How the 'hypnagogic state' of drowsiness could enhance your creativity

> hypnagogic state”. This is the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, when we drowsily linger in a semi-conscious state, experiencing vivid mental images and sounds.

There’s hypnagogia and hypnopompia. Both are liminal states between conscious and unconscious processing.

Hypnagogia is the transitional phase as you’re falling asleep, while Hypnopompia is when you are waking up.

Highly highly recommend trying out liminal dreaming.

It is a great place whence ideas may be harvested.

I've asked AI to help some, and maybe it's me who hallucinated it, but something that's super stuck with me from reading Philip K Dick's VALIS trilogy/Radio Free Albemuth were two dual modes: of the scorching mid-day heat of the Palm Tree Garden, a sweltering heat of the sun/that red even with your eyes closed, then at night, a sort of relief, an un-watched-over state. I enjoyed VALIS the first time a lot, but going back and finding these specific sections has a strong lure to it.

At the time it felt cute, a nice flourish. But over the years, the idea has sort of grown into me. I find that during the day, my critical mind is quite active & wants really exact precise things. Expectations can be large & slow down just letting things pour out of me. Now, this isn't the same in-between sleep/waking state as the article, but at night a lot of my concern goes away, and I can just enjoy things, work on things, uninhibited. Let it flow. Some level of tiredness can help.

I would like to be better about the flip side. I think the morning is another interesting, that a lot of people use well & love. Before the world is really awake, seizing the moment. Ursala Le Guin wrote about her daily routine, which involves waking prompty & writing writing writing. I feel like there's likely strong similarity. But also it sure feels good to have a bunch of work under your belt at the beginning of the day, right away. https://www.openculture.com/2019/01/ursula-k-le-guins-daily-...

Back when I was an artist, the pieces of creative writing I'm most proud of - broad ideas, and individual lines - mostly came to me from within this state. I've had a few technical (ie, to do with [dayjob] technology) insights come that way, too, but much more rarely. I don't know if that's a difference between brain processes, or the depth of my own knowledge and experience in the two areas, or my level of interest / commitment - I usually try not to think about [dayjob] problems when I'm not at work.

This reminds me of an article I read years ago about how people used to commonly wake up in the middle of the night, before the advent of electric bulbs, and often get a waking period between sleep in two phases (I assume more in winter months than in summer due to daylight hours). Apparently it was a very popular time for writing by candlelight, and I'm sure the creativity enjoyed by some of this tendency toward hynagogia had plenty to do with it.

A lot of the western world is focused on "alert problem solving mode", which is great, because it's given us all of these technological advances.

But I think in the future we should explore more of these altered states, because I think it's going to be a great source of creativity since it's so underexplored.

In shikantaza meditation I enter a state that could be called closer to dream. There's all kinds of strange stuff there and visualization gets easy. And stuff can get pretty clever. (Not saying that's the point of the meditation mind you)

This is one of the areas where memorization/deep familiarity with material is important.

Sometimes, when I have a difficult problem, I will spend time reading up as much on the principles of the problem and then go to bed.

Sometimes, I wake up with the answer.

This must be different from straight up sleep deprivation.

Most moments of discovery in my experience have arrived only after a good night's sleep. Shower thoughts... Hmm. The state of waking up?

It's so weird to see this topic come up yet again with no mention of Salvador Dali.