Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Electric Dreams Volume 13 Issue 10
[This is a revised version of ED13(10) resent on 10-13-06 which includes the World
Dreams Peace Bridge review]
E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe Online:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s
Volume #13 Issue #10
October 2006
ISSN# 1089 4284
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Electric Dreams: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
Cover: http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
C O N T E N T S
++ Editor's Notes
Richard Wilkerson
++ Global Dreaming News
Harry Bosma
++ Cover Secret Hand
~and~ Nightmares Fuel My Art
by J. Myztico Campo
++ Column: An Excerpt from the Lucid Dream Exchange
Lucy Gillis Editor
Arthur Gillard interviews author Robert Augustus Masters.
++ Article: The New Age of Pisces
Linda Lane Magallón
++ Column: The View World Dreams Peace Bridge
Months summary
Kathy Turner
++ Dreams: Moving On
~and~
Red Potato Woman
Stan Kulikowski II
SPECIAL NIGHTMARE SECTION FOR HALLOWEEN
++ Column: The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
DreamRePlay with David Jenkins, PhD
++ INFO: Nightmares: an Introduction
Richard Wilkerson
++ Article : Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of Dreaming
Richard Wilkerson
++ DREAM SECTION: Kat Peters-Midland
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
D E A D L I N E :
Send articles and news in by Oct 20th, 06 for the Nov issue
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to
Harry Bosma <ed-news@alquinte.com>
Send Articles, news and other items to:
Richard Wilkerson: <rcwilk@dreamgate.com>
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Editor's Notes
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Welcome to the October 2006 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and
dreamwork online.
If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, there are a few e-lists where Electric Dreams
people seems to congregate that might interest you. One is
dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe by going here and registering
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamchatters/
.. and another is the IASD bulletin board. Please, no dreams interpreted here, just
discussion of dreaming and dreamwork topics.
http://www.asdreams.org/subidxdiscussionsbboard.htm
In this issue:
Global Dreaming News editor Harry Bosma, brings you dream news and events from
around the world, online and offline. If you have dream news you want to get out, please
send those to Harry for next months publication at ed-news@alquinte.com
Lucid Dream Exchange (LDE) editor, Lucy Gillis, regularly shares gems from her
publication with Electric Dreams. In this months Excerpt, An Interview With Robert
Augustus Masters By Arthur Gillard Responses (c) Robert Augustus Masters. From
psychedelic nightmares to psychoemotional theater fleshed out and broadcast by the
mind, constellated around and expressive of certain feelings, urges, intentions, pulls this
interview will get you ready for Hallo-ween and all other doors BE-tween.
From the World Dreams Peace Bridge. This months View, from Kathy Turner,
review traces just some of the major rhizomic connections the Bridge has been making:
the war on Lebanon and continued destruction of Iraq; weeds and flowers; dealing with
awareness of the sadnesses of others; dreams and peace events.
Not all is dark on Halloween. Linda Lane Magallón offers some light from the pumpkins
eyes in The New Age of Pisces where she will free you from the bewitchment of
modern life and show you what the Aquarian Age is really going to offer.
As the Dream Section is a bit smaller this month, so Im including two dreams from Stan
Kulikowski II, Moving On below ~and~ Red Potato Woman at the end of the
Dream Section. Stan often contributes selections from his unique dream journal. If you
have dreams you would like published, please enter them in the form at
http://dreamgate.com/forms/dream_flow.htm
Our SPECIAL NIGHTMARE area (Halloween tradition at ED) has some resources for
beginners, and challenges for advanced dreamers. See the Nightmares: An Introduction
for resources. Thanks to David Jenkins, PhD., the director of Berkeley based
DreamRePlay for his article on Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax.
Besides the basics, I'm including a re-run of "Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of
Dreaming." This is NOT for beginners, and YOU MUST BE THIS HIGH to RIDE. This
article that looks into the possibility of actually conjuring nightmares as part of a larger
Transgressive Dreamwork project. Booo!
