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Electric Dreams Volume 11 Issue 07
E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
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E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Volume #11 Issue #7
July 2004
ISSN# 1089 4284
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http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
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Download a cover for this issue:
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C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
++ News PsiberDreaming Conference
The Association for the Study of Dreams
September 19, 2004 - October 3, 2004
Virtual Conference - Online
++ Review: IASD Dream Conference 2004
Strephon Kaplan-Williams
++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange
Lucy Gillis
Robert Waggoner interviews Beverly D'Urso
++ Article: Evolution of the Dream
(From "How To Fly")
Linda Lane Magallón
++ Column: Lucid Living On The World Dreams Peace Bridge
The World Dreams Peace Bridge
A View from the Bridge
Jean Campbell
++ Column: Spectral Waves: The Quest for the Holy Grail
Spectral Moon, White Spectral Wizard Year
Ron Adams 2004
++ DREAM SECTION: Dreams from June, 2004
Host Kat Peters-Midland
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D E A D L I N E :
July 21st deadline for August 2004 submissions
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Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Send Dreaming News and Calendar Events to:
Peggy Coats <info@dreamtree.com>
Send Articles and Subscription concerns to:
Richard Wilkerson: <rcwilk@dreamgate.com>
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Editor's Notes
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Welcome to the July 2004 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to
dreams and dreamwork online.
If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, please join us on
dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com and we will guide you to the
resources & groups you need. To join send an e to
dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Announcing two new staff members to Electric Dreams. Kat Peters-
Midland has volunteered to take over the Dream Section. Kat is a
therapist, dream worker. You may know her as the editor and
publisher of the Rocky Mountain Dream Journal. If not, be sure to
stop by the RMDJ site and get a subscription at:
http://www.rmdjournal.com/
Janet Garrett joins Electric Dreams as an archive specialist and
is currently transferring all the past Electric Dreams articles to
formatting for the web. Be sure to see her work in progress at
http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Electric Dreams is looking for a Dream News Editor. If you are
interested in this position, see the details below. This is a
really fun position as you get to know all the players in the
field of dreams.
This month in Electric Dreams:
Strephon Kaplan-Williams reports on the 21st International
Conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Strephon's
life marks a balance between someone who has spent decades
studying Jungian therapy, and yet has also gone beyond the Jungian
fold and deeply influenced the Dreamwork movement. Whether you
were there or missed this year's conference you will want to read
this review.
Lucy Gillis shares travels around the dream world to find the most
talented and experimental lucid dreamers. This month, "DreamSpeak:
An Interview with a Lucid Dreamer." In this three part series,
Robert Waggoner interviews long time lucid dreamer Beverly D'Urso.
Linda Magallón. author of Mutual Dreaming, offers us a selection
this month from her book on How to Fly. In the article, "Evolution
of the Dream," Magallón offers some theories on flight in dreams
that delve into the way evolution has expressed itself in our
hopes, fears, desires and dreams.
Jean Campbell honors members of The World Dreams Peace Bridge in
"Lucid Living On The World Dreams Peace Bridge." If you have never
heard of the Peace Bridge or if you are an active member, be sure
to read her column "A View from the Bridge."
The Waves is a newsletter reporting on the explorations underway
at the Sea Life forum. They take a community approach to dreaming,
running monthly dreaming projects to learn more about the world,
and the evolutionary path before ourselves and our planet. This
month from Ron Adams, "The Quest for the Holy Grail"
Keep in mind that the Fall PsiberDreaming Conference is almost
upon us. For more information, read the invitation from
the Host, Ed Kellogg, Ph.D.
Talking with dead people, flying spirits, flashing Virgin Mary
eyes, dying whale in a bathtub, and dating a serial killer
What do
they have in common? They are in the Electric Dreams Dream
Section. Be sure to read all of these dreams and more. If you want
to contribute dreams, enter them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
or join the dream flow at dreamflow@yahoogroups.com
(dreamflow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com)
--------------------
For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to
stop by one of the many resources:
http://www.dreamtree.com
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library
Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo)
http://www.dreamofpeace.net/community/electricdreams/
--------------------
Dreamin' up a storm,
-Richard Wilkerson
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Global Dreaming News seeks new Editor (volunteer position)
If you feel you would be a good candidate to report the news that
is going on in the dream world, be sure to contact Richard
Wilkerson at rcwilk@dreamgte.com
The GDNews editor will receive the support of the Electric Dreams
staff in making contact with all the essential people in the dream
world, and will be responsible for putting this information
together once a month for publication. This is a really fun
position and you can expand then news as you like. In the past, we
have included reviews of dream books, dates for conferences,
seminars, talks and other events, new websites and research news
and requests.
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IASD Dream Conference 2004
©2004 Strephon Kaplan-Williams
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[IASD is the International Association for the Study of Dreams]
Whether you have gone to an ASD-IASD Dream Conference or not
recently, you may wonder what it is like.
Is the yearly conference like it is described in the brochure?
What actually happens there?
What is in it for you if you choose to go next year to Conference
2005 to be held in Berkeley, California, USA?
Don't miss it, is all I can say.
An ASD conference is equivalent to being at the finals of a tennis
grand slam tournament, The Rose Bowl, The World Cup Finals,
listening to the Dalai Lama, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No,
we would not go that far on the last one, but it is always a
tremendous experience for those who let themselves fully
participate.
Why?
Do you want to live at the leading edge of culture and
consciousness in life? Then the dream and the dreamwork movement
is one of those segments of the cultural edge in modern life,
though wars and political issues get the limelight in the regular
media.
At the annual ASD conference you will meet each other and chances
are you will find many truly dedicated people to interact with and
learn from and be inspired by.
Is it not important to lead a dedicated life?
Let me give some personal examples from this last conference which
I attended with my assistant and workshop presenter, Daniela Seebe
from Germany. I also was a Featured Presenter with around sixty
people in attendance and a workshop presenter with maybe twenty by
the time the people all came in.
Maybe there were around two hundred and fifty in all at the
conference. I do not know the exact number. Imagine that all
these, presenters and participants alike, have been drawn here to
Copenhagen for four days to engage in dream rituals like tribes of
old thousands of years ago because of their dreams and wanting to
know the meaning of their dreams and their lives.
One presenter from Finland, Annti Revonsuo, as a scientist
presents his research with slides to support his thesis that
threat in dreams is basic and goes back thousands and thousands of
years in our evolutionary history in which our ancestors had to
dream of real threats in the night from animals and natural
phenomenon such as forest fire and earthquakes, dreaming these
things but also trying to understand them in a way to survive them
and keep their families alive and together.
It's a wonderful theory, and he is setting out to prove it by
inference through content analysis studies. I for one accept the
possibility but offer a different thought in my conversation with
him and in my presentation, The Dream and Its Dreamwork, available
as a CD from me or ASD.
My contribution is that through analysis of the dream ego, the
dreamer in the dream, you can measure through a series of dreams
what the dream ego is for the dreamer and any significant changes
in dreams and life. No one has focused on this so far. Content
Analysis does not focus on the dream ego as the most significant
and common symbol occurring through a series of dreams. I am now
developing The Dream Ego Assessment Profile and using it with my
students since two years ago.
So is not threat only one of the key factors in dreams? See
Patricia Garfield's latest book on key dream themes, The Universal
Dream Key.
This is an example of major thinking around dreams currently
happening. Come, load your mind with good stuff to ruminate during
the coming years. Key thoughts help determine how we think about
and live our lives.
What are the major dream themes as I see them in using the
technique I am most known for, Following The Dream Ego? I have
twenty in The Dream Ego Assessment Profile which you can send for
as a download to use, or get at my website when it is soon
available at www.dreamwork2000.com.
To name a few: Active-Passive, Fearful-Fight, Choosing, Congruent.
There are twenty in all, twenty major dynamics with which to
evaluate your behavior in your dreams and apply the insights to
your life.
Is Threat not also true for modern times despite governments and
technologies that are supposed to protect us? During the cold war
in the Seventies and Eighties I remember well how so many people,
including myself, had dreams of atomic bombs exploding. When a
threat is made visible we can better deal with it. Anxiety is fear
without an object. When we find the objects and experiences we are
afraid of we can the better deal with them.
There are of course many lessons from working with dreams.
During my presentation on a new tool of mine, The Dream Alphabet,
a precocious eight year old sitting in her father's lap shared her
dream and the reasons from school for having it, all in a very
adult like manner. In the end I asked her, "Are you telling it
like it is, or are you complaining?" She thought a few seconds and
then said clearly, "Telling it like it is." Some adults smiled in
appreciation that the newest generation was already working with
dreams. Her father, Fred Jeremy Seligson, was an American living
in Korea with a Korean wife and teaching at a university there.
This precocious eight-year old girl bridged continents and
cultures in her genetic and destiny heritage. Her father uses the
Dream Cards in Korea as part of his work.
I never got to his presentation but I taught him and his daughter
some spiritual aikido during the intermissions. He uses the Dream
Cards, he said.
A number of others came up to tell me they were using the Dream
Cards regularly. One was Lauren Schneider, a psychotherapist and
"dream tender" from Southern California. I wish I could have met
them all. But maybe next conference year all of us who use and
love the Dream Cards will get together to share. Maybe we will
have a Dream Cards Day during or after. Anything is possible where
dreams are concerned.
Such tools unite us all. When I wrote and published the first
comprehensive dreamwork manual in 1980 it was the first. Now in
the book store there were at least ten different dreamwork manuals
of good quality and a range of around thirty authors who have
recently written about gaining meaning from your dreams.
Near the end of my presentation I invited any presenters present
to stand up and just tell the audience briefly what they were
offering at the conference so people could know them. Twenty
presenters stood up. A side effect of this was that we all grew to
appreciate the dedication to dreams and dreamwork that the other
presenters had.
The dreamwork movement has surely grown tremendously since
incorporated in ASD in 1984.
When you go to a conference you can also become a part of a dream
and dreamwork family, those regulars, presenters and participants
alike who attend most conferences through the years. You
appreciate the caring and warmth that people show each other. You
appreciate that many of the regulars have not only maintained the
organization but have also developed a dreamwork interest which
they present.
I was interested to learn that the outgoing president, Bob Hoss,
was trained also as a Gestalt therapist and has written an
excellent dream course manual which he does giving basic dreamwork
techniques, including working with color in dreams.
Many people were doing courses for people in the helping
professions. Alan Siegel, Dr Dream, teaches other therapists, not
only in America, but if I got it right, also in China.
Robbie Bosnak has a dream group in Japan, and Daniela Seebe and I
met two of his Japanese students at the reception given by the
mayor and city council of Copenhagen for us.
Imagine being treated as royalty at a centuries old town hall by
the president of the Copenhagen City Council because we were all
active dreamers in sleep and in waking life.
A further short talk with Robbie Bosnak led to the interesting
theory that dream and the psyche are in a fluid state. Thus rather
than dream figures being fixed parts of ourselves like sub-
personalities these figures are more fluid dynamic entities and
functions happening now. Bosnak himself keeps his own personality
identity fluid by constant travel to many countries and cultures
to do his special forms of dream groups.
There is an incredible amount and kind of dreamworking the dream
going on now. When you join ASD you link yourself into an endless
chain of dreamworking possibilities, some dreamwork psychology,
some educational, some creative.
Fariba Bogzaran is a trained psychologist but seems to emphasize
more the creative ways of re-experiencing dreams. Jeremy Taylor is
the Johnny Appleseed of the American dreamwork movement because of
his constant traveling around for years giving presentations on
the value of dreams and dreamwork.
I did not get to attend many of the presentations. Patricia
Garfield asked if I had attended her presentation on the dreams of
Hans Christian Andersen. Alas, I had not because as a presenter
myself I had many contacts to make and people to relate to and
that morning I had not the extra energy. But I bought her book and
had a special lunch with her, just the two of us as long-time
friends and cofounders from the past until the present. She
informed me we are almost the same age. I experienced from her her
deep feminine wisdom, a "golden moment" for me at the conference.
My conversations and interviews with psychologists pointed again
to the need for psychotherapists and psychologists to be trained
in dreamworking the dream. They get precious little of this in
their regular training. And so my idea of declaring a separate
branch of dreamwork psychology seems to be gaining steam. We have
a name for it, starting this year, and it is called, IDPA, the
International Dream and Dreamwork Association.
This is just a little slice of life. When you go as a participant
or presenter you feel the bonding with all those who take their
dreams seriously. You find inspiration and community in meeting
others in such a friendly and stimulating atmosphere.
You learn many new key ideas around dreaming and working with
dreams.
Bob Hoss asked Jeremy Taylor and I to give brief remarks to the
question, how are we doing as an organization twenty-one years
down the road from the founding of ASD? Patricia Garfield was
unable to be there at the membership meeting.
Jeremy and I embraced each other. We have stayed dedicated to
educating the public to dreams and dreamwork, along with Patricia
Garfield with her many books connecting dreams and life.
What I could say most is that the dream itself is the treasure at
the end of the rainbow, and the rainbow itself is the many
approaches to working with dreams.
As Fariba Bogzaran asked of a presenter. Why do you emphasize only
one method? Are you open to learning about and using many methods
and approaches for working with the dream?
This I would say to all of us. Keep the dream as the focus but
learn and use many methods and approaches so that you may reap the
incredible harvest of working with your dreams to inspire your
life and the lives of others.
Perhaps if you see yourself as a Dream and Dreamwork Educator you
use only one method for working with people's dreams. But if you
are a Dream and Dreamwork Psychologist or Practitioner you will of
necessity use many methods to help your people reexperience and
live from their dreams.
