The previous post is, it seems to me, the key to everything.  It is a worthy listen.

I have been studying jazz for a few years now.  In spite of a lifetime of being involved in music, Jazz is tricky business, and mastery of it remains elusive to me.

Jazz improvisation is the communication of a dream – the translation and exposition not so much of the state, but of the journey.  A skilled musician can share that journey with us, even though few of us are or will ever be musical virtuosos, polished performers and improvisers.  A skilled musician can lead us into a state where the magic of the journey needs no explanation or effort.

Child’s play is pure improvisation – the selfless acting out of dreams.  With adulthood, however, comes responsibility and ever increasing resistance to abandoning ourselves to our dreams.  As adults, we replace the natural improvisation of play with surrogate experiences such as losing ourselves in a movie or climbing on a roller coaster.  We know these experiences are safe in spite of the thrills they can offer. We can indulge ourselves without abandoning our responsibilities or security.

We crave entertainment because we miss our natural ability to improvise.  We still want to play.

This, I believe, is why lucid dreaming is destined to become a revolution in human experience.  A lucid dream can be the ultimate playground – the ultimate improvisation, with no risk to our status or circumstances.  We abandon no responsibility, breach no trusts, and cause no damage that translates to anything outside of our own transient internal world, and the next dream brings a complete reset.  This is a good part of what keeps us lucid dreamers coming back.

We view artists as exceptional because they manage that seemingly impossible feat of releasing themselves to the dream and sharing a bit of it with the rest of us.  Yet each of us has grown from a child who once knew how to play without being taught.  Perhaps the goal of learning to improvise or achieving any other creative goal isn’t really learning at all.  Perhaps what we need to do is un-learn.

We already know how to dream – but we live in a world that defines maturity as learning to abandon our dreams.