A few weeks ago, I wrote about how you can use your “sleep thinking” to improve and increase your creativity. Many of you wrote to ask how precisely this process works and if there were steps to take to increase your own sleep thinking abilities. There are indeed steps to take! I present a complete program for making use of your sleep thinking in my book The Magic of Sleep Thinking, which Dover has just reissued this month. That’s the place to go to learn more.
Here are a pair of comments on my original post. Kate wrote: “This is absolutely true, how sleep thinking can work for you, and probably if you look back through your life you’ll wonder why something seemed relatively simple on a given morning, rather than the mess it had seemed the day before. That was an accidental gift your mind gave you! Remember the advice ‘sleep on it’ when you have a decision to make? Sleep thinking adds guidance to that prescription and can turn confusion into direction. It may not BE the magic that the book title suggests, but it’ll feel that way when it works!”
Phillip wrote:
“I like your analysis, and am going to try it. I have found that in some of the most confusing situations, ones which need a real answer but we don’t know where to start, focusing on the question often brings no answer because our mind is too focused on the question. The advice we hear, concentrate, study, or be focused, can lead not to the best answer. Often, as is in the creative process of the artist, answers to questions can come to us in our sleep because our minds are in a state of receptiveness that doesn’t usually happen while we are wide awake. We also don’t have full control of our volition most times in our sleeping state.
“I think being an artist means we understand this process better than most, that creating something starts with an idea, and this process unfolds as we go along. There is nothing mundane about this. The person who spends much of his time doing with his mind things that lower his consciousness, like watching television, doesn’t usually get to appreciate this extraordinary life that artists live. He has convinced himself what we do is unnecessary, a waste of time, or serves no practical purpose. And yet, the development of the mind is the most essential attribute of being human. Artists are these people who are fully developed cognitively, or ought to be.”
Do get your hands on The Magic of Sleep Thinking. I think it will serve you.