Dream Section with Kat Peters-Midland: This months dream section is short, but it has
some very interesting dreams of a black bird biting, hearing voices on a haunted pager,
digging for gold, and a yellow rattle snake following
If you have dreams to share, use the dreamflow form at
www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
Janet Garrett archives past issues so you can search out specific articles and authors in an
easy-to-access format. These articles contain a wide range of information for dreamers
and dreamworkers. You can see her work progress and view hundreds of article on
dreams at: http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Cover by Myztico - http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
Which includes an article Nightmares Fuel My Art and Bio.
--------------------
For those of you who are new to dreamwork,
be sure to stop by one of the many resources:
http://dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
http://dreamgate.com/dream/library
http://dreamunit.net/news-en/
Electric Dreams in PDF: (thanks to Nick Cumbo)
http://electric.dreamofpeace.net/
--------------------
From Planet Dream,
-Richard Wilkerson
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S
October 2006
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Email all dream news to Harry Bosma at his special ed-news@alquinte.com address.
Online:
- Premonition Web
- Sawlogs Dreams Now Have Images
- Real Life Log 'Field of Shattered Dreams'
Physical world:
- New York: Latin American Fine Art Exhibition
- California: IASD Call for Presentations
- Berkeley: Dreams and Islam
- Kickoff Event for IASD Bay Area Lecture Series
- Santa Fe: Workshops by Victoria Rabinowe
Reminders:
- Various calenders
- Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog
- Ritual DaFuMu for Peace
* * * ONLINE * * *
---
- Premonition Web
---
Register your dream's and premonitions, visions, without having to go to a bank.
Premonition Web is a dream registry designed to help precognitive dreamers to monitor
what they see and when they see it.
If you want to register your dreams there is yearly fee of £6.00 to pay for the site, the
paperwork (a receipt will be sent to you via post or Email) and lastly the safe filing of
your dreams, which will be kept within the limits of the Data Protection act 1998. Once
you've paid this fee, you can update your dreams six times throughout the year.
There are also discussion papers offering explanations for premonition dreaming.
www.premonitionweb.com
---
- Sawlogs Dreams Now Have Images
---
Sawlogs now displays an image next to each dream described at Sawlogs. Along with a
complete site redesign, these images offer a visual component to a (typically) text-driven
experience.
Sawlogs still offers dreamers content analysis statistics based on the Hall/Van de Castle
scales. Describe a dream today and see what happens.
www.sawlogs.net
---
- Real Life Log 'Field of Shattered Dreams'
---
My site basically is a detailing of all of my strange dreams, and also speculation on what
the dreams might mean for me, etc. Eventually I want to expand the website to include
articles on dream interpretation, the meaning of dreams for our lives, how dreams impact
our lives and psychology, and assorted other topics.
The URL of my site is this:
http://www.reallifelog.com/lostintokyo/
Peter Kaufman
* * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * *
---
- New York: Latin American Fine Art Exhibition
---
Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th St., New York.
Running from October 21 to November 10, 2006
www.Agora-Gallery.com
The upcoming Latin American Fine Art Exhibition will showcase artists inspired by
dreams - Mauricio Toulumsis and Raul Martinez. Reception takes place on Thursday,
October 26th, 6-8 PM.
* Mauricio Toulumsis *
Replete with religious and symbolic significance, Mauricio Toulumsis' images are
inspired by the deeply felt emotion accompanying the exultant belief in eternal life.