How has ASD done, to repeat Bob Hoss' question?
It is wonderful to meet all the dedicated presenters on dreamwork
and dreaming. The ASD has succeeded in being at the forefront of
re-creating a now world-wide dream culture. While there are not
millions of us yet with the dream as a purposeful focus for our
lives, at least there are many thousands who read the books, go to
trainings and workshops, and work with their dreams.
As Jeremy Taylor said, there are many courses now in colleges and
universities on the dream and its dreamwork.
Dreams are here to stay. A new artifact of culture has rooted in
the soil of the future happening now. As came to me years ago, We
dream to wake to life. We also live the dream to inspire our
lives.
I can seen the conference in California next year being the
biggest of all yet, maybe seven hundred people. Why not start now
preparing to attend and present?
Remember that the IASD yearly conferences are dream culture in
themselves. You will be inspired. You will dream special dreams,
as I did, with C.G. Jung speaking to a group of us dreamed by me
on the first night of the conference.
They have a contest every conference on dream telepathy. Why not
also have at least a reporting of the "great dreams" that come in
from the holotropic universe because of the conference?
"I have a dream!" says the prophet. "And we have the dreamworking
techniques for working with that dream!" say all the presenters
who make the conferences a living experience of dreams waking to
life.
Join the family. Meet each other. Meet the participants and
presenters. Help out in any way you can. ASD is a small army of
volunteers. Without their dedication we would have much less dream
culture in our lives.
I say join us and have your own amazing experiences.
And, oh, also pace yourself. It makes you very high and much
energy goes around at these conferences. Be prepared for a few
days rest after to assimilate all that has happened for you. This
may be one of the highlights of your year.
Strephon Kaplan-Williams
Strephon Kaplan-Williams
We dream to wake to life!
Visit http://www.dreamwork2000.com
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PsiberDreaming Conference
The Association for the Study of Dreams
September 19, 2004 - October 3, 2004
Virtual Conference - Online
Invitation from Host, Ed Kellogg, Ph.D.
E-mail: alef1@msn.com
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http://www.asdreams.org/psi2004/
Join some of the world's foremost experts on the subject of psi-
dreaming for two weeks of cutting-edge papers, discussions,
workshops, contests, and chats at a bargain price. If you've ever
had a precognitive dream, a lucid dream, or simply an 'unusual
dream' that puzzled you, this online conference seems the place
for you.
Past presenters include: Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., author of Altered
States of Consciousness, Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D. author of
Our Dreaming Mind, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Ph.D. author of The
Dreamer's Way, Robert Moss, author of Dreamgates, Marcia Emery,
Ph.D., author of The Intuitive Healer, Alan Siegel, Ph.D., author
of Dream Wisdom, Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. author of Lucid Dreaming,
Dale E. Graff, author of Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness, Stanley
Krippner, Ph.D. co-author of Extraordinary Dreams, Jeffrey
Mishlove, Ph.D., host of Thinking Allowed - and many others!
Previous conferences brought in rave reviews:
"Bravo!", "Incredible!", "a wonderful experience," "amazing!",
"topnotch", "I am really thrilled," "great conference," "please,
please do this frequently," "I don't know how many accolades I can
give you, too many to count, I believe. The conference was simply
great!! Good presenters, topics, participants, and great energy."
If you missed the first two, make sure you attend the third!
Features:
1. Online Presentations, including provocative papers and
workshops on popular and cutting edge topics, such as: remote
viewing, precognition, dream telepathy, mutual dreaming,
psychopompic dreams, lucid dreaming, visionary dreaming, prodromal
dreams, dream healing, the nature of dream reality, and dreaming
as a spiritual practice. Workshops will provide resource lists for
those who wish to explore topics in greater depth, and practical
instructions for techniques or experiments detailed enough so that
conference participants can try them out at home.
2. Dedicated PsiberDreaming Discussion Boards where participants
can discuss each paper and workshop in depth with authors and
other participants, and can post specific questions, etc. Links to
relevant threads would appear conveniently at the end of each
posted presentation, updated daily to show new threads of
interest.
3. Scheduled Chats each week of the conference with presenters
and/or other experts on cutting edge topics.
4. Numerous PsiberDreaming Events where participants can test
their skills and explore different facets of paranormal dreaming,
including dream telepathy and remote viewing, precognition, and
mutual dreaming. Judges will evaluate how well dreamers tune into
the designated targets, or how well dreamers perform a specific
dream task. And ASD will provide prizes to the winners!
5. A PsiberDreaming Gallery of Dreams and Art. One section of this
gallery will feature the "best of the best", graphic images of
dream art selected from the submissions to past ASD conferences,
formatted into a sequential point and click cyber tour. A second
section of the gallery will provide a place where participants can
display their own dream art (with accompanying dream text or dream
poetry), sharing them with other participants.
Event Dates and Costs:
The PsiberDreaming Conference runs from September 21, through
October 5, 2003.
Online Participation Costs for both weeks (no one week rate):
General Public $38! (US Dollars)
ASD Members $33! (US Dollars)
Students with valid ID $23! (no additional ASD discount)
Note: we've deliberately set the price of attending this
conference low to open this conference to interested participants
worldwide. Please take advantage!
http://www.asdreams.org/psi2004/
------------------------ END NEWS ----------------------
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An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange
By Lucy Gillis
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LDE is pleased to present DreamSpeak: An Interview with a Lucid
Dreamer. In this three part series, Robert Waggoner interviews
long time lucid dreamer Beverly D'Urso. (Please note, as with all
material in LDE, the author retains copyright of his or her
material. In this interview, the questions are by Robert Waggoner
and the responses are copyright of Beverly D'Urso.)
DREAMSPEAK
AN INTERVIEW WITH BEVERLY D'URSO: A LUCID DREAMER - PART ONE
(c) Beverly D'Urso
Questions by Robert Waggoner
Beverly D'Urso (formerly Beverly Kedzierski, and also Bev Heart)
is an incredible lucid dreamer. She served as Stephen LaBerge's
main lucid dream research subject in the early years of his
research work, and helped provide key insights into lucid
dreaming. Interviewed by magazines, national and local television,
and other media, Beverly has promoted a greater understanding of
lucid dreaming and "lucid living." The LDE is pleased to provide a
multi-issue interview of this fascinating lucid dreamer.
ROBERT: Beverly, thanks for doing an interview with the LDE. Since
you play a pivotal part in the development of lucid dreaming, tell
us how your interest in dreaming began.
BEVERLY: I grew up in a small suburb of Chicago, the only child of
a lower- middle class family. I was very close to my parents. When
I was about five years old, my grandfather came to live with us.
It was around this time that I remember having a series of
recurring nightmares.
I imagined gruesome witches living in the back of my dark and
scary closet. In my dreams, I'd be quietly playing or lying in
bed. Without notice, the witches would sneak out and come after
me. I'd scream and run through the house, making it to the back
porch and sometimes down the back stairs, but never any further.
I'd fall on the cement at the bottom of the stairs, spread eagle
on my back, and just as they were about to devour me, I'd wake up.
In an icy sweat, breathing fast, I'd be terrified of going to
sleep again. For a few weeks, the witches would leave me alone,
but, when I least expected it, they'd be back. After years of this
same recurring dream, I'd find myself pleading, as I lie on the
cement with the witches hovering over me, "Please, spare me
tonight. You can have me in tomorrow's night's dream!" At that
point, they'd stop their attack and I'd wake up. However, the
dream was still very upsetting, and I always hated going to sleep.
I would lie in bed and tell myself that the witches only came in
my dreams, while I was safe in bed. I tried to get myself to
remember this the next time they appeared.
ROBERT: So, recurring nightmares led you to realize that witches
only came in dreams. When did you consciously realize this in the
dream state and become lucid?
BEVERLY: One hot, sticky summer night, when I was seven, I was
especially afraid of going to sleep. I was sure the witches would
appear in my dreams that night. My mom was sleeping on the living
room couch, which she often did when it was so hot. The front door
was opened to create a breeze. So, still being awake about two in
the morning, I grabbed an old, dark pink, American Indian blanket.
I put the blanket on the floor next to the couch to be close to my
mom, and I fell asleep.
Soon, I found myself back in my bedroom, unknowingly in a dream,
and noticed the closet door creaking open. I knew at once it was
the witches, and I began to run for my life. I barely made it
through the kitchen. As I raced across the porch and down the
stairs, I tripped as usual and immediately those horrifying
witches caught up to me. The instant before I started to plead
with them, the thought flashed through my mind, "If I ask them to
take me in tomorrow night's dream, then this must be a dream!"
Instantly, my fear dissolved. I looked the witches straight in the
eye and said, "What do you want?" They gave me a disgusting look,
but I knew I was safe in a dream, and I continued, "Take me now.
Let's get this over with!" I watched with amazement, as they
quickly disappeared into the night. I woke up on the floor next to
my mom feeling elated. I knew they were gone. I never had the
witch nightmare in this form again! I would later have new
episodes with the witches in my dreams and discover similar witch
scenarios in my waking life.
ROBERT: Did that initial lucid dream realization change your
outlook on dreaming? How so?
BEVERLY: My dreams were really fun after that night. Remembering
the feeling of facing the witches, I learned to recognize when I
was asleep and dreaming. Safe in the dream, I would do things I'd
never do when awake! Being a very obedient student during the
daytime, I would dream of being in class jumping wildly and
carefree all over the tops of the school desks. Whatever I
desired, was possible. Whatever I thought, would occur. I felt
ecstatic. I could face other fears, heal or nurture myself
emotionally, resolve conflicts or blocks, have adventures, help
others, or just have fun. I could fly, visit places, people, or
time periods, and generally "do the impossible!"
I made up ways to wake myself up from dreams, such as staring at
bright streetlights in the dream, whenever I wanted to end a
dream. Oftentimes, I would lay in bed imagining myself doing
backward summersaults and float right into my dream, without ever
losing consciousness, as I fell asleep. I figured out how to stay
in a dream, if I felt I was waking up, how to change the dream
scene, and even how to repeat the same dream!
ROBERT: What other things did you learn to do in your early lucid
dreaming?
BEVERLY: I learned to fly in my dreams, as well. Usually, I would
be lucid. I started out flying like a little bird, having to flap
my wings to stay up. This could take much effort. As I grew up, I
discovered that I could fly like superman, soaring effortlessly
through the air, arms first. At some point, I must have hit some
telephone wires or some other barrier because I fell. I soon
realized that because it was my dream, I could fly right through
physical objects of any kind. I had fun flying through walls and
even deep into the earth. As I matured in my lucid dreaming
skills, I could eliminate flying by merely imagining that where I
wanted to go was right behind me. This soon got boring, and I went
back to flying for the simple pleasure it brought me. However,
lately, I have been doing what I call "surrender flying.'" I lean
back, and I let an invisible force pull me upwards from my heart
area. This is a very ecstatic sensation, and it often leads me to
places of great peace and power, which remain with me even after I
wake up.
ROBERT: My earliest lucid awareness came when I was 10 or 11 years
old, and saw dinosaurs in the public library in my dream and
announced that this must be a dream. Besides the witches, what
else helped you realize that you were dreaming?
BEVERLY: Often, in dreams, I would often find myself in front of
my childhood home. At times, there were changes to the structure
of the house. Other times the house changed in impossible ways.
Sometimes, people other than my parents were living there. In the
dream, I'd often get confused and scared. However, the more I
thought about it while awake, the more I realized that I only saw
the house this way when I was in a dream. So, I told myself, the
next time I'm in front of my childhood home, I will check for
these changes. If I see them, I will know that I am dreaming. From
then on, seeing my childhood home was often a clue for me to
become lucid in my dreams. Once I became lucid in this manner, I
could pursue any other goals that I might have for that night.
ROBERT: What I find amazing is that you were so young. Did your
lucid dreaming make you feel unusual, or did you feel special?
BEVERLY: My lucid dreaming experiences continued throughout my
teenage years. However, I never knew the term "lucid dreaming." I
thought that everyone dreamed this way every night. I guess I
liked the experiences, so I thought about them at night, in bed,
before I went to sleep. I suspected that I was dreaming whenever I
would have problems in a dream, for example, when all my teeth
would start to fall out, when my contacts would grow or multiply,
or when I would find myself on shooting elevators or on bridges
that were too steep to drive on.
I often dreamed of my close friend from high school, named Denise,
She died in a car accident, when I was nineteen. At first, I'd see
her, and we would continue as we would have when she was still
alive. One time, I remembered that she had died. It scared me so
much that I woke up. Afterwards, I learned to stay in the dream
and talk to her. It took me time to get accustomed to hearing her
voice, but I was finally able to ask her questions, and,
eventually, listen to her answers. I felt very relieved to connect
with her this way. It helped me
deal more easily with my father in my dreams after he died, in
1992. By then, I was an expert!
ROBERT: What other types of lucid dream experiences surprised you
back then?
BEVERLY: I would sometimes end a dream, think I woke up, yet find
myself in another dream. These are called "false awakenings."
Sometimes, I would 'wake up' ten or twenty times in a row, but
usually the time it took me to realize that I was still dreaming
shortened exponentially. For example, I would realize I was still
dreaming when I left the house for the day in a dream. The next
time, in a similar dream, I would recognize I was still dreaming
earlier, when I was in the shower, and so on. Finally, I would
still be in bed, waking up, when I'd realize I was still in a
dream. I have gotten better at recognizing false awakenings
through the years.
