Post by thenightmarehero on Feb 14, 2005 18:22:21 GMT -5
Increasing your Imagination
& How to Remember your Dreams
By Amin Emilio Aun Joven
Many of us have a problem remembering or having dreams. I have come to realize that the problem involves our imagination. With sufficient imagination a person could remember their dreams in the morning. This is one way to dream, the other way is to deprive yourself of sleep for several days, then when you can’t go on any more you will be able to dream vividly. I’ve tried this in collage and it always worked like a charm. Of course some of you may not want to go with this approach for obvious reasons. So I have developed a strategy based on my own experiences of how you can increase your imagination.
The best way to do this is with art. Art is the gateway to dreaming. When we dream, whether we remember it or not, we always remember our previous dreams subconsciously while we are awake, when we create art it allows us an avenue by which we can express to our conscious selves what happened while we slept. Now I know some of you are not artistic, and you’re thinking if that is the case that you’ve already hit a roadblock. This is not true. Passion just like anything else has to be grown and nourished.
So if you can’t create art well, the next best thing is to watch and hear it. Rent movies so that you can watch them in the comfort and quiet of your own home. Make sure you are alone so that you can concentrate on the movie. Make sure that it is a movie that you really enjoy, one where you wish you could be in the main character’s shoes. The first step involves remembering the catchy phrases or dialogue dispensed in the movie by heart. Once you have the dialogue down then you create an association between the dialogue and what you saw. You do this by remembering what you saw and heard in your head. Keep doing this until you can form a clear mental video and audio in your head.
Ok, that’s the first step; the next step is transposing yourself into the character’s shoes. While you watch a movie, imagine your face on the character you like, visualize seeing the face on the screen. Once you have done this try and remember what you saw in your head without the movie.
A word of advice, I don’t know how long this will take you to achieve this level of skill in your memories. Don’t give up. If it helps, record the dialogue from the movie on your hard drive with an mp3 mixer. This can be done with a program such as Acoustica mp3 audio mixer. As you hear the dialogue or music from the action sequences, remember the video that you saw on the screen in your head. Close your eyes as you do this. It’s best to do this when you have something with passion to listen to. As an example I have on my hard drive the movie I bought called Troy with Brad Pitt. What I did was record the music and sound from the movie when Achilles is going up the beach of Troy killing as many Trojans as he can single-handedly. His soldiers on the other boats are cheering him on saying “Achilles, Achilles, Achilles!!!!” At the end of my recording, Achilles throws his sword at a Trojan and impales the son of a bitch in the head with his blade. The track ends with the Spartans cheering on Achilles and the enemy retreating. This is just one example. High levels of passion and creativity are synonymous with high levels of action. At the other spectrum, love, you would listen to your favorite love songs or dialogue from your favorite romance movies.
When you can remember what you saw and heard, the next step is to change your memories. Rent a movie with a really, really, bad ending. Do NOT rent something that will depress you, instead rent something that will anger you. Rent something with some sort of injustice, something that you feel is wrong. When you feel righteousness, the burning need to right the wrongs that you just saw and heard, then your passion will increase. This I promise you. I’m not talking about inconveniences or injustice in terms of commercial value (“…they ripped me of… I got screwed on the car loan…”) I’m talking about human injustice. The kinds of things you look at and say “That’s just not right!” and when you say those words your passion for having the hero or heroine win climaxes. This also happens in real life as well when you watch news reports of stories where capital crimes were committed. Imagine yourself being in the victim’s shoes but instead of having the events happen as they did in the story, imagine them differently. Imagine yourself surviving a car crash. Imagine that the deadly nail on the road wasn’t there. Imagine that the wind pushed it aside and that no one got hurt on that day. Imagine that the person that was trapped in that fire in an apartment complex on a particular day was you; imagine knowing the way out and surviving. Imagine that a mugger tried to kill you and take your money; imagine beating the living crap out of the mugger and having the police arrest him. Remember the line from Gladiator:
“Imagine where you will be, and it will be so…”
-General Maximus Decimus Meridus
Imagination is the key to dreaming well at night, and remembering your dreams in the morning. To do this you must imagine well in the day. You must literally day dream while performing a task that is not life threatening and not concentration intensive, such as a repetitive task. Repetitive tasks include activities such as dancing, exercising, reading, drawing, and in this case typing. Let’s take a look at the specific case of dancing. I don’t mean in the traditional sense with a partner, what I mean is when you’re at home by yourself and you’re listening to theme music from a movie, imagine moving the same way the characters do in the scene with that music. While you’re moving imagine the scene in your head. The last technique that needs mastering is imagining and doing something else while you dance by yourself to the theme music, (please don’t do this in public or you’ll look like an idiot, “cough” Star Wars Kid “cough”) If you’re too embarrassed to do this by yourself, then imagine something while you’re performing in a dance class. I would advise against doing this with a partner, since intimacy is required in a somber setting, and she or he might be offended if they saw you day-dreaming.
The key is that you should imagine doing something else or accomplishing a goal while you do your repetitive tasks. In this way you’ll form more neural connections in your mind and be able to work more productively. This is the key to mastering the technique of multitasking.