Toulumsis' distinctive, stylized portraiture generally depicts the female as the central
figure in the process of life, as the stewardess of birth and creation. Groups of heavenly
matrons, often surrealistic in semblance, are the proud, powerful and uncannily numinous
sovereigns of Toulumsis' works. The result of 30 years of self-exploration, Toulumsis'
paintings delve into the philosophical search for meaning in life, meaning in death, and
truths about the corporeal and spiritual human. Born in Mexico City, Toulumsis
developed his technical rendering skills while studying architecture. He has exhibited his
work both in Mexico and the United States.
www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistInvite/Mauricio_Toulumsis.aspx
* Raul Martinez *
In Raul Martinezs painting, Self Portrait, the artists hands, turned inward, are tranquil
yet melancholy in their stillness and isolation. The artist does not show his face, but
reveals so much more by sinking his arms into a milky light. This, Martinez is telling us,
is where his art is created, and where he reveals himself. This palpable mood is also
conveyed in Martinezs black and white studies of women portrayed within a painterly
environment of light, shadow and motion. Like the artist in his ironically titled self-
portrait, his subjects are physically vulnerable and turned away, yet we know intuitively
the complex emotional landscape of these women, for Martinez has made it the substance
of their surroundings. When he works in color, sunlight is key to Martinezs work.
Whether contemplating a dozing figure or capturing the kaleidoscopic impressions of a
streetscape, Martinez uses light as a tool for an exuberant investigation of the isolated
moment. Raul Martinez !
has shown his powerful oil painting throughout Puerto Rico and has recently been
invited to participate in international shows in Valladolid, Spain and The Hague, Holland.
www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistInvite/Raul_Martinez.aspx
---
- California: IASD Call for Presentations
---
24th Annual Conference
International Association for the Study of Dreams
29 June to 3 July 2007
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California
DEADLINE for submissions 15December 2006
High quality proposals are invited that explore the conference theme, The Spirit of the
Dream. These may reflect on how the dream offers a source of wisdom, guidance,
information, energy, or creative inspiration to the dreamer or to the community; and how
the relationship with dreams can be cultivated so that we live lives that are deeper, more
creative, and more meaningful.
http://asdreams.org/2007/
---
- Berkeley: Dreams and Islam
---
I have exciting news regarding the Open Forum in Dream Studies, which will meet twice
this Fall, on Monday September 18 and Monday October 16, 7:30-9:30 pm at the Dream
Institute (1672 University Ave., Berkeley, 510-845-1767).
The gatherings will involve a two-part presentation on Dreams and Islam, facilitated by
Malek Yamani. Malek's work centers on the interaction of Muslim spirituality and
Jungian psychology, with a focus on the powerful dream teachings of the two traditions.
In a world that seems to be tearing itself apart over different religious visions of the
divine (you know what day this is), Malek's perspective offers a refreshing and hope-
inspiring vision of cultural respect and mutual understanding through dreams.
A native of Morocco, a graduate of Sonoma State's Depth Psychology Program, and
currently a student at California Institute of Integral Studies (in addition to being a globe-
trotting Microsoft executive and father of four), Malek will lead a discussion on topics
that I think everyone who works with dreams in the contemporary world should be part
of. Please tell your friends, colleagues, and students, and I hope to see you there.
Best regards, Kelly
---
- Santa Fe: Workshops by Victoria Rabinowe
---
Offering Workshops in Santa Fe and elsewhere. Weekly Studio classes, every Tuesday
from 1:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Victorias Santa Fe Learning Center. Custom designed courses
of study, workshops and retreats for groups, conferences and professional trainings.
Internet remote workshop projects for individuals and groups.
Here are workshops coming up in October. Also visit the website
http://victoriadreams.com/
* THE DREAM AS THE BOOK OF LIFE *
October 3
Remembrance and forgiveness
In Honor of Yom Kippur
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
* MONASTERY DAY; HARVEST / SUKKOT *
OCTOBER 10
Tuesday 10-6:00
Pecos Benedictine Abbey
Call for reservations and directions 505 988-1086
$50. donation to Sister Miriam
For over ten years, Sister Miriam has hosted our dream group in a day of sculpting our
dreams from nature by the beautiful pecos river.
The Festival of Sukkot is intended for all of mankind. It is quite a drastic transition from
the most solemn holidays in our year to the most joyous. It is a harvest festival and a
general thanksgiving for the bounty of our dreams in the year that has passed.
