Author: Steven Aitchison (399 Articles)
The owner of this blog. Proud father, doting husband, blogger, hire me as freelance writer, and addiction worker
Finding your creative genius – The bridge to the unconscious
There are many ways to find the inner creative person inside you and there are some great blogs, which can help you on your way. Check out some of these blogs:
- The
Positive Blog Network - Balanced
Life Center - Dating
Tips and Relationship Advice - Dragon
Slayer’s Guide to Life - Evolving
Times - Get
the Most Out of Your Life! - Make
It Great! - Motivational
Speaker - Passive
Income - Personal
Development for the Mind - Personal
Finance Forum - Pick
the Brain: Critical Thinking - Personal
Growth and Effectiveness - Personal
Development Podcast & Blog - A
Quest for Personal Freedom - Sales
Motivation - Talent
Development - Zen
Habits – Simple Productivity
Here is another suggestion to find creative solutions to problems, for creating works of art, for writers, for anything you just want to mull over.
Our dream images can tell us a lot about ourselves and can give us deep insight into our lives. You can use this knowledge to your advantage by harnessing the power of your subconscious mind. As mentioned before it can be difficult to get access to our subconscious without a lot of effort on our part.
Hypnogogia
Hypnogogia is the state we experience just as we are falling asleep. We are not quite conscious but we are not fully asleep yet. The brainwaves are going from the alpha and beta states to the deeper delta and theta waves usually experienced in dreaming. Therefore, it is like the bridge to the unconscious.
Hypnogogia can produce hallucinatory experiences; tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations. It can also produce a state called sleep paralysis, which is a state when our bodies are paralysed for a period. Our mind is still awake and we are awake when sleep paralysis occurs which can be a terrifying thing if we start to hallucinate.
Many lucid dreamers go through the state of sleep paralysis before becoming lucid in their dreams. When I practiced lucid dreaming a few years ago, I had a few scary sleep paralysis nights. It is also a state, which can occur during hypnogogia, and when we recognise this state, we can use it for our benefit.
Creativity in the state of hypnogogia
To practice keeping your mind awake just as you are falling asleep can take a few weeks but it can be done.
If you want to practice this you have to first have the will to do it, so don’t do it half-heartedly as you will give up after a few nights.
When you have the will, practicing is easy, perseverence is the harder part.
Practicing staying awake
Just before falling asleep each night, as you are the dozing stage, talk to yourself and tell yourself your mind is awake. Don’t repeat the statement as this might make you sleepier, rather make a running commentary something like ‘my mind is awake but I can feel my body falling asleep, my arms are relaxed, my mind is alert, my legs are also relaxing………’ and so on.
When you have practiced this for a few nights and you have got used to this state you might experience sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and lucid dreams or even astral projection (yes it really happens).
Using it for creativity
You can now start using the hypnogigic state to begin your creative journey. Before drifting off to sleep ask yourself a question, you need an answer to. This can be anything, like; what can you paint for your next painting, what can you write about in your next post, where can you find a great business idea, how will you sell your house or anything you need inspiration for.
Obviously, this is only another tool in the toolbox of personal development. It may work for someone who is highly motivated and it might not work for others who are less motivated. Try it, if it doesn’t work move onto another tool.
If you have had experienced the tae of hypnogogia and used if to help you why not tell us about it and leave a comment.
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This is great information. I’ve heard of it but I wasn’t sure what it was. Thanks for sharing it and providing the links.
Thanks I enjoyed this post.
In fact, I recently wrote in one of my articles, the following:
“Whatever our conscious thoughts and desires might be, we also have subconscious beliefs that often contradict what we want.”
It stands to reason that setting one’s mind in a positive direction just prior to sleep to set things in motion (the law of attraction if you will) will have tremendous outcomes.
Thanks for your post,
Larry Christopher
Hi Steven!
