Art
Art is a body of methods, principles and techniques operating in the realm of aesthetics and culture that employs creativity and imaginations to achieve the goals of creating beauty and discovering meaning and significance beyond simple description. The processes and manifestations of art can be understood as dreams.
Art is a realm of human endeavor that focuses on beauty and meaning. The content or subject matter of art is born in the inner realm, conceived within an individual. In its visible, audible or tangible creation, the individual's dream is made manifest, at which point it becomes available to others. Artists make inner realm dreams manifest in the outside world. Beside their own inner dreams, artists give voice and shape to dreams of the collective. The two aspects of art, dreams made manifest and then being shared with and by others are a bridging of inner and outer realms, as well as the individual and the group.
Often ar seems to be unconscious impulses and drives seeking tangibility, which is similar to the process of other types of dream wanting to enter dreamers' consciousness. The best of quite literally performs the functions inner world dreams, emanting from unconscious, irrational sources within an individual, although many would say that artistic inspiration, like all dream content, comes from outside the individual, inspired by something or someone greater than the artist herself. So much of art, be it music, dance, writing, painting, sculpture is the process of making inner realm dreams and nightmare tangible. Often the artist gives expression to dreams of the collective. The artist senses dreams and nightmares of their culture, dreams often unacknowledged by the cultre and gives them form, so that otheres can remember and begin to comprehend such aspects of their own life.
Art can be seen as inner world dreams made concrete. It can also be seen as an individual's dream conreteized or as group dreams made given form. Art also has the quality that the perceiver's own attitudes evoked by a work of art can become information and grist to put into the Dreamfulness mill. What do I fell and experience as I witness a particular work of art? What does it awaken inside myself? This is the stuff of dreamfulness.
Like all dream types, art invites the one who perceives it to open up to form a deep and broad connection with it. Art intends to be interacted with dreamfully, that is, mindfully, heartfully, bodyfully and soulfully. Like other dreams, art wants to tell us something. Art has aspects of all the types of inner world dream. Art can quite literally express sleep dream content. It can give form to daydream material. It can give form to the content of visions and hallucinations. It can give shape to dreams and aspirtations. It can make perceptible ideals. Art, too, can make tangible nightmares, both of the inner world and the outer world. The stuff of art is inherently the stuff of all the types of dream, whether or not the artist is aware of it.
Any work of art can be interacted with Dreamfully. After the initial experience of being entertained or horrified by a piece of art, of being transported outside onself or deeply within oneself by it, the person experiencing the work can engage in the process of comprehending the artwork, apprehending it, translating it, interpreting it and compreheding its meaning and value for the comprehender, the beholder of the work.
As is the case with all types of dream, art often shows apsects of the status quo, both light and dark. Art can express yearnings and desires for change. it can reveal situations and attitudes of imbalance. The language of art, like that of other dreams, is not usually particularly rational and linear. Art will employ whatever signs and symbols seem necessary to get across what ti wants to communicate. The more profound a work of like, like any dream, the more multi-layered and rich it is. As with any dream, an artwork perceived has significance beyond the first impression. If the message were easy to communicate and perceive, there would be no particular need for the dream.
Understood as a dream, the purpose and value of art is not just to present what is nice and pleasing. Beauty in art also consists of presenting what is dark and disturbing in mankind. In addition to pleasing us, art can and shold also disturb us. Art as a dream that shows the full picutre of the state of humans and humanity, wants to inspire us and also terrify us at our darki aspects. Art can be a marvelous way of identifying and incorporating dark aspects of ourselves and our communities. Shadow material acknowledged can but understood and brought into consciousness. In its quest for beauty and meaning, the dream of art embraces all of what the experience of being human is. What is unconscious is given form and then can be integrated into consciousness. Art passionately engaged with cultivates Dreamfulness and can be an invaluable part of creating a beautiful and coherent life.