Apparently the tune for yesterday came to Paul McCartney in a dream.
It was so vivid he had to check around to make sure he hadn't heard the refrain somewhere else and unconsciously copied it.
The Belgian organic chemist August Kekulé was trying to work out the structure of benzene.
He knew it had six hydrogen and six carbon atoms,
But couldn't envisage how they could attach to each other.
One night he dreamt about a snake biting its tail.
When he awoke he realised benzene had a ring structure and as a result gave birth to all organic chemistry.
When we sleep our conscious mind is quiescent and unconscious whispers and murmurs bubble to the surface.
For about 50% of our sleeping time we experience these types of thought forms as dreams.
Just imagine if you could use the time when you're dreaming to be creative.
The problem with dreaming creatively is twofold.
First we have to learn to remember our dreams and second we then have to interpret and analyse them.
Occasionally we will get a dream which is literal,
But most dreams come in a metaphorical or allegorical form and some are downright crazy.
While there are loads of dream interpretation books out there,
Dreams are very personal affairs and interpretation can only be based on our own life experience.
So to use our dreaming time to be creative we make use of the hypnagogic point between waking and sleeping to seed our dreams and the hypnopompic point between sleeping and waking to remember our dreams.
So breathe in and breathe down.
Before you go to sleep,
Put a notepad and pen on your bedside table and mark off a sheet in three columns.
Then on a scrap of paper,
Jot down something you'd like some enlightenment upon and slip it under your pillow.
As you drop into hypnagogia,
Think about the problem or opportunity you'd like your dreams to help you on,
Then sleep tight and watch the bugs don't bite.
As you awaken,
Spend some time in the hypnopompic zone and allow your dreams to percolate into your consciousness.
Then jot down the bullet points only of your dreams in the first column of your notepad.
Quickly,
Using word association,
Jot down the first thing that each bullet point makes you think of in the second column.
Next in the third column,
Make a note of how the contents of the second column could be beneficial to you.
This procedure may take a little practice,
So try it for at least a week,
As what could be better than making use of the time when you're asleep to be creative?