I’ve got a goofy one to tell you about, and while odd it does fit
There was a movie I really enjoyed and had the theme song down pat. Then one day, whoosh, and it was gone. Having just read an article in Discover magazine that reminds us all our brains are super computers, I set mine to the task of remembering the song (just before bed).
Granted, it was three days later, but upon waking, before my feet even hit the floor WHAM the entire song, words and all, came flooding back!
If it can work for something so simple, imagine the power of accomplishing so much more by using this same technique.
Again, thanks for a great read!
All the best,
Theresa
http://www.moltenmarketing
http://www.mywizardads.com
Hi Alan
Thanks for your comments and glad you enjoyed the links.
Hi Larry, thanks for your comments also. What you are talking about when you say:
“Whatever our conscious thoughts and desires might be, we also have subconscious beliefs that often contradict what we want.”
This is called cognitive dissonance and is a powerful barrier to manifesting our desires. Getting through to the subconscious is the key to this.
Hi Theresa, great story thanks for sharing it. Out of curiosity what was the song?
Great links, thanks.
Kul
I have been practicing self induced Hypnogogia for a few nights. If you encourage your mind to on just the event of hallucination you can definatley achieve such. I have had interesting results and plan on continuing further. “The fear” can be accounted for and I’ve found it almost awakening. Try, really try this method. Make sure it is silent and very dark. You must completely relax. When all is realized, Nothing is Lost.
The unconscious mind controls over 95% of the body and it’s functions AND most of our beliefs, which in turn control our thoughts, which in turn create our reality so accessing the unconscious mind is really the place to start first but the good news is that it is really quite easy to do this. You can consciously access your unconscious through guided journeys and visualizations, through shamanic drumming, and, although I’ve never tried Hypnogogia personally, it sounds like a credible method as well.
http://www.GuidedHealingJourneys.com
Dear Steven,
My name is Steven C. Nunez the 3rd an I’m writing you, in hopes, that you will get this letter and you will help out in this degree of illness. Well, let me cut to the chase. I myself have suffered for years with night terrors ( hynogogia, to be precise ).
The thought of trying to get to sleep, but feeling paralyzed for 5 to 6 seconds, was, an is ” DISMAL, ” to say the least. But through the years, I had to find something, some way, to get into bed, without that hurtful dread. So, I experimented, to make a long story short, I found the missing key, an it was ” SOUND! ” I had a stint with cotton balls, but they weren’t strong enough to keep the voices and sounds out of my eardrums or I guess my mind. So, I gradutated up to earplugs in the night, an I’ll tell you right now, Steven, I found the cure! Now I’m not sure if it works for everyone, but it sure worked for me. All I did was plug my ears every night before I would lay down for sleep an incredibly, I had no Sleep Paralysis, whatsoever. My question for you is, can you give it a shot and spread the word, that this might just work and if it does that we may have found a cure. In hopes you do, you’d be helping out the masses an I’d be in your debt. Test it out, what could it hurt? There’s no pills or anything to swallow, so if this works for me then I’m praying that it works for you also.
In waits,
Sincerely,
Steven C. Nunez III
Hi, I have written a song called hypnogogia describing hallucinations in sleep paralysis, it’s on myspace/didibergman/
Very intresting information on unconscious.
Hi, almost every night I have a Hypnogogic experience. This has fascinated me to such an extent that today I have done research and am amazed to learn that there is even a term for this semi-conscious state. I have decided to record my experiences daily to try to better understand myself (including the thought processes that I go through) of course I have come to the conclusion that requests that are too general and too wide do not deliver any results. Perhaps in a few weeks I might just be able to share, well … something. Many thanks for this site – I am truly excited to explore this “twilight” zone.
I’m a writer and often my mind is busy with ideas when I should be settling down to sleep. While I wasn’t actually aiming for this kind of thing, I have found in several instances that I’ve been able to move an idea onwards and develop a new plot twist, when I’m lying there in a partially awake state. I know that it’s not exactly dreaming, but I also know that I’m not fully awake either. I think this might be a hypnogogic experience, and if so, then I’ve been having them for years without realising it.