ROBERT: So how did it happen that you met Stephen LaBerge?
BEVERLY: In the late 1970s, I moved to California to finish my
graduate work in computer science at Stanford University. Soon
after I arrived, I went to see a dream expert to find out if I
could learn to dream less often. I thought that waking up too
often with dreams was disturbing my sleep. The expert asked me to
describe some of my common dreams. When I did, she told me that my
dreams were called "lucid dreams." She said lucid dreaming was a
valuable skill that people were trying to learn. I was very
surprised! I only saw her once, but many years later she showed up
at a presentation I was giving on my lucid dreaming experiences. I
decided that if I were going to remember so many dreams anyway, at
least many of them were lucid!
At the time, I was finishing a master's project with a Stanford
Cognitive Psychology professor. I told one of his other students
that I was a lucid dreamer. He said that I had to meet his friend
Stephen LaBerge, who was doing his dissertation on this exact
subject.
After Stephen and I were introduced at an initial meeting, we
discovered that we both did similar things in our lucid dreams. He
asked me to try some things at home and report back to him. When
he asked me to try spinning in a dream and see what happened, I
already knew the answer. My somersault dreams were like spinning
backwards. I used them to get into new dream scenes. Steven also
found that spinning in his dreams created new scenes, as well. He
attributed it to something in the inner ear that affected a
certain part of the brain.
ROBERT: Obviously you both shared similar interests in lucid
awareness. Did that lead to being a research subject?
BEVERLY: Stephen invited me to participate in some experiments at
the Stanford Sleep Laboratory. I ended up sleeping at the lab and
doing experiments about once a month for many years. I also did
many experiments for publicity, such as television or magazine
specials. I succeeded every time I was in the lab, except one time
early on when the technical equipment failed.
Before I came along, Stephen had used himself as the subject to
show that one could be definitely in the sleeping state and signal
the beginning of a predetermined task from a dream. He wondered
how what we dream in our mind affects our physical body. For
example, if we dream that we breathe slowly, does our physical
breathing slow down? Although we can not, for example, cause our
hearts to stop beating in a dream, in general, the activity of our
dream bodies can be recognized as happening in our physical
bodies, as well.
ROBERT: So how did the research begin with you as the subject?
BEVERLY: In the lab, I would signal from a dream, and my signals
would be picked up by EEG machines in the lab via electrodes on my
body. During this process, my brain waves, and other body
functions, were also being monitored. They showed that I was
unequivocally in the sleep state, particularly REM sleep, while I
was signaling.
The first time Stephen signaled in the lab, he squeezed his arm
muscles in Morse code for his initials. When I tried squeezing my
arm muscles in an experiment, the signal was not strong enough to
register, so we decided on using a new signal. We used eye
movements, because eye movement is not as inhibited as other body
movements during sleep. I would move my dream eyes back and forth
in the dream and the left-right movements, from my physical eyes
in bed, connected to electrodes, would appear in the lab on the
polygraph machine. I used a double left-right left-right movement
to show that I knew I was dreaming. I would use a similar movement
to signal that I was about to begin a task in a dream. I
eventually decided to use to series of these, or four left- right
signals, to say that I was waking up, or about to wake myself up.
ROBERT: What other lucid dream research did you do in those early
years?
BEVERLY: After I demonstrated that I could have lucid dreams at
will, every time I was in the laboratory, I did many other
experiments that used the signals. After signaling that I knew I
was dreaming and in a dream, I would signal that I was about to
begin a predetermined task. One time, we decided I would sing a
song, which should have activated a certain area of my brain,
which was also being monitored by electrodes. It did. Another
time, I did a more mathematical task of counting from one to ten,
which should have activated a different area of my brain, just as
it would while awake. The experiments showed that the same parts
of the brain were activated while dreaming a task, as when doing
it while awake.
ROBERT: Did you ever have problems as a lucid dreamer on these
research nights?
BEVERLY: One time, I was in the lab doing an experiment for
*Smithsonian Magazine*. My task was to get lucid, and then clap my
dream hands to determine if an electrode on my physical ear would
register the dream sound. In the dream, I signaled lucidity, but I
couldn't clap my hands. A buoyancy compensatory had unexpectedly
expanded around me, and I couldn't get both hands to meet. I had
recently learned to scuba dive. A buoyancy compensatory is a
device used for floating that expands around the center of the
body. The part that the reporters didn't realize was that just as
I was going to sleep, Stephen had whispered to me that maybe I
could solve the ancient Zen koan of "the sound of one hand
clapping." I believe that the reason my subconscious couldn't get
my hands to clap was because then I wouldn't be making the sound
of "one" hand clapping.
During another lab experiment, my eye movements were being
monitored, as usual. In a lucid dream, before I moved my eyes, I
explained what I was going to do to the dream character that
represented my friend Tim. He said, "Oh, you mean you move your
eyes back and forth like this?" He then moved his eyes in this
manner. After I signaled and woke up, we noticed that there were
two eye signals recorded. Tim's eyes moving in the dream must have
affected my physical eyes. This made me wonder if all dream
characters are really aspects of the dreamer as well.
ROBERT: It seems that the lucid dream research focused mostly on
physiological correlations between dream experience and waking
experience, rather than, say, the psychological meaning of dream
characters, etc. Is that the case?
BEVERLY: We did many more experiments in the lab through the
years. I tried estimating time in a dream and while wake. The
estimates turned out to be very similar. We believed that time
sometimes seems different in dreams because dreams often work the
way movies do. When scenes end in movies, often new activity from
a later period begins immediately. In other experiments, I
followed patterns with my dream eyes. For example, in a dream, I
would watch my finger make an infinity sign about two feet wide in
front of my face, and we'd compare it to my physical eyes
following this same pattern while awake. Oddly enough, I would
often do these experiments after working all day on my Ph.D., and
performing all evening with my professional belly dance troupe.
Talk about working 24 hours a day!
In another ground-breaking experiment, I was in the Stanford Sleep
Lab, hooked up to electrodes and vaginal probes. My goal was to
have sex in a dream and experience an orgasm. I dreamed that I
flew across Stanford campus and saw a group of tourists walking
down below. I swooped down and tapped one dream guy, wearing a
blue suit, on the shoulder. He responded right there on the
walkway. We make love, and I signaled the onset of sex, the
orgasm, and when I was about to wake up. We later published this
experiment in the *Journal of Psychophysiology* as the first
recorded female orgasm in a dream.
ROBERT: Did dream lab work affect your normal lucid dreaming?
BEVERLY: During this time period, while at home in my bedroom, I
found myself in a dream. Dream scientists asked me to go to sleep
in a chair. They wanted to study me. By falling asleep in a dream
chair, I actually woke up, and I wrote down the dream. I went back
to sleep, and I found myself in the same dream chair with the
dream scientists. I asked them what they observed while they saw
me sleeping, while I had actually woke up and recorded the dream.
They said I was almost paralyzed, except that my eyes were moving
quickly back and forth, left and right. Was my waking life a dream
to these dream scientists? I began to use the process of falling
asleep in a dream as a way to wake up.
ROBERT: So what about your lucid dreams in the lab? Were they
affected by the laboratory setting?
BEVERLY: In the laboratory, I learned to wait until early morning
hours to even try to have a lucid dream. After eight hours of
sleep, it would be easier for me to become lucid. We found this to
be true for most people. For example, I would say, "I will do the
experiment at 7:30 a.m." I picked this time because it was before
the office personnel would come in and begin to make noises.
Picking a time, also made it easier for the media people. Instead
of watching my brain waves all night, they could rest, and know
exactly when to watch me perform live. I normally woke up after
most REM periods, about every hour and a half. When I would wake
up between six and seven a.m., I would then focus on my lucid
dreaming task. This process is how we came up with the technique
called "MILD," or Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams.
In my laboratory dreams, I would often find myself in a lab
setting, similar to the one in which I was sleeping. In my dreams,
I would often joke with the dream characters who represented the
lab technicians or the media people. Sometimes, I would fly over
their heads for fun. I would always remember to signal at the
point when I knew I was dreaming, and at the beginning and ending
of any of my tasks.
Robert: Was it odd having news media attention about lucid
dreaming?"
Beverly: Once, I was asked to do a lucid dreaming experiment at
the lab for the television show 20/20. While being hooked up to
electrodes used to verify my sleeping brain waves, I sat next to
Hugh Downs, the host of the show. I had known him from television
since I was a child. He wanted to try his luck at becoming lucid
in his dreams that night. I became lucid easily that night,
finding myself in a bed that looked like the one in the lab where
I had fallen asleep. I got the idea to head towards Oakland, and
maybe make it to a scheduled Grateful Dead concert. I got half way
there, when I remembered that I was being filmed for a national
television show. One of my goals was to bring Hugh Downs flying. I
turned around midair and quickly flew back to the Stanford Sleep
Lab. I looked for what I thought would be the wall of Hugh's room.
I nudged him on the side and said, "Hugh, wake up! I have come to
take you flying." He seemed very sleepy, so I took his hand, and I
gently pulled him out of bed. We got to the coliseum just as the
Grateful Dead were playing on stage. Because we were like ghosts,
it was easy to merely float right over the band, in fact, directly
over the lead guitar player, Jerry Garcia's, head. We had the best
location in the place, and the music sounded especially clear and
vibrant. The next morning, I asked Hugh if he remembered any
dreams. Unfortunately, he didn't, but he seemed very pleased when
I told him mine. The reporters interviewed me, but as far as I
know the segment was never shown.
ROBERT: Sexual desires seem fairly common in my lucid dreams and
in most other lucid dreamers'. What this the case in your
experience as well?
BEVERLY: In my lucid dreams, I have had sex with dream characters
who represent men, women, old people, young people, strangers,
relatives, as well as people of various races and classes. I have
been the woman, the man, half woman/half man, both split from
waist, and with both a penis and a vagina. I have been a man with
a man, a woman with a woman, an old man with young girls, with
groups and alone. I have made love physically with myself in all
combinations. I can barely think of some sexual situation that I
have not experienced. These dreams are all very enjoyable and
everyone is always totally accepting.
I would sometimes give myself challenges while not in the lab, as
well. In one very powerful lucid dream, I felt very sure of myself
and decided to have sex with the next dream person who came down
the street. I did so, right in the middle of the road, with no
inhibitions. I gave myself a suggestion to remain lucid afterwards
and it worked. However, I now found myself alone, in front of a
campfire. I took this as another challenge and stepped right into
the center of the roaring fire. I was having fun and decided to
try eating the flames. Interestingly enough, they tasted salty.
Next, I appeared with nothing physical around me, so I decided
that I would fly up and merge with the sun. I sped upwards like
superman, accelerating rapidly until, about half way there, I
heard a great sound. It was very intense, and yet blissful. I felt
extremely lucid for the next several days in both my waking and
sleeping states.
ROBERT: Any final thoughts about experiments or experiences in the
lab with Stephen LaBerge?
BEVERLY: During one lucid dreaming experiment at the lab, Stephen
LaBerge asked me to try healing my stiff neck in a dream by
rubbing my hands and directing the energy to my neck. I tried this
in a dream, and I found sparks coming from my hands. The sparks
set my hair on fire, and I spend the dream trying to put the fire
out. Even I wasn't always completely lucid!
In another lab experiment for a television special, I had to sing
the song, "Row, row, row your boat.... life is but a dream." The
week that the show was to air, they used a clip of me singing this
song with electrodes all over my face, wearing my blue robe, for a
commercial. It was shown several times a day that week. A few
times, when I turned on the television, the commercial was playing
and I saw myself saying, "Life is but a dream!" It was a very
strange experience indeed! I decided it must be some kind of
message from the universe, and I better pay attention. I was
formulating the ideas that would eventually become what I now
call, "lucid living!"
ROBERT: Beverly, because you have so many great lucid dream
experiences, we plan to continue this interview for the next LDE -
and maybe even the one after that! Would you care to leave us with
one of your favorite lucid dreams from this period?
BEVERLY: This next dream serves as a good description of how our
thoughts can create reality. I was in a lucid dream and I met a
lovely fairy teacher who told me that she would give me the gift
of seeing my thoughts manifest instantly in front of me. I found
myself driving on a road around a large lake. I thought how nice
it would be to be in a boat on the water. Instantly, I was sitting
in a boat looking up at the road I had just been on. I was amazed.
I must have imagined being in town next. In front of me on a dusty
road, I saw a mysterious man walking towards me. He put his hand
in his pocket. I thought, "What if he pulls a knife on me?" Sure
enough, I noticed the blade. I was terrified, but just as quickly
I tried to picture him merely scratching his leg. I was relieved
when he did. Still, I was afraid that I would think more negative
thoughts, and I wanted this all to stop. Yet, I didn't know how to
do so. Finally, I decided to think of my bedroom and myself
asleep. Sure enough, I woke up, and I felt that I had learned a
great deal about how our mental states can affect our experiences.
********************************
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid
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Evolution of the Dream
(From "How To Fly")
© 2004 Linda Lane Magallon
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http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html
(Dream Flights)
If paleoecological studies identify an ancestral threat that
occurred with high frequency in the ancestral environment and
posed a significant selective pressure on ancestral humans...then
we should find that the same theme is frequently
simulated...during dreaming.
Antti Revonsuo
Flying dreams have been found across the world wide and down
through recorded history. There are even cave paintings that seem
to illustrate the vision of human flight. Of all dreams, flying
has one of the best claims to be called "universal," although I
doubt that an alien from Alpha Centuri would agree. With our
species-specific myopia, we apply such terms with an appalling
lack of concern for other corporeal life. It's not clear if the
rest of the creatures on this planet have flying dreams. But I'd
be willing to bet that birds do. After all, it's their day
residue!