* THE DREAM IS A CIRCLE THAT NEVER ENDS *
October 17
In honor of Simchat Torah
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
Come, come whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving;
It doesnt matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, come
even if you have broken your vows a thousand times
come - come yet again, come.
-Rumi
* THE NIGHT OF POWER *
October 24
In Honor of Lailatul Qadr
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
The Quran is peace by itself.
The night in which this Divine Book is sent down gives a spiritual luster to our dreaming
hearts and souls.
* WITCHES BREW *
October 31
In Honor of Halloween
Tuesday 1-6:30
The Dreaming Arts Studio
1432 Don Gaspar
$50.
Fill dream books and journals with spells, incantations and hexes. Call the wild, dark,
hidden side to emerge.
* * * REMINDERS * * *
---
- Various calenders
---
Robert Moss (USA):
http://mossdreams.com/xcalendar.htm
Jeremy Taylor (California):
www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/schedule.html
Nicole Gratton (Canada):
http://www.nicole-gratton.com/calendrier_01.htm
---
- Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog
---
By following Strephon's podcasts you will be engaging in a consciousness course by
experiencing the meaning of the dreams Strephon talks about as he developed their
themes and wisdom aspects.
Strephon Kaplan-Williams is an international expert on dreams and the new dreamwork,
as reflected in his many books over the years. His best seller in America and other
countries has been his The Dream Cards. However, his dreamwork manuals are the
respected classics in the field used in college and university classes as well as by the
general public.
Now in retirement age Strephon gives his podcasts and continues to write new books.
http://strephonsays.com/
---
- Ritual DaFuMu for Peace
---
The World Dreams Peace Bridge, on the 15th of each month, is holding a monthly
DaFuMu - a collective dream of good fortune - to support peace.
For more information go to:
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly.htm
To join the World Dreams Peace Bridge discussion group, just send an e-mail to
worlddreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
END NEWS ================================================
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Cover: "Secret Hand"
~and~
Nightmares Fuel My Art
by J. Myztico Campo
http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed13-10cov.jpg
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
The dream world of nightmares has been fascinating me since I was a child of five. Some
of my earliest recollections of these nightmares were a recurring dream of being in a very
exotic lost land with some of the most magnificent plants I had ever seen. I would wander
this land and witness incredible natural beauty. But then it would turn dark and I would
be chased by man eating prehistoric creatures most notably a T-Rex. I would run for dear
life until suddenly I would find myself at the very edge of a cliff and I had to decide my
fate quickly. Would I prefer to take a chance at survival and jump off the cliff or face
being eaten alive by a very hungry T-Rex. I would always choose to jump off the cliff
always waking up or shifting into another dream before I hit the ground. These childhood
dreams inspired me to draw T-rex and other nightmarish creatures on blackboards at
school.
Fast forward to my adult years as nightmares became more of a source of constant
inspiration artistically. They serve as portals into the imagination of fear, shining a light
onto the dark corners of the psyche. Exposing parts of oneself that one may need to
confront during their waking lives. We are living during a time in history that
governments and the media collectively use to exploit the sense of FEAR to project
onto the masses a sense of insecurity. To give us the illusion that the only way that we as
a society can be safe from all of the evil surrounding us is by allowing governments to
continue eroding our rights and pry deeper into our private affairs. When in effect in my
humble opinion I instinctly sense that these governmental entities are not only staging
many of the events that are sensationalized in screaming headlines but are reaping the
rewards that come with more control of the masses. This to me is like a recurring
nightmare that we as humanity must be aware of and ultimately wake up to, otherwise the
nightmare will progressively get more sinister and we as sentient beings will only
become institutionalized numbers and chattel for the wealthy to do with as they see fit.
On the cover of this months issue of Electric Dreams my painting Secret Hand is
based on a recent nightmare of a secret society of bankