid dreaming to create a surreal piece of art. Surrealism is a more modern artistic movement that attempts to express subconscious thoughts and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruence juxtaposition of subject matter (Thefreedictionary.com). Because this movement taps into the subconscious mind, learning the skill of lucid dreaming would be very beneficial to an artist who wants to create something surreal. The artist could create anything he or she thought of, and by living the experience within his or her dreams gives that artist an advantage to create something deeper and more creative than an artist who creates something by just thinking about it.

Creating something unreal that just doesn't seem to make sense unless you take time to think about it for a while is not easy. Surrealists, like Salvador Dali, have the ability and opportunity to not only think about their subconscious and create something based off of that, but go inside of it and explore it in order to create a work of art that is filled with details and is extremely dynamic by learning to lucid dream.