But not ours. So why flying dreams? Why not, say, a plethora of
dreams about being consumed by fire or burrowing through the soil
or any one of a zillion other possibilities? Is there something in
our human heritage that reveals the hidden sources of such common
dreams? Yes, I believe there is. But even though I'm a researcher
of mutual dreams, I don't think we need to hypothesize a
"collective unconscious" to explain the phenomenon. This is not a
dip in the shallow sea of psychological complexes or a Rorschach
rumination. This type of dream is forged in the chain that links
us to our basic building blocks. I'm talking about human DNA.
The Aquatic Ape
There is a theory that sometime in the distant past, our ancestors
lived in an era of warm, shallow seas. The ice melted, the water
rose, creating islands surrounded by ocean. We lived by the ocean;
we were formed by the ocean.
There are several living examples of mammals that have returned to
the sea: dolphins, porpoises and whales, to name a few. Others
live at the water's edge, becoming sleek and building up a layer
of fat in order to better adjust to the water temperature and to
become buoyant. Now, obviously, we never became mermaids, but,
according to this theory, we did shift in that direction.
Like other sea-edge creatures, we straightened out and elongated.
We lost most hair, except on our heads, the part we poke out of
the water in order to breathe. Two of our limbs, the legs,
stretched to touch the bottom while the other two helped us retain
our balance in the waves. While we waded and paddled through the
surf, seeking crustaceans, fish and more, we probably kept our
children close to us. So our infants are comparatively chubbier
than other primates. Maybe we even birthed our infants in the
water. Even today babies are able to swim, not merely before
they're able to walk, but even before they can crawl. Babies have
a swimming reflex, and breath-holding and diving reflexes as well.
All of us have the ability to close nasal passages and throat and
to hold our breaths, a skill needed for deep diving. We weep salt
tears and copulate face to face. The seaside habitat may also have
helped us develop the soft palate, along with our unique throat,
vocal tract and resonant nasal structure, enabling us to enunciate
words. And sing.
As we stretched to become Homo Erectus, we had to learn to walk on
only two feet. This is fine when we are in the water. But we pay
the price when we step onto land. Standing erect means shifting
weight from four limbs to two. Large amounts of weight on small
amounts of body places stress on knee and hip joints plus lower
back. Our upright stance places more gravitational pressure on
heart, abdomen and lungs, which have to work harder than before to
pump blood and move food and oxygen around the body. Muscles must
compensate for our upright posture, creating tension and tension
headaches. We literally feel more than we ever did before, more
weight, more pressure, more gravity, especially when we become
sedentary creatures.
Reefs surrounding tropical islands can keep out the more dangerous
ocean predators. Stretching out on our backs in the warm sun,
bobbing in the water, is an experience of euphoria, very similar
to the warm floating sensation of the womb. But we weren't in the
womb, we had movable limbs. We could paddle. We could tread water.
We could dive, flying through the water, until the air in our
lungs naturally allowed us to ascend like bubbles to the top. To
our nirvana of sweet, salty air. Upward was life. But the trip to
and from was ecstatic, too. Even better, the buoyancy means we
wouldn't have to worry about falling. We were supported,
surrounded. Gravity didn't hold it's usual sway. Pain, pressure,
stress was replaced by relaxation. We felt good. Floating in the
sea, we enjoyed the lull of the waves as our bodies swayed in the
surf.
Thus, our instincts to hide or flee were developing concurrently
with our ability to float and fly. Our fear of falling was more
than a fear of gravity; it was a thwarting of natural support
provided by the medium of water.
So, in our dreams, we hover in free fall. We enjoy ourselves
soaring and diving in an ecstatic echo of the ancient past. We're
shocked when we fall. We wonder what happened to that warm,
floating sensation that's supposed to buoy us up.
Nice story, isn't it? Unfortunately, recent findings have revealed
that it's largely untrue. A good portion doesn't "hold water," but
some of it does. Water still played a crucial role in our
evolution, as we will see. But first, let's look at its sister
theory: the one on very dry land.
Flight or Fight on the Savanna
The most publicized explanation of evolution has life moving ever
upward, from the bottom of the sea, out of the ocean, slithering,
stalking, gliding, soaring towards the sky. Our mammalian
ancestors were humble ground dwellers. At first. But there's a
strong indication that, like many of our primate cousins, we took
to the trees. And then the climate changed, the trees gave way to
grasslands. We had to come down out of the trees and forage for
food.
Standing, walking on two feet, is more precarious that four feet.
But being out of balance has its advantages if we direct the
course of our natural propensity to fall. If we fall headlong,
then break the fall with one leg, then another, we move ourselves
forward, faster and faster. We run!
The headlong stride is helped by growing longer limbs. Longer legs
makes us better runners than short, squat legs. There's less time
spent on the ground. The forward momentum helps counter gravity's
pull. Arms in good proportion to the length of our legs means
that, if we stumble, we can cartwheel or tumble on the ground,
then rise and keep going.
Running, running, running, looking desperately for safety up a
tree trunk, but finding none on the savanna. Now, that's scary!
And so, eons later, we run in our dreams, pursued by frightening
critter or human monster, hoping to get airborne, but failing to
find an altitude high enough to avoid grasping hands or toothy
jaws. Another instinct has been honed to a fever pitch.
Flight or fight doesn't mean literal flying, it means fleeing,
getting away as quickly as we can. It's an instinctual preparation
of the body for an active motor response to threat. Heart action
increases, blood pressure rises, respiratory rate goes up.
Being chased is by far the most typical theme in the recurring
dreams of both children and adults today. Flying dreams often
begin when a dreamer is being attacked and discovers, with
astonishment, that it is possible to escape by flying away. How
could we have flown in our ancestral environment? Well, hopefully
we could still leap up into some of the dwindling number of trees.
And when we stopped running, and our blood pressure fell, we might
feel a "floating" sensation.
But the best bet for "flying" is the result of running. When we
leave the scary scenario far behind, running becomes, not escape,
but enjoyment. Even today, runners can get a "high" by using
forward momentum to defy gravity with every flowing interim
between steps. So, flee during the day, fly at night.
Ah, the runners of the plains! Makes for another good tale of the
origins of our upright stance. Again, not well supported by fossil
evidence.
Falling From the Tree Tops
Recent palaeoanthropological discoveries paint a different picture
of early apes. Trees actually were part of the picture. In terms
of predators, they were a comparatively safe place to spend the
night. However, at the top of the forest, we'd be at the mercy of
gravity. A momentary lack of vigilance, a single slip, could mean
certain death. Hyper-awareness of our location in space would have
become, not a conscious act, but a necessary instinct, adjusting
our attitude automatically. Baby could rock-a-bye, curled up in a
fetal position, in a nest of twigs and leaves, on a tree bough
swaying in the wind. But baby would fall when venturing over the
edge. Even today, the greatest cause of infant death among our
cousin chimpanzees is falling from the treetops.
Our powerful urge-to-life became so deeply embedded in our bodies
that the least sensation of falling can rouse us from the sleep
state. Fear of plummeting earthward haunts our dreams more than a
million years after we were forced to trade arboreal existence for
life on the ground. Thus, falling dreams are simulations of an
ancient concern, with real consequences. They are easily
activated, frequently repeated scripts designed by natural
selection to be released in specific conditions. They are
biological defense mechanisms the evolved in an environment where
the threat of falling recurred over and over again for hundreds of
thousands of years.
This very long evolutionary history left a lasting mark on our
dream production system. The system will make an attempt to
describe current concerns using basic materials imported from our
ancestral environment. The script will be reenacted whether or not
we have actually encountered situations comparable to our ancient
threats. We don't have to literally fall from a tree or cliff to
have a falling dream. We just have to feel like we are.
Getting Smart in the Swamp
DNA evidence shows that, some 80,000 years ago, the path of humans
took some of them out of Africa, across the Red Sea and into what
is now Yemen. Their migration continued along the edge of the
Indian Ocean to Australia and beyond. Before boats and rafts
assisted in that trek, passage was by wading and swimming through
shallow water from one nearby land mass to another. How could this
be? Aren't we just land creatures? Perhaps not.
About 4 million years ago, water flooded the area where our
ancestors lived, probably isolating them on several volcanic
islands. The old sources of food in the trees and on the ground
were soon depleted. We had to learn to survive at the water's
edge. Most apes aren't very fond of water; some are clearly afraid
of it. But food is a tremendous motivator. Since the main food
source was in the water, that was where we had to go.
The earliest hominids were semi-aquatic wading apes, foraging in
an environment that included forest, meadow, marshland and
possibly the seaside. We were aquarboreal. All apes can stand and
walk upright at least some of the time. As tree-dwellers we had
already developed hands that can easily grasp limbs and leaves. We
could stand on the ground and pick fruit and insects off the lower
branches. To wade in water, using hands to gather food, we needed
to stand squarely on two feet. Our famous cousin, "Lucy," had
extra wide feet (an attribute that frogs and salamanders share).
The riverside swamps and seaside marshes have predators just as
dangerous as the grasslands and the forests, but they tend to be
of the sneakier type: spiders, snakes, crocodiles. We'd have to be
very alert to spot them (crocodiles are quite capable of stealth).
Since predators roamed freely, we still had plenty of need to run
in panic and leap for the trees. But if our infants fall from the
tree tops over waterways, they won't sink, if they're pudgy
enough. They can float. This might have been just enough time to
grab them before the predators attacked.
For all the dangers and fears, our change in diet turned out to be
a blessing in disguise. The food we were gathering (fish and
seafood) are linked with brain growth. As we got smarter, we could
outwit predators better. Become the hunter instead of the hunted.
During arboreal life, we had developed a hyper-awareness of
position in three-dimensional space. This served us well when we
entered the
water. We waded, then swam, then learned to dive.
Tree, land or waterways, we're built to move. It's healthy for us.
Our children still remember this imperative. They have a lot of
spirit and energy to keep in motion.
Eventually, we grew into a new creature with a huge neocortex.
Such an advancement results in the development of advanced tool
use, intricate social behaviors and a complex spoken language.
Finally, we had the ability to *talk* about our dreams. Especially
those intensely powerful dreams that have us moving swiftly,
fleeing for our lives.
With a plentiful food source there was more time for leisure. Time
to lay on our backs and look skyward, at the birds soaring through
the air. The sky was freedom; it had few, if any predators to
threaten our existence. When we closed our eyes, we could retain
the image, the memory of the birds in flight.
Still, it was not an idyllic world. In addition to predators,
there was illness and injury. Like other animals, we seek out
plants that numb pain (and often give us a high, besides).
Floating sensations from mind-bending chemicals imbibed during the
day can attach to our memories of flight and build flying dreams
at night.
Evolutionary Dreams
In evolutionary terms, therefore, flying has its origins in two
main instincts: escape from predators and escape from pain. In
those strange dreams that reprise our frights, our fights and our
flights. In those euphoric dreams that are lifted by a medicinal
high. In either case, the best scenario replaces an extremely bad
sensation with a good one. We're motivated to go beyond the panic
and agony, all the way to a peak experience. In other words,
there's a reward at the end of hurt and fear. In time, we learn we
can get the same high sensation without using plants. And without
having to go through the pain and strain.
In our dreams we float in ecstasy or run until we fly. Flying
helps us flee, but not from ourselves. Dream flying is bred from
an urge to keep the body from harm, to take it along for the ride.
Thus flying is the unification of mind, spirit *and* body. Now
that's freedom!
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream
Flights)
* Hutchinson, Michael. The Book of Floating. New York: William
Morrow and Co., 1984.
* Kuliukas, Algis. River Apes. www.riverapes.com (3/04).
* Mavromatis, Andreas. Hypnogogia: The Unique State of
Consciousness Between Wakefulness and Sleep. New York: Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, 1987.
* Morgan, Elaine. The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of Human Evolution.
New York: Stein and Day, 1982.
* The Real Eve. Discovery Communications, 2002.
* Revonsuo, Antti. "Did Ancestral Humans Dream For Their Lives?,"
Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations,
Pace-Schott, Edward F., Mark Solms, Mark Blagrove and Stevan
Harnad (Eds.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003,
275-293.
* Revonsuo, Antti. The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary
Hypothesis of the Function of Dream.
http://goodelyfe.healingwell.com/dreams/Dr%20ar.htm (3/04).
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Lucid Living On The World Dreams Peace Bridge
The World Dreams Peace Bridge
A View from the Bridge
Jean Campbell
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If any of you have ever dreamed, as I have, and at the same time
been aware that in the dream you were both awake and walking
through a glass door, feeling your molecules and the molecules of
the door form and reform, then you already have an idea of the
magic potential of lucid living.
In the dream, we can do many things impossible to us in ordinary
waking life; yet the lucid dreamer recognizes the connection
between the dream and waking life in a very particular way. If I
can be awake in the dream, aware that I'm dreaming, can I not be
aware in waking life that this might be a dream? And if this is a
dream, might not the impossible be possible here as well?
I have no particular desire to walk through walls in waking life,
but I have a very real desire to live in peace. I desire a world
in which children are free to dream, rather than living in fear
that the next gunshot might kill them or their father or mother. I
desire a world in which conflict, though it certainly will
continue to exist, might be resolved by peaceful means; and I
desire a world in which the incessant greed of a few does not lead
the many to lose sight of the fact that our dreams promise endless
abundance.