That’s all I know; I leave you with this to contemplate and internalize.
& How to Remember your Dreams
By Amin Emilio Aun Joven
Many of us have a problem remembering or having dreams. I have come to realize that the problem involves our imagination. With sufficient imagination a person could remember their dreams in the morning. This is one way to dream, the other way is to deprive yourself of sleep for several days, then when you can’t go on any more you will be able to dream vividly. I’ve tried this in collage and it always worked like a charm. Of course some of you may not want to go with this approach for obvious reasons. So I have developed a strategy based on my own experiences of how you can increase your imagination.
The best way to do this is with art. Art is the gateway to dreaming. When we dream, whether we remember it or not, we always remember our previous dreams subconsciously while we are awake, when we create art it allows us an avenue by which we can express to our conscious selves what happened while we slept. Now I know some of you are not artistic, and you’re thinking if that is the case that you’ve already hit a roadblock. This is not true. Passion just like anything else has to be grown and nourished.
So if you can’t create art well, the next best thing is to watch and hear it. Rent movies so that you can watch them in the comfort and quiet of your own home. Make sure you are alone so that you can concentrate on the movie. Make sure that it is a movie that you really enjoy, one where you wish you could be in the main character’s shoes. The first step involves remembering the catchy phrases or dialogue dispensed in the movie by heart. Once you have the dialogue down then you create an association between the dialogue and what you saw. You do this by remembering what you saw and heard in your head. Keep doing this until you can form a clear mental video and audio in your head.
Ok, that’s the first step; the next step is transposing yourself into the character’s shoes. While you watch a movie, imagine your face on the character you like, visualize seeing the face on the screen. Once you have done this try and remember what you saw in your head without the movie.
A word of advice, I don’t know how long this will take you to achieve this level of skill in your memories. Don’t give up. If it helps, record the dialogue from the movie on your hard drive with an mp3 mixer. This can be done with a program such as Acoustica mp3 audio mixer. As you hear the dialogue or music from the action sequences, remember the video that you saw on the screen in your head. Close your eyes as you do this. It’s best to do this when you have something with passion to listen to. As an example I have on my hard drive the movie I bought called Troy with Brad Pitt. What I did was record the music and sound from the movie when Achilles is going up the beach of Troy killing as many Trojans as he can single-handedly. His soldiers on the other boats are cheering him on saying “Achilles, Achilles, Achilles!!!!” At the end of my recording, Achilles throws his sword at a Trojan and impales the son of a bitch in the head with his blade. The track ends with the Spartans cheering on Achilles and the enemy retreating. This is just one example. High levels of passion and creativity are synonymous with high levels of action. At the other spectrum, love, you would listen to your favorite love songs or dialogue from your favorite romance movies.
When you can remember what you saw and heard, the next step is to change your memories. Rent a movie with a really, really, bad ending. Do NOT rent something that will depress you, instead rent something that will anger you. Rent something with some sort of injustice, something that you feel is wrong. When you feel righteousness, the burning need to right the wrongs that you just saw and heard, then your passion will increase. This I promise you. I’m not talking about inconveniences or injustice in terms of commercial value (“…they ripped me of… I got screwed on the car loan…”) I’m talking about human injustice. The kinds of things you look at and say “That’s just not right!” and when you say those words your passion for having the hero or heroine win climaxes. This also happens in real life as well when you watch news reports of stories where capital crimes were committed. Imagine yourself being in the victim’s shoes but instead of having the events happen as they did in the story, imagine them differently. Imagine yourself surviving a car crash. Imagine that the deadly nail on the road wasn’t there. Imagine that the wind pushed it aside and that no one got hurt on that day. Imagine that the person that was trapped in that fire in an apartment complex on a particular day was you; imagine knowing the way out and surviving. Imagine that a mugger tried to kill you and take your money; imagine beating the living crap out of the mugger and having the police arrest him. Remember the line from Gladiator:
“Imagine where you will be, and it will be so…”
-General Maximus Decimus Meridus
Imagination is the key to dreaming well at night, and remembering your dreams in the morning. To do this you must imagine well in the day. You must literally day dream while performing a task that is not life threatening and not concentration intensive, such as a repetitive task. Repetitive tasks include activities such as dancing, exercising, reading, drawing, and in this case typing. Let’s take a look at the specific case of dancing. I don’t mean in the traditional sense with a partner, what I mean is when you’re at home by yourself and you’re listening to theme music from a movie, imagine moving the same way the characters do in the scene with that music. While you’re moving imagine the scene in your head. The last technique that needs mastering is imagining and doing something else while you dance by yourself to the theme music, (please don’t do this in public or you’ll look like an idiot, “cough” Star Wars Kid “cough”) If you’re too embarrassed to do this by yourself, then imagine something while you’re performing in a dance class. I would advise against doing this with a partner, since intimacy is required in a somber setting, and she or he might be offended if they saw you day-dreaming.
The key is that you should imagine doing something else or accomplishing a goal while you do your repetitive tasks. In this way you’ll form more neural connections in your mind and be able to work more productively. This is the key to mastering the technique of multitasking.
That’s all I know; I leave you with this to contemplate and internalize.
