Thread: Creativity in Lucid Dreaming: a Reddit rant

"I was kind of shocked that this guy thinks of LDing and daydreaming as the same thing. I am confused about his perspective about Lucid Dreams."

You are right to disagree with this assertion. Lucid dreaming is a distinct physiological and experiential state.

They do not have identical Neurological underpinnings.

The quality, intensity, and type of sensory phenomena in Lucid dreams are all different from your typical day dream.

Lucid dreams always happen when one is asleep and 9 times out of 10, in REM stage sleep, while day dreams do not require or occur in REM sleep.

"LD-ing at best is only a tool. Tools do not boost creativity! Creativity is a matter of the heart. It isn't a skill."

I do happen to think that exposure to the expanses of mental phenomena associated with lucid dreaming does increase creativity by increasing the store house of novel information one has access to and giving one a novel perspective on things in general. I suppose there could be debate between creativity as a conscious ability or as a kind of receptivity to emanations from some unconscious source. I tend to think that 'creativity' is most usually a confluence of both of these factors. All creative people are somewhere on the spectrum of both types, there are writers and artists who seem to come up with interesting work without accessing altered states of consciousness, they use a intentional process. Then there are artists who seem to be more passive, their greatest ideas come to them in dreams, altered states, or flashes of creative insight which have nothing to do with any kind of conscious process.

So I would ask the person what exactly makes a person "creative", is it their frequency and intensity of 'flashes of insight' or is it their ability to grow new ideas and forms in a step by step procedural and intentional manner?

So if it is in the first sense, then lucid dreaming can increase 'creativity'.

Does it in the second sense? At least it helps by increasing the store house of novel information. As to it helping one actually working this new information into a coherent book, picture, or song I have no evidence either way.

As to the assertion "It (creativity) isn't a skill." This seems absurd if his idea of creativity consists in some intentional process, because most artists, poets, or writers seemingly get better at their craft over time. Also people who go to school for these things come out with much better 'creative skills', or at least something which appears as creativity.

A counter argument may be, "well school and practice doesn't make one more creative (they assert it is not a learn able skill), it just allows one to express it better." This seems ridiculous to me because isn't expression a integral aspect of creativity, what is the point of having every creative idea in the world rattling around in your personal brain if one cannot utter a word of it? I think a great deal of people have high or intense feelings or flashes of ideas, but simply cannot express it in any form, are these people really creative, because like I said doesn't a person empirically prove they are creative by the things they actually produce? It seems to me what makes Picoso or Mozart extraordinary is their ability to isolate, observe, and give outward form to universal feelings and intuitions, and not just their ability to have them.

Valis covered this extremely well already ( especially the creativity part ), but yeah the guy has no idea what he is talking about.

Originally Posted by Witchtheworld

He claims that Lucid Dreaming is a vivid version of Daydreaming ( ~he does not understand the concept of LDing )

And that it is not good to use Lucid Dreaming as a tool to be creative. "LD-ing at best is only a tool. Tools do not boost creativity! Creativity is a matter of the heart. It isn't a skill."

He has probably never been lucid before, or has never been truly lucid, exploring the depths of his own mind.

How is, entering a giant dome made of canvas where everything you decide to paint with the brush of your mind comes alive, not a good place to be creative for an example?