Because of these desires of mine, in October 2001, not long after
the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Centers in New York,
I invited a group of friends from around the world to join me on
The World Dreams Peace Bridge, in what has proven to be a grand
experiment in what I define as lucid living.
Now, the group of dreamers who make up the Peace Bridge, some of
whom are here in this room, have many different backgrounds. They
come from sixteen different countries around the globe; they are
of different faiths; they are as young as twenty-one and as old as
seventy-five. But they share one thing in common, a belief in the
power of the dream. And out of this belief has come a hopethat by
utilizing the power of the dream we might, in some way, begin to
attain the second goal all of the dreamers on the bridge share: a
world filled with peace and abundance.
The World Dreams Peace Bridge has an active discussion group of
around sixty-five people. Unlike some online discussion groups,
where months go by without a post, on the Peace Bridge there are
always a dozen or more posts each day. It is probably of interest
to note that the majority of dreamers in this discussion group,
whether they be from Australia, Japan, the United States, Germany
or Holland, are fairly practiced lucid dreamers. I believe this
fact, this shared experience of lucidity, is the glue which holds
the group together. Many members of the group have other types of
psi dreams: precognitive dreams, telepathic dreams, shared dreams,
giving them a common belief about the flexible nature of time and
space. But the experience of lucidity may be the commonality which
gives birth to the hope that global change is possible.
The Peace Bridge is a freewheeling place, in which dreams, ideas,
creativity, and longing for community are all expressed. There are
no rules, past that of kindness and respect for one another, yet
out of this multitude of voices have evolved several clear and
distinct ways to promote and foster lucid living. All of this has
been, to me, a rather magical result of the fact that three years
ago I sent an e-mail to some people asking if they wouldn't like
to join me in an attempt to dream up some peace. It is these tools
for lucid living, which have grown spontaneously out of the Peace
Bridge, that I would like to share with you today, along with
examples of where use of these tools might lead us.
Honoring the Dream
Peace Bridge member, Sandy Ginsberg, who is also a member of
ASD, has written for ASD's magazine _Dream Time_ about honoring
the dream. She was doing this before she ever joined the Peace
Bridge, but her work inspired both some of the early art exchanges
on the Bridge, and ultimately an entire dream art gallery on the
Peace Bridge web site. Here is what she says in an article
published on the World Dreams site:
"We run the risk of postponing the gift from the dream when we
fail to take action. By honoring the dream creatively, we allow
the dream's message an opportunity to be delivered to us. By
honoring the dream, I am referring to the conscious effort to
manifest a part of the dream in the waking world. This creative
act can take form as visual art, earthwork, food preparation,
music, interaction with another or an activity or journey that is
calling to you."
In the context of a group of dreamers, communicating with one
another online, this idea of honoring the dream has taken on new
dimensions. Here is just one example:
On July 26, 2002, Jeremy Seligson from South Korea had a dream
about a peace train. "Our long black locomotive travels across the
country to Washington, D.C.," he said in his dream report to the
group. "A large white banner around the smokestack reads, 'PEACE
TRAIN.' This makes me joyful."
What we soon discovered was that other members of the Peace bridge
began to dream about trains too, and before long there was a
discussion about creating Peace Trains around the world. Of
course, the result has been not just an honoring of Jeremy's
dream, but an honoring of the dream all of us have for peace on
Earth. The first of the Peace Trains was created by children in
South Korea, but since then trains have been created in Australia,
in Israel, in Turkey, in the United States and several other
countries in the world. In Australia, Peace Bridge members Nick
Cumbo and Victoria Quinton have facilitated Peace Train workshops,
and Nick has designed a web site,
www.PeaceTraining.org.
One teacher from the United States plans to take the Lorikeet
Peace Train, which began in Australia and traveled to schools in
Washington state and Virginia, to Trinidad this summer. And most
recently we received the first of the pictures drawn by children
in Iraq for the Iraq Peace Train.
As Jeremy writes in his "Call for Peace Trains":
"Whereas our planet is in jeopardychildren live in poverty;
violence is everywhere; the air is filthy; and ice caps are
meltingwe call upon ordinary people of the world to join us in a
cry for peace by reaching out with your hands and building a
carriage for a Peace Train, or even an entire train.
"A Peace Train is an art formwith an engine, carriages and
caboose
."
You can view some of the Peace Train art created by children
around the world at Jeremy Seligson's presentation during this
conference. And you are welcome to join us in the creation of
trains as they begin to link people to one another the world over.
Setting the Intent
The second approach to lucid living discovered by the members of
the World Dreams Peace Bridge is known among dreamers as setting
the intent for the dream. When we speak of lucid living though, we
are also speaking of setting an intention or focus for waking
life.
From the beginning of the Peace Bridge, people often asked for
dreamers to dream on a particular date for a particular purpose,
which might be for an individual healing or for the children of
Afghanistan, or any number of other things. Not infrequently,
dreamers would share similar dreams themes or dream about one
another during these times.
Finally last year in April, Kathy Turner from Australia asked, "Is
there a name for this type of focused, intense peace dreaming we
are doing?" And a conversation began about this on the discussion
list.
Before long, the group came up with a name; one which like the
group is multilingual. It's a combination of Japanese, Chinese and
English that we call DaFuMu Dreaming, or Big Dream of Good
Fortune. So if you would like to do a little world dreaming with
someone, just ask them to DaFuMu.
I'd like to give you just one example among the many available, of
how this type of dreaming interacts with waking life to create
greater shared lucidity.
On November 20,2003, I woke before five a.m. and went directly to
my computer. Because the World Dreams Peace Bridge spans the
world, someone is always awake. I found a message from Ilkin Sungu
in Istanbul saying that bombs were exploding again. Earlier that
day, four terrorist bombs had exploded in populated areas of the
city. Immediately I sent a request to the Peace Bridge and other
online dream groups like the ASD Dream Activism group, for DaFuMu
Dreaming for the people of Istanbul.
There were several dreams reported to the Bridge the next day, but
I am going to start with one of my own, because it involves all of
us here in ASD.
When the dream begins, I am sitting in the dining room of a big
house where ASD is having a workshop. Yvonne Baez from Mexico and
I are sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing one another. I am
explaining to her about permeable and impermeable boundaries in
dreams. Then later all of the people in the house lie down on the
floor to go to sleep.
We are awakened not long after that by Alan Siegel and Bob Hoss
coming in the front door. Soon everyone is awake and up again.
In the next scene in the dream, I am flying in a helicopter that
Bob is piloting. We are flying across a bay spanned by the
Bosporous Bridge.
I look to my right. Ahead of us is a convoy of helicopters. I am
worried that they are US helicopters getting ready to bomb
someone. Then I look to my left and see a winged figure
backwinging to alight on the land below. At first I think it is an
eagle, the US eagle, and I'm afraid again. But then I realize that
it is an angel. Bob smiles.
There were many other shared images which came from this night of
DaFuMu dreaming, but the one which most closely connected with
mine came from a dream sent by Yvonne Baez, who was present in my
dream. Yvonne wrote that she forgot to set her intention for the
DaFuMu dreaming before she fell asleep, but two hours later
something woke her up. "I felt Jean's presence right in front of
me," she said "and immediately began to send peace and love around
the world."
Yvonne also sent a dream in which she is in a swimming pool with a
friend who is having a crisis of faith. Suddenly, in the dream,
Yvonne says, the clouds start taking on the shapes of big angels
all around. "I tell my friend, 'Look up to the sky! There are many
angels above us,'" Yvonne told us. "She looks up, but sees
nothing."
In her message thanking the group for the DaFuMu dreaming, Ilkin
wrote that on that night each year Turkey celebrates the feast of
Qudar: "It is believed in Islam that tonight is the sacred night
on which God sends all his angels to the world to listen to the
prayers and forgive sins," Ilkin said.
When I announced my intention to write this paper to members of
the Peace Bridge, Kathy Turner again spoke about DaFuMu dreaming
to the group. Her words summarize far better than mine what DaFuMu
dreaming is really all about.
"I think the DaFuMu is a real tool of lucid living," Kathy wrote.
"A DaFuMu enters by conscious intention into the collective
consciousness, and seeks to shift the possibilities held there. It
seems to me it is a practical application of the ideas inherent in
Jung's collective unconscious and the Eastern idea of universal
awareness. But what is revolutionary, and perhaps even
evolutionary, is that rather than merely seeking to experience the
collective Unconscious (as in the traditional Jungian view of
dreams) or seeking to align our consciousness with universal
consciousness (as in the Eastern view), the DaFuMu actually uses
the conscious intent to shift the possibilities held within the
collective consciousness. Now clearly the shift cannot be dramatic
and won't deliver "what we want," as I feel the field we are
reaching is one of possibilities rather than actualities. But it
will shift possibilities, and that opens up something new.
"Unlike the traditional means of shifting possibilities (e.g.
prayers to Godunderstood by me as another name for this field of
collective consciousness) the DaFuMu actually uses one of the
Prime Means by which the collective consciousness is more or less
directly available to us. I suspect that makes our conscious
intent more powerful in effect. To me, all this means the DaFuMu
is a revolutionary tool of Lucid Living."
"Second," Kathy goes on, "the DaFuMu also creates the possibility
of new ways for the individual dreamer of relating to the world. I
have not forgotten the DaFuMu dreams from before the Iraq
invasion. I've read them over many times to see what it is about
them I find so interesting. What I notice is that almost every
dream is either an experience of peace or displays ways to find
peace. Now that means we were able to lay down in our minds the
possibility of a new pattern, that of peaceful relating, or to
confirm that pattern within us, giving it more strength."
There were several responses on the Bridge to what Kathy had to
say about DaFuMu dreaming, but I think one of the most insightful
came from Ralf, who said, "I dream peaceful solutions more often
since I am on the Bridge." But additionally he made this comment:
"We don't know much for now of how the thing works, but
information may be an important part of the psychodynamic (in the
sense of energy). So it may be that new thoughts, ideas, solutions
may have a unique power. This is an important factor in homeopathy
too. The system changes when the right information is applied."
Ralf is not only a nurse, but a healing practitioner who uses
homeopathy. He has also studied and practiced lucid dreaming
techniques.
An interesting note to this discussion of DaFuMu dreaming came
from Pam, who teaches college students in Washington, D.C. "I am
always behind with e-mails, so frequently I don't have conscious
awareness of when we are doing group DaFuMus, but when I check my
journal I almost always dream of friendly groups and have vivid
recall during those days."
Cultivating Community
Those of you who are familiar with some of my earlier work with
dreams know that I have spent quite a lot of time researching
group dreaming, or mutual and shared dreams in the group setting.
It has not been surprising to me to see the number of mutual
dreams which arise from the dreamers on the World Dreams Peace
Bridge, since I believe that groups of people often share dreams
spontaneously.
However, there is an element of what happens on the Bridge which I
think is very pertinent to lucid living, and that is the conscious
attempt to cultivate community. Rather than being a six-week class
or an eight-week experiment, the World Dreams Peace Bridge is an
ongoing activity, week after week and month after month, for
members from all over the world. As we say in our logo: "There can
never be too many people dreaming of Peace." The result of this
type of ongoing dreaming, combined with ongoing discussion of
dreams, ideas, thoughts, and reflections on daily life has been
that not only have dreams been shared but profound changes have
occurred for many of us, particularly in the realm of
understanding people from other cultures.
Let me tell you about an incident of shared dreaming which relates
directly to this ASD conference.
When the bombing of Iraq first began, despite the protest of
millions around the world, we people from the Peace Bridge held
DaFuMu dreaming for the children of Iraq. It is sobering to know
that over seventy percent of the population of that small country
is under the age of eighteen.
The first night of the DaFuMu, I dreamed of a young Iraqi girl,
maybe five or six years old, running to greet me with her arms
outstretched and a big smile on her face. Her image has stayed in
my mind and heart.
Then starting in March of this year, almost a year to the day from
when bombs began dropping on Baghdad, I began dreaming about this
ASD conference. Night after night I was dreaming about working in
the kitchen to provide food for all the people at the conference.
I was often accompanied by this same little Iraqi girl. In fact,
these dreams prompted my final decision to come to this
conference, even though I could ill afford it, because they spoke
to me about the importance, at the world level of what we are
doing here.
Now you understand this was not DaFuMu dreaming, only my own
compulsive personal dreams. Nonetheless, two other members of the
Peace Bridge shared my kitchen dreams, Rita Dwyer and Jody Grundy.
Both of these wonderful ladies suggested that I take a break from
the work, go out and sit in the yard and have a cup of tea.
This is the type of community I feel is built with endeavors like
the World Dreams Peace Bridge: loving, caring, sharing and
compassionatea real example of lucid living.
There are also deeper and even more important issues that I feel
are addressed within the context of the Peace Bridge community,
when I think about lucid living. Many times, I feel that our
dreams, even our lucid dreams, and our work with them, is quite
insular. What I mean is that we tend to believe that even the
language of dreaming is the language of my native tongue, whether
it be English or German, Dutch or Japanese. We believe that the
culture represented by dreams is mine, my own familiar world.
To some extent this attitude is perfect as a background for people
to learn about lucid dreaming and lucid living. But if we are
truly considering living lucidly in the world, as citizens of the
world, then it may be necessary to confront the other: that is to
confront the deepest, most culturally ingrained beliefs and
feelings about otherness and separation. Particularly in a time of
war, it may be necessary to confront the question of just who is
the enemy.
Naturally, if people share their lives with one another daily, as
we do on the World Dreams Peace Bridge, there is ample opportunity
for this type of confrontation, and often with remarkable results.
