Here is something that’s happened to me as of late: I stopped watching television, so my new hobby before bedtime is reading fiction books. I find it is a great exercise in imagination and also puts me in creative mode before bed. When I was a child, in elementary school and middle school, I read every night before going to bed, and I would often stay up later than everyone else, just so I could finish the book or one more chapter. I’m starting to become more into reading now that I no longer watch the tube. The natural consequence of this is after I read and set myself off to bed, my mind is still in creative mode from visualizing the story I was reading minutes earlier. This creative activity in my brain carries into my dreams, and gives me at least two to six dreams I remember each and every night.
When I used to watch television, my mind was just accepting what it saw, and was constantly being pushed to the flight or fight response mechanism from all the changing camera angles and blood/violence I saw on the screen. Now that I have books to read, and the whole experience is going on insde my head, and not through my external senses, it is entirely my creation. I think what all the characters look like and I create the scene by filling in the gaps and it is a wonderful experience. There is nothing to react to, all I need to do is create.
People always compare books to movies. First, the book comes out and it is a national bestseller, so they decide to make it into a movie to make more money. And everyone is always so happy they made it into a movie. Then it rules at the box office, and most of the people that go see the movie never read the book, at least not up until that point. Maybe after seeing the movie, they decide to read the book, but most people say they do not have time. I find that if I read a book after seeing the movie, I am forced to put the characters from the movie, the actors who played the characters, into the novel and it takes away from my imaginative power. I would rather imagine the characters the way I see them, making it a richer experience. If I ever read The Shawshank Redemption, every time the narrator describes a scene, I do not want to be thinking of Morgan Freeman’s voice. That would just place celebrities in a book I am reading to form my own impression about the book.
Even when I do read a book after I see the movie, I still find the book was always better. The book always contained more information, different scenes from the movie, and all of that good stuff, so it is not entirely the same. But the affect it has on my dreams is amazing. If I read the book, I start to have much more vivid dreams. They are so amazing, it is incomprehensible. Better than before. It is a mix of people from my life, and the storylines from some of the books all brought together, and sometimes there are things I never experienced, nor had I ever read these experiences, which is really interesting. I find that no one, or hardly anyone, ever wants to discuss dreams and how they relate to real life. I am one who loves to explore the dimension of dreams and its discontinuity. Its lack of persistence from night to night, from dream to dream. In a given night, I can create as many as six vivid scenes, six amazing dreams that put me in six different states of mind. And they all start off like this is my life, this is what I do, this is what is really happening.
Lucid dreams come few and far between, but I did have one about a week ago. That is something I need to get better at. I believe the key to unlocking that realization is when something happens in the dream that would never happen in real life, or would seldom happen and you would never expect it. Like the time I became lucid recently, I found over eighty dollars on the ground, and I thought to myself, “Hold on a minute, this never really happens, and if it does, I must be dreaming.” So that is how I became lucid. Although I really did not do much in that lucid dream except celebrate that I was lucid, it is something that was an indicator of progress, and the more I read, the closer I feel I am to having richer and possibly more lucid dreams.
The whole fact is that I have taken initiative to strengthen my mind and getting rid of the television was the first step. Now that I allocate the time I used to watch to either reading or writing, imagining instead of passively accepting images in front of me, I am unlocking the creative side of me that was dormant for so many years. Luckily, the first place the creativity struck was in my dream world, the place where I can have the most fun, at least in comparison to everyone else who is sleeping. I intend to read from now on every night. Another thing I added to my routine is going to bed earlier. Instead of staying up watching some sitcom I have already seen ten times anyway, I decide to read for maybe 45 minutes to an hour and then go off into dream land. It is less stimulating and relaxes me into sleep, like a warm bath.
I’ll keep everyone posted on my dream vividity and also come back for some more tips on how to have better dreams in the near future. I look at it this way: If you are asleep, would you rather dream vivid dreams, or essentially do nothing while you sleep? The choice is up to you.
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