A most recent example of what can result from this sharing, as
it's done on the Bridge, arose from a post from Jeremy Seligson
entitled: "My Mother Died in Hiroshima." In this e-mail, he
detailed the cause of his mother's death, which happened when
Jeremy was five, as proceeding from the fact that his father was
at the time Manager of Budget for the Atomic Energy Commission and
the family lived at the US Nuclear Testing Facility in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. Breast cancer, from which Jeremy's mother died, was
found to be the most common cause of death from cancer to result
from the type of nuclear bomb tested at Oak Ridge, and also
dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War
II.
The response to Jeremy's post was enormous within a group with
active members from China, from Japan, from Germany, Australia and
the United States. In fact, the issue touched us all, in terms of
histories in the cultures in which we grew up. I will not tell the
entire story here, since it was used as the April, 2004, "View
From The Bridge", which is published as a monthly column in
Richard Wilkerson's E-Zine, Electric Dreams and as a monthly
update on the World Dreams Peace bridge web site. (You can read it
there at either www.dreamgate.com or
www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org )
But I would like to share one or two of the results of discussion
around Jeremy's post. As people began to realize the implications
of what Jeremy was saying, May Tung wrote from San Francisco:
"Don't forget the Chinese when we talk about Hiroshima. I grew up
in World War II, remember the fear and hatred we had for the
Japanese. Through my family was fortunate enough to move to the
safe region, the Japanese were pushing closer and closer. That
kind of fear and panic, feeling your back is against the wall with
no more ground to retreat
. We CELEBRATED when the bombs were
dropped and Japan surrendered."
When Kotaro wrote a response from Japan, he mentioned how as a
young man he had often thought about what he would have done if he
had been asked to fight for his country during World War II.
"There is no 'if' in the history," he wrote, "but I think I would
be certainly one of them if I was born in those years. I would try
to be a good soldier for Hirohito and God blessed country. This
imagination always terrified me."
"Dearest Kotaro," May wrote back. "Here we are, a Japanese and a
Chinese, with genuine affection for each other. As a matter of
fact, dear friend, you alone have made more basic difference in my
feelings toward the Japanese than any other single factor. I have
felt close to you, respected you, since the beginning." She added
to this: "How do we promote peace? By posts like these on the
Bridge. Right, everybody? Non of our hands are totally without
blood."
In answer, not long after this Ralf had a dream which he told the
group. In this dream, Ralf is an agent whose job is to kill
Hitler, who is speaking in front of a group of people. After much
difficulty, Ralf is finally able to kill Hitler. Not long after
that in the dream, just as if a computer had been rebooted, Hitler
appeared again, doing exactly what he'd been doing before.
In his commentary on the dream, Ralf wrote: "I see that we need to
fight for democracy itself all over the world, even in the so-
called 'democratic countries' like the US and Germany. We need to
fight for democracy and peace in our personal relations and we
need to fight for a peaceful way of living together globally and
locally. We can't wait for any administration to do that
. We need
to modify the operating system. Any killing of dictators seems to
be no use in the long run. Global Windows XP needs an update,
urgently."
As we have found on the Bridge, the Internet provides a kind of
communication particularly suited to lucid living. There is
something about the immediacy of the Internet communication and
something about the isolation of that communication to just our
written words, that seems to focus our connectedness. A plea for
support, whether it be from Jody with her son's friends in the
army; or Anna with her son, or Stephen with his father's death is
met immediately with a flow of love from around the world. And as
time is no longer a definer of communication, the love flows
literally "around the clock". In turn the support generates its
own momentum in waking life. As Anna said after a DaFuMu dreaming
for her and her son, "I feel so humbled in the face of this. If
that (support) is there for the asking, then it follows so
naturally that my heart opens and desires to pour out too!"
The Internet also enables an easy linking with other peace
groups around the globe. Just an email message is sufficient for
us to become aware of the strength and vitality of another desire
for peace. Chayim, a resident of Israel, entered our group
seeking to spread knowledge of his Hands Across Jordan project to
help peace in the Middle East. We are now working with Chayim,
cheering him on in his own peace activity.
Just as with dreaming, even lucid dreaming, the particular
quality of focus and immediacy the Internet provides, is no
substitute for the far more messy, rich waking life connections.
We all meet in a cyberspace and dreamtime, yet there is a pull to
waking life connection. Some of us have translated that into
waking life meetings. There is growing awareness of the joy of
"hearing" a voice on the phone or meeting someone who exists only
in written form. Recently Stephen is welcomed Chayim from Israel,
to his home in Virginia, in the US. Chayim has mentioned flying
members of the Bridge to Israel for the Hands Across the Jordan
date in November. Such world connections, made at the level of the
individual, create the groundwork for peace.
Taking Action on the Dream
What Ralf says about the need to reboot the Global XP may sound
amusing, but certainly one of the things that dreamers on the
Peace Bridge have discovered about lucid living is the need to
take action on our dreams. That means listening to our dreams,
whether they are lucid or non lucid, listening to the advice and
suggestions of the wise dreamer, and carrying these actions
forward into the waking world with some sense that dreams do come
true, can come true, that the reality of the dream with all its
vast improbabilities can become the reality of the waking world.
As soon as the bombs began dropping on Baghdad, many of us were
impelled by our dreams to reach out in some way to the people of
Iraq, particularly the children of Iraq, to demonstrate a dream of
solidarity and peace.
Ever the wise woman of the group, May Tung counseled this:
"We are not a large group," she said, "but we can do something
small and personal. We can provide toys and art supplies for the
traumatized children of Iraq." And that is how the Aid for
Traumatized Children Project was begun.
For the first nine months of its existence, the group within the
Peace Bridge who chose to participate in this project collected
funds while looking for some way to send packages and to make
contact with therapists and others who were working with children
in war-torn Iraq. Even though we were turned back time and again
by UNICEF and other organizations, who told us that our project
was too small, too insignificant, we began to establish a network
of contacts within that countryagain thanks to the Internet,
which allows for e-mail to travel even though there may be bombing
in the next town or the next block.
Finally, in January of this year, through the help of Nobel Prize
nominee Kathy Kelly and her organization, Voices in the
Wilderness, we were able to make contact with the Season Arts
School in Baghdad, and the group of university graduate students
who were running a program for children designed to deal with the
trauma of war. In January, the first of our packages were
purchased in Istanbul, including musical instruments like a guitar
and an aud, drums, jumping ropes and soft, cuddly toys.
Ilkin Sungu from Turkey, a country which forms a natural bridge
between Europe and the Middle East, ahs been our point person on
this project, devoting endless hours to shopping, shipping and
writing e-mails to our friends in Iraq and elsewhere.
I wish you could see the expressions on the faces of the children
who have been touched by the generosity of the people on the
Bridgeand their friends, for of course we have sent letters and
e-mails to other people we know, asking them to contribute. We
have made four shipments now, and plan more. Through the magic
again of the Internet, we were able to receive photographs of the
children receiving the toys from the Peace Bridge. These photos
can be seen on the World Dreams web site. We are still carrying on
this dream-inspired action of lucid living, and you are welcome to
contribute if you'd like.
We discovered in the process of the Aid for Traumatized Children
Project that much of what we were doing with this project was very
similar to what we were already doing on the Peace Bridge: making
connections, one person at a time, one moment at a time, with
other dreamers around the world, and especially reaching out to
the children. A most inspiring result of this work came to us not
long ago from the children in Baghdad, photographs of the first
drawings, for the first cars on the Iraq Children's Peace Train.
These are truly some incredible drawings. And they are part of the
display of Peace Train art, which Jeremy is showing in his
presentation here at the conference. And so we have come full
circle, in a way, have we not?
The primary goal of lucid living is to awaken the dreamer to the
fact that waking life and dreaming life may be one and the same,
that we can erase the barriers between the two. If waking life
informs the dream, then so certainly does the dream inform waking
life. The dreams of children in Iraq, translated into art, into
drawings for a Peace Train, send us all a powerful message, a
message about our common humanity and our common need for peace.
Can we become lucid in our waking lives? I believe so.
Before ending today, I would like to thank all of the Peace bridge
dreamers for their contribution to this paper, whether they were
quoted or not, because they are the people who make this work
possible. And I would like to thank Rosemary Guiley, who devoted
half of the Dream Activism chapter in her new book, The Dreamer's
Way, to the work of the Peace Bridge. Thank you all for listening
too, and if you would like to become a peace dreamer, there are
directions for joining the discussion group at
www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org
Thank you.
******************************************************************
Spectral Waves: The Quest for the Holy Grail
Spectral Moon, White Spectral Wizard Year
© Ron Adams 2004
******************************************************************
The Waves is a newsletter reporting on the explorations underway
at the Sea Life forum. We take a community approach to dreaming,
running monthly dreaming projects to learn more about our world,
and the evolutionary path before ourselves and our planet.
The Quest for the Holy Grail:
http://sealife.dreamofpeace.net/viewtopic.php?t=1433
During the Spectral Moon, we were joined with Dream Alliance on
The Quest for the Holy Grail. John, a member of a group Dream
Alliance was led to Dreampeace through a dream, calling for
guidance on other groups whom his group could hook up with, in
promoting world peace through dreaming. Last year, we joined Dream
Alliance in a magical adventure to Mt. Shasta.
http://dreamofpeace.net/thewaves/04mtshasta/
This year, John suggested we share in 'The Quest for the Holy
Grail':
"The Quest for the Holy Grail seems very timely. As the Mayan
Calendar winds down to 2012, humanity is facing a choice. We can
either pursue the one-sided, male-dominated, authoritarian war
paradigm or we can choose to bring balance to this approach by
adding the Sacred Feminine principles to our lives. The Holy Grail
has been thought to be the cup or chalice used by Christ, but
Christ used allegory and metaphor extensively in his teaching. The
Holy Grail is now being considered by many to represent the Divine
Feminine. "The Quest for the Holy Grail" can be seen as the
opportunity for us to re-claim the Sacred Feminine within us all.
This Sacred Feminine may manifest as the Goddess in Her many
forms, or as Mother Nature, or in any form that promotes the
togetherness of the Universal Network of Being. Our dream group
here in Arizona has seen her as Mary, Kwan Yin, Isis, Brighid, as
well as in messages from whales and dolphins and woodland
creatures who have come to us in dreams.
The Grail has been associated with Avalon, the misty Isle, and
with the Druids. Any dreams with these images could be looked into
for contact with the Grail. Ask for messages from the Divine
Feminine. Share them with us, as we will share what we get with
you. May we find and share in the Holy Grail together."
We used this link to improve our understanding of the project:
http://www.lilithsophia.com/
The Quest for the Holy Grail included many dreams on the feminine,
healing, creativity, intuition, and even the 13 Moon Peace
Calendar. There were many great dreams about this Quest. We
discovered we were dreaming of each other and finding out some
suprising things about the 13 Moon Peace calendar colours, the
colours of the Tibetian Flag, dreaming about other dimensions, and
Goddesses like Isis. There was a strong connection with Compassion
and our Creativity as human beings on Earth.
Sunwolf kicked it off with a partial dream recall:
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL
I went to bed reading parts of "Chalice of Ecstasy" by Charles
Stanfield Jones 1918 piece on 'Parsival' legend that Richard
Wagner set to music, an opera on the Holy Grail.
"Religious ecstasy takes place in the highest centres of the human
organism."
"In ritual therefore, we seek continually to unite the mind to
some pure idea by an act of will."
The piece said we do this continuously, to find some sort of
religious ecstasy.
In my dream, which was very detailed, I was working with some
poweful woman with raven black hair, on Sea Life. She was having
me reorganize some files. It made perfect sense in the dream. I
woke up, not remembering who she was or what we were reorganizing.
It felt like tweaking what we had, making it fit into a bigger
picture. I do remember thinking to myself I couldn't wait to tell
Explora.
Anyway suffice to say it led to a very nice Full Moon ritual
tonight. I got to explore some of the concepts of the dream,
without even remembering the details of the dream. Very
interesting. I just let my subconscious fill in the blanks. My
ritual was basically about invoking my striving for genius and
higher ideals, by filling the sacred cup, continuously. It gave me
a whole new insight into the old adage "Is the cup half empty or
half full?"
Doesn't matter, drink what is there and fill it again!
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
This set off a trend of the members of this Moon's quest dreaming
together. During the course of posting Sunwolf put up a picture of
a Jaguar avatar, and this triggered a chain of events for John
(Dreamster) and later Sandy (GreenEyes).
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
FREE THE TIGER (JOHN)
Sunwolf,
It is remarkable that you are posting the picture of the large cat
with your name. That is one of the signs I was looking for. I had
this dream in April: I was in a large field with my dream group. A
breeze came up and I lifted my arms to a horizontal position and
began flying. As I flew above our group our members waved at me. I
came in for a landing and noticed a large building nearby that
resembles our meeting hall. We all walked over and entered the
hall. Inside there was a rope extended the length of the room,
dividing it in two. Over the rope hung oriental rugs, which made
the whole thing look like a huge Tibetan Prayer Flag. One of our
dreamers climbed up on top of the rugs to sit on the rope. He said
to us "There's a message up here". (We often ask for messages in
our dreams). "What does it say?" we all asked. "It says, Free the
Tiger", he answered. This has set off a whole series of dreams
related to freeing the tiger within us....in order to serve the
Goddess.
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Then there was the T-shirt connection with both Nick and John. The
first night John dreamed he was wearing a T-shirt that read "Let
Christ live through you". Perhaps a symbol of the Cosmic Christ,
John felt. Nick's dream had a t-shirt that read "REAL Beauty
Standing Up". John felt that perhaps the t-shirt messages were for
the males in the group from 'the Divine Feminine'.
Nick later dreamed of a journey to 2012, he shared with the
feminine power within, and the importance of him creating a set of
oracle cards based around the maiden/mother/wisewoman trilogy in
order to honour and support this aspect of Self.
John also reported that another Dream Alliance team member had a
dream 'he was receiving an award for an esoteric mathematical
formula that he came up with. The equation was several pages long,
and very complex. On the last page this huge equation came down to
6 over 3, which reduced to one half. I believe it symbolized that
we all represent one half of the answer. Waking life is one half,
dreaming is one half, Male is one half, female is one half, light
is one half, dark is one half, matter is one half, spirit is one
half.'
John (Dreamster) had a healing dream for a friend:
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
"A friend of ours, the mother of our daughter's best friend, went
into seizures yesterday. She had recently had a stroke. She helped
me edit one of my books and is helping with a new book on lucid
dreaming. We went to visit her at the hospital and she said to me
that she really wanted to know what all of this suffering was
about. She asked me to talk to Quan Yin about it. I promised I
would.
Last night I set my dream intent to ask for healing for our
friend. In my dream, I was at the beach. I saw a grand old mansion
on the beachfront and the gate was open. I walked in and saw an
old woman sitting in a wading pool. I intuitively knew she was a
recluse, she had been a very beautiful young woman and now didn't
want anyone to see her. I approached slowly and she turned around
and made a funny face at me, but I knew it was alright for me to
join her. We sat in the pool and an old man joined us. He had a
watering can and started to sprinkle water over me as he sang a
song in a language I didn't know.
The water felt wonderful, and somehow it didn't leave me wet. The
dream ended. I drew a tarot card for the dream and again got the
King of Cups (upright). I feel that in asking for help for my
friend, an older woman, I received some kind of blessing myself. I
believe the Goddess appeared to me as the crone, and the watering
can was the chalice or grail. I can't wait to tell our friend
about the dream."
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Sunwolf's Many Dolphins Dream (where he and GreenEyes had a
synchronicity with the image of playing the Guitar:
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
MANY DOLPHINS DREAM
First dream me and four guys were camping out, trying to escape
some gangs. Lars gets a cell phone call that some kids are setting
fire to his parents house. Suddenly there are guys surrounding our
camp. They grab this main dude we were hiding because they think
he stabbed someone in their gang.
This gang leader pulls out a list of occult groups, and I read it,
rather long, I'd say about 20 names, TOPY, and Marriage House, all
occult groups I recognize. He says they are going to feed me to
the Earth.
Next dream we are at a friends house. We are going to put The Book
of the Law to music. I sing a little bit of it and Dave says
that's nice, but we have to lay down some rhythm tracks first.
Dave asks GreenEyes if she has her bass guitar and she says it is
at home. Someone says there is a toy ukulele and GreenEyes says
its worth a try, better than nothing.
I go for a walk. It's a beautiful spring day in Boulder. I walk
from North Boulder to the ocean, which in the dream is only a few
blocks away. At the ocean I remember the scene and I say this
outloud. This little girl DC overhears me and says "Oh, this has
been here for a very long time."
The Ocean water level is very low, the oceans are dying. These
creatures looked like long whitish-yellow bones that have dried in
the Sun, and then I noticed that they were slowly moving, they
were alive. I couldn't help but notice they felt like whales,
their heads looked a little like dolphins. I asked the little girl
what they were called. She replied "Many Dolphins." Like that was
the whole name.
Before I could ask her to explain herself, the solid concrete I
was standing on in front of the metal rail turned to mud and I
started to slip. I cried out: "I don't want to go now." The
dolphin/worm was edging towards me, opening a gapping mouth. The
little girl handed me her dolly blanket. I wrapped it on the metal
railing above us and pulled myself up. When I was standing again,
I woke up.
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Sage mentioned to use to pay attention to the colors in our
dreams, which led to GreenEyes having an interesting dream
connecting the colors of the Dreamspell with the Tibetan Flag,
especially the Colour Green:
"I can only remember one dream. The dream would start and I would
wake up, then I would go right back into the dream as soon as I
went back to sleep. Over and over.
I was being shown the colors blue, red, yellow and white against a
flowing dark background. Sometimes they were shaped like the 13
moon avatars, but mostly I saw bars of each color about 2 fingers
wide, one color at a time. I was supposed to repeat the colors. I
kept trying to stick green in there somewhere and I would hear,
No. Just these colors. Finally I said, Okay! Just primary colors!
I didn't have the dream any more after I said that. I can still
see it in my mind. I've been thinking about my artist supplies. I
think I need to get them out and be creative. I really can do
anything with just those primary colors."
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
And GreenEyes had another dream along these lines, which continued
the Tibetan flag dream. A dream of celebration of life and peace:
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
All of Sea Life was at a colorful lovely peace festival. Beautiful
blue sky. We were going to hang prayer flags. The colored prayer
flags had each of our latest dreams of peace printed on them, but
it was printed in Tibetan. Nick wanted us to read them as we
attached them to a braided hair rope (?) to hang them. My dh had
printed out a stack of them in English. They looked like printed
emails. I was handing them out as fast as I could.
At the same time I was whining about the Holy Grail assignment.
Sunwolf stepped up with a dark-haired girl and said, Stop! You
know what you think. Just write it down for Pete's sake! I blinked
at him a few times, realized he was right and went back to handing
out people's dreams. Nick was saying, Hurry up! We're using up too
much time! All of us were smiling and trying to hurry.
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
GreenEyes dream sums up the whole quest: the Search for the Holy
Grail is a search for COMPASSION:
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
"My time leading up to bedtime and sleep last night was hectic and
noisy. A television was still on as I drifted to sleep. I was a
bit annoyed that I wouldn't have a few quiet seconds to set
intentions. I thought, What intentions would I set?.... the holy
grail?....the white tiger?....find spirit guide?.......the women
of the tiger dream with their blowing black hair was the last
thing I remember thinking about...
I dreamed a lot of things, but I can only remember small pieces.
Each bit happened very quickly, just a few seconds each. I'm going
to put them here, because they feel somehow important.
I am looking down from the sky at a man figure outlined in white
on a brilliant green hillside......
I am with someone dressed in dark green. I am wearing old leather,
brown and soft. My hair is long and curly blond. We are scrambling
through a cave with boulders everywhere. We are trying to figure
out a way to climb up to the top of the cavern to get some little
crystal tubes hanging there...like stalactites. We urgently need
them for flutes. I am determined! We are hurrying and dirty and
the little tubes kept getting further away......
Hip-length glossy black hair swinging back and forth in front of
me, like someone walking. I want to touch the hair and see if it
is as soft as it looks. As I reach out my hand, I think it might
be a man......
I am being shown letters, one at a time, to form a word. I am
supposed to guess the next letter. Like a gameshow or something.
The first letter is a C. I thought, Cup! I guessed the next letter
would be a U. An indistinct figure of a woman sitting on a boulder
shook her head at me and gave me another chance. I was like,
Whuht? I know she's going to tell me It's a cup! and I tried to
buy a vowel or something foggy.....She laughed and I could see her
right hand come down clearly in front of the rock, like into light
while the rest of her was in shadow. The rock seemed to be made of
brown velvet. The edge of her long sleeve had wine-colored crochet
on it, about as wide as my thumb. The pale hand started to pull
the red-lettered card (with fancy brown design all around the
sides) out further--in order to see the next letters. The next
letter was an O. Everything started to tilt and I realized I was
falling! I heard a woman's voice say, Wait! Everything blurred as
she pulled out the rest of the card and I felt/heard rather than
saw the word COMPASSION"
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
It seems like the quest never ends, in fact even though the moon
is over, Dreamster and his group are still dreaming of the Quest
for the Holy Grail. It was definitely a fun journey to share with
everyone in the group.
------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Stay tuned next month for the results of our 'Journey to the
Galactic Center'. We welcome new dreamers to join us in our
adventures.
Email Ron: sunwolf@dreamofpeace.net
The Waves: http://www.dreamofpeace.net/thewaves/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
_
Talking with dead people, flying spirits, flashing Virgin Mary
eyes, dying whale in a bathtub, and dating a serial killer
What do
they have in common? They are in the Electric Dreams Dream
Section. Be sure to read all of these dreams and more. If you want
to send in dreams, enter them at dreamflow@dreamgate.com.
Date: 5/20/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: none
Dream: I keep on having dreams about my grandmother that had
passed away in August of 2003. My dream about her is that we (the
family) are at her funeral and she gets up out the casket and she
walks around (this dream happens often). Can you please help me
what does this mean does it mean that she isn't resting or what?
Date: 5/30/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: Thirsty
Dream: I was dreaming that I was very thirsty and I kept on asking
for water.
Date: 05/31/04
From: momof2
Dream title: Spirits
Dream: My dream took place on the military base in Iwakuni, Japan.
There were a bunch of people in this house which had a wooden
screen door. These people and I were just walking around when the
screen door opened up and in came a dust cloud with these things I
can only describe as spirits (maybe 2 ft long with a gray
outlining of their body and what was supposed to be their eyes and
mouth) flew in and started attacking us. They would fly through
individuals, killing them. These humans would disintegrate into
powder. I ran out the door and could feel that one of these
spirits had seen me and was after me. I ran for a little bit and
then picked up something in my hand, not knowing what it was,
threw it at the spirit and it turned and disappeared. At this time
I saw this older woman staring at me. She then turned and walked
off before I could talk to her. I went in search for her. In my
mind she knew something I didn't. All around this base in Japan I
saw these dust clouds and knew that people were being attacked. I
kept thinking that it might be a terrorist attack and some country
had released these things on us. I also couldn't understand why
everyone was so calm about these attacks. They were going on about
life as normal and only freaked out when attacked. After some time
I went in to a local market and found this woman I had been
searching for. This woman asked me if I was able to see these
things. I said yes and she told me I was the only one that could
and that people were searching for me. She asked me if I knew what
I had thrown at that spirit. I said no and she showed me 3 lima
beans. She was eating them thinking that if one flew threw her
they wouldn't be able to kill her since what I had thrown was
those and it scared them away. She gave me those 3 lima beans and
I put them in my pocket. I also noticed that inside the store,
people were frantic trying to buy these beans thinking it would
protect them. As soon as they would walk out the door they were
completely calm again. I went in search for this guy I used to
work with. He's a Christian and I kept thinking that I needed to
find him to see if he knew something about these things that I
didn't. There were 3 buildings in a row, 4 stories high, and about
a mile apart. I ran to the first one to find only another branch
of the military living there and started running to the 2nd
building. At this point I woke up completely disturbed. If anyone
has any insight to this dream I would greatly appreciate it! I'm
searching for some dream interpretation.
Date: 6/1/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: Shoes
Dream: I was at some type of gathering like a party, and my
boyfriend's daughter was there. She had been molested and was in a
lot of pain. The thing is that in my mind I thought that my
boyfriend had done it to her. It was so weird that his ex-wife was
there also. I was caring for his daughter and I went to help her
take a bath and the whole time I helped her, the thought that he
had done this was in my mind. It seemed so real like if it was
really happening and I was not dreaming. The whole time the party
was going on and I thought to myself, how can everyone be so
normal about this, as if it did not happen?
Date: 6/1/04
From: Confused
Dream title: none
Dream: I stand outside my old boyfriend's house. I want to meet
him but his mother tells me that he isn't home yet. So I wait with
a friend. The scene just mysteriously changes to being inside an
institution. And I pick something up off the floor and then he
walks past me. I catch up to him and greet him. I then go back to
my friend, because I am so excited. The boy I like walked into
this main room with a huge dome to wait for me. Then I go to where
he is, sit on his lap, and give him a kiss.
Date: 6/4/04
From: "C"
Dream title: Nightshift
Dream: I had one of the most intense and scary dreams I have ever
had in my life last-night. As soon as I woke I thought it must
have been morning but I had only been asleep for less than 90
minutes, I felt exhilarated yet scared all the same, I tried to
write down what I had dreamt this is what I wrote (I haven t a
clue what any of it means??!):-
Come out of the edge of darkness, I am at work my first
nightshift. Working okay. In bed trying to watch a Brazilian
football match, look over to a work colleague he said something
(?) look back no Brazilian football match where s the football,
there s a shrug of shoulders. Step out, anymore work I am
thinking? Mental head never seen before, looked like an
electrician electricians everywhere, telegraph poles everywhere
underground?? Person says wasted tonight, this is mental what has
he done another says in answer all sorts, I feel scared of these
new faces I'm thinking what's going to happen? I walk past a work
colleague who I know and I say hello. He doesn't acknowledge me,
he becomes distracted he sprints to a bloke, he's fallen off he
says. I thought you had fallen off he shouts he goes to help,
other colleagues I have not seen before approach. I looked at the
injured he looks ok but very high. I broke my leg this time he
says, grinning manically, almost proud. He's in a room, he shakes
his ankle. It is broken and he is shaking it. I shriek and sprint
away scared. I sprint past people they ask me what's up he's broke
his leg I say. Not another one they say, totally without emotion,
as if it was as a matter of fact. I legged it a bit further. I
glance in to a room: loads of other people have broken arms, legs,
and worse, amputations in progress.
In my place of work dark underground I start taking the boxes in,
they keep piling up outside, more and more, I work faster and
faster try to keep up, I am, I enjoy it annoyed of the work but
its there and I keep up. Something outside I am holding a torch,
something is coming in my direction, I am on the edge of darkness
I sprint away in a total daze, very light headed, I don t know
what s going on. I come around it is the early hours, see an old
friend he's like my guardian angel I feel safe. I see a fete
(bouncy castle and stalls that sell marmalade) and a hotel
everybody I see I know but I do not know their names. I go in to
the hotel looking for a short cut to get underground around and
around, over and over to get underground faster I feel intense
that I need get there.
This girl fancies you say my old friend all these strangers saying
hi, they knew me!!! I don t think I knew them (?) maybe. I am at
work no you're not you're in **** (a place name, a local town
about 5 miles from where I live).
I sprinted, went in to the hotel made even more of a scene this
time hurdling tables and chairs guests where did they come from?!
I am not at work I go down, the gate is locked I can t get in,
there s a basket outside the gate. I ask my friend what the time
is he says a time to me, I don t know what time but I should be at
work and here I am in **** (local town same one as above), I must
get back.
Go down a hill as everybody leaves not thinking straight, people
look at me mysteriously suddenly all is quiet I m all alone in a
housing estate rows and rows of houses I must get away from this
place scared intense go one way then next fake to go in the
opposite direction who am I running from- more intense still must
get away railway crossing across road everything s clear I can
visualize everything, wide rail ways more than one track three I
can see a train as I approach it is coming from the right a
smoking locomotive, I can t slow down I am approaching the
crossing from above, I swerve to the right hoping to miss it, my
feet hit the first tracks before the train I get an electrical
buzzing sensation wow I thought...I am stood on the track I jump
off the track look to my right and see a stranger on railway track
coming towards me . Am I trapped?????!!!!
Date: 6/4/04
From: Pam
Dream title: Whale watching
Dream: We were on the beach and whale watching. I witnessed an
undecipherable mammal, which could it be a whale or a dolphin. It
sprung out of the waters as another one, this time, the baby
whale, also followed.
Date: 6/5/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: Mother and father who are already dead
Dream: I was talking to my father first who died in 1992. I also
dream that my mother is talking to me too (who died in 2001). They
are trying to tell me numbers but I cannot remember the numbers.
What does this mean?
Date: 6/6/04
From: Scary
Dream title: The shiny nan
Dream: My nan died on September 8. On my birthday, I had a dream
about her. She was in a old trailer and I was looking in on her
and she was smiling at me. She was shining, while I was looking in
on her. I started to cry and she looked at me and she looked like
she wanted to hurt me. I know that she wouldn't do that. She
started to chase me to my uncle's house that wasn't far from the
old trailer. I started to fly and she turned in to a crow. I would
like it if I can find out what it's suppose to mean.
Date: 6-3-04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: Mice and devil
Dream: The devil put mice in my pocket .
Date: 6/5/04
From: anonymous
Dream title: none
Dream: I constantly dream my husband is sleeping with other women.
My husband is very flirty towards other women and I have found
condoms in his wallet as well as phone #'s.
Date: 6/9/04
From: Ianoah
Dream title: People from the past
Dream: I have reoccurring dreams of people from my past doing
ordinary daily tasks with me. The people are from all parts of my
past. For example, my third grade teacher, a girl I went to high
school with (that I never have spoken with before), a guy I worked
with eight years ago and I are all riding in an elevator together
and laughing about the color of the carpeting in the hallway of a
bank that I visited halfway across the US a year and a half ago.
The dreams seem pointless, are never confrontational or dealing
with important or even current events. They also never involve
people or events from my current life. The only common denominator
is that they bring together people from various parts of my past
that in all probability have never nor will ever know each other.
These dreams have been happening every few months for many years.
They don't really trouble me, I just find them intriguing if not
perplexing. Where are they coming from? And for what reason?
Date: 6/9/04
From: Reema
Dream title: The neighbor
Dream: My neighbor gets inside my refrigerator and tries to break
its back. It's as if she wants to look for spells or put a spell
on it. She has a lot of ice from the back of the refrigerator. My
kid's nanny watches her with surprise when I come in. The neighbor
sees me and she immediately leaves the refrigerator and tries to
explain ...then I woke up from my dream afraid
Date: 6/11/04
From: hennayume
Dream title: Desperate to find a place to live
Dream: Three different dreams simultaneously: I am housekeeping in
a very nice house. I keep thinking I will be able to find money or
something to sustain living there, but I don't know how to get it.
I need a lot I recall. After a few days I become delusional and
believe it to be my house. I love the carpet it is very plush. All
I remember is a big huge room that is never lit brightly enough
and the rest of the rooms being so dark I don't go into them. I
never really feel too at home there and it feels more like a total
drug haze. I like being there and feel very high but then I am
coming down and I am severely depressed toward the end of my stay
there and I realize I won't be able to stay. I remember when they
came home, everything became a total blur. I remember before they
came home I was walking on that carpet I liked, but it was dimmer
and harder to focus on. I wished at that moment that it was as i
had seen it earlier and that I was still that happy.
In the second dream, I am driving looking for this house that will
be very cheap to live at. It is very far away in a place I have
never been to. I remember the names of the cities and they are
real cities I have driven through before but nothing like what it
looked like in this dream. I remember getting out of my car and
there was this drama at a house. I wanted to rent out the shack or
something in its backyard. It was a dark brown house and the
property sloped down so the house was lower then street level.
There were kids involved and it got kind of weird. But I never
really found a place. For one, it was too hard to find and the
house I did find had too much problems going on in it.
The third dream is I am trying to go down a driveway of my old
friend's house from childhood. Everything is so completely changed
I can't go down the driveway and everything is all wrong.
Date: 6/12/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: Is this trying to tell me something?
Dream: I had a dream that my friend and I were running up a lot of
staircases and each set of stairs lead to a different cellar. When
we got to the top cellar we saw a person/thing dressed in black
and started walking towards us so we jumped off the top floor into
my aunt's backyard near a close line. My friend disappeared and I
walked over to the BBQ area and my cousin told me to read a
letter. I read half of it but then I woke up. When I was awake
something told me to go back to sleep because there was a very
important message in the letter. So I went back to sleep and read
a bit more but then woke up again. I kept on going back to sleep
and waking up. When I went back to sleep, I returned to the exact
same dream and the same part of it. Could you please help me out
this dream feel very significant to me and I feel like I must find
out what it means.
Date: 6/12/04
From: Susz
Dream title: Anthrax
Dream: There were classes going on about skin anthrax. my cats
and
I had gotten it at a beach. It caused the inside part of my arms
to itch and have a rash. A girl was near-by she had medicine for
it in a spray bottle. She seemed drunk or something and was
bragging about the medicine. I was talking to her and I managed to
get the bottle from her and she didn't even notice. It was herbs
and water in a spray bottle. I yelled to everyone around in the
class to come over here and look at it, we were at a beach area.
Date: 6/13/04
From: geepers89
Dream title: Eyes of the Virgin Mary
Dream: I was standing next to my husband. We were looking face to
face at the Virgin Mary. One of her eyes was brown and the other
was blue. They would then alternate, one blue, the other brown,
one brown the other blue, flashing back and fourth. The Virgin
Mary looked scary, perhaps even dead. I turned to my husband and
said, "Remember when I told you that I had this dream?" "I told
you about this dream!" I started sobbing. He said, "No, I don't
remember." But I knew he was lying. I have no idea what this would
mean.
Date: 6/14/2004
From: Barbudo
Dream title: My Brother the Orca
Dream: I had a realistic dream of a white tile bathroom with a tub
half full of water. There was a small Orca or Killer whale (black
& white) in the tub thrashing and flopping around. My younger
brother came into the bathroom and as he approached the whale, he
vaporized and became the whale. I realized that the whale was
dying as ink (Like a squid's ink) was coming from his tail and out
his mouth in periodic spurts. The whale thrashed when ejecting the
dark liquid. With each fit, he weakened. Eventually, he pushed
over a flap at one end of the tub and slid into a small tiled room
or cave hidden behind the end of the tub. I could see him flipping
and knew he would die soon. I awoke.
Date: 6/14/2004
From: Danielle
Dream title: none
Dream: I keep seeing a young man I met at this trade school 2 yrs
ago He is wearing a tux & holding a rose with a smile. What does
this mean?
Date: 6-15-04
From: Me
Dream title: Sex with a stranger
Dream: This dream was about me having sex with a total stranger,
after having sex he said he had to find out if I was any good. And
then he disappeared just like that.
Date: 6/15/04
From: xxashiebabie
Dream title: Fight
Dream: I had a dream last night that a younger girl that I hate
was walking through my high school. She was walking towards me and
when she saw me coming she started walking in the opposite
direction real fast. So I followed her and kept provoking her by
stepping on her shoes and pushing her. She didn't do anything so I
grabbed her by her hair and starting hitting her in the middle of
the hallways. Everyone was still walking like nothing was
happening. The thing was that when I was hitting her in the face
it wasn't hurting her and the punches just would go like I wanted
them to. Plus she wouldn't even fight me back, so I let her go and
I woke up.
Date: 6/15/04
From: sunflower1359
Dream title: Dream of cat
Dream: There is cat and he is trying to be friends with me, but I
don't want it. I am not acting like that I like this cat. Finally
I am getting angry and hit the cat and after I did that the angry
cat bit me and scratched all my hand and my arms.
What that mean is any one know?
Date: 6/15/04
From: anonymous
Dream title: none
Dream: The dream I've have that sticks in my mind is my teeth. It
seems so real; I can feel it and almost taste it. Most of the
time, it starts with me becoming aware that I'm in a dream and I
start to touch my teeth with my tongue. One feels loose, and then
they all start falling out. They start to break in half then into
small pieces, and then I start spitting them out. At the same
time, my mouth will fill up with more small pieces of teeth. It
happens so fast that I start gagging and can't close my mouth. I
then try to get them out with my hands but it's happening too fast
that I wake up. In the last 10 years, I have this kind of dream
about 4 maybe 6 times a year.
Date: 6/16/04
From: Kel
Dream title: Frustration
Dream: I keep dreaming that I need to be someplace at a certain
time and everything is ok then close to the time that the event
will start I can't seem to find stuff to finish getting ready and
am always late. Although, I wake up before I ever make it there.
The dream is just frustrating looking for objects and I am just
exhausted and stressed when I finally wake up. I keep having this
dream over and over again but it is just different situations that
I need to be someplace.
Date: 6/16/04
From: anonymous
Dream title: Helpless
Dream: I have been dreaming lately of a dark figure over my bed I
can hear him breathe and it's like he is holding me down. I am
awake but I can't move my body only my head. I try and scream but
nothing will come out. It feels like it is attacking me and
afterwards I cannot move and feel like all my energy is gone. I'm
terrified. This has actually happened to me more than 5 times
wherever I go I got a rose quartz and it has not happened since.
Date: 6/16/04
From: Rach
Dream title: Serial killer dream
Dream: I've been having reoccurring dreams about serial killers
but this is the one I dream most often: I am on a date and I never
see the guys face, anyways, we are having a good time and all of a
sudden he turns to me and says, very casually "by the way I'm a
serial killer" and I ask him if he's going to kill me he says "no"
and we just continue on with our date. It doesn't even bother me
that he's a serial killer. So we go back to his house and he
starts telling all the different ways that he kills people and he
shows me the body parts he's kept as "trophies" and he shows me a
woman's heart and I say to him "I love how this piece captures the
woman's innocence" as if it were some painting or art form. Then I
wake up. This dream feels so real that often when I wake up I have
to ask myself if it really happened. I would love any input on
what this dream means.
Date: 6/17/04
From: Lilly
Dream title: Apple of his eye
Dream: I've lost my dad 2 yrs ago & was the apple of his eye- his
most beloved child. He was my emotional anchor in my life & I miss
him terribly. He's been appearing in my dreams & dying in my arms.
I never got to see his dead body &couldn't attend his funeral
since he died in another country, though I got to see & visit his
grave later. I seek his advice & guidance even now & he answers me
I feel his presence around me & also in my house. He appears to my
younger sister too when she is under any stress or turmoil. (I'd
foreseen all these events before he died but wouldn't or couldn't
accept it as he was my beloved dad & I knew that I'd hearing this
news on the day he died)I'd like to know more & grow.
Date: 6/19/04
From: Anonymous
Dream title: none
Dream: I've had this dream over time. This dream always seems to
be in a public place. There is an attractive woman with shoulder
length blonde hair and light brown eyes. She always is friendly to
me and wants to talk but I want meet her even half way. After
awhile she turns to leave with a sad look upon her face and I'm
left feeling lost.
Date: 6/19/04
From: AM
Dream title: Old Friends
Dream text: I often dream of a friend that committed suicide about
3 years ago. In my dreams I can see him so clearly it's
frightening. I run up to him, hug him, and tell him that I love
him. We are usually in a public place - a party, a store, etc.
Sometimes I am the only one that can see him, other times my
friends can see him also. He tells me he had to disappear for
awhile, get his life right. When my friends see him, they still
tell me he's dead, but we can see him! I can feel the warmth of
his skin, his breath, hold and talk to him.
Comments: This dream happens to me about every other night. It
scares me and depresses me. I didn't go to my friend's funeral,
and I really think I should have had that closure. Even after I
wake up, I feel like I'm looking for him - just keeping an eye
out. My dreams just started this year and he's been gone for
awhile. I just don't want to have these depressing dreams anymore.
My anxiety is so high in these dreams I usually wake up in the
middle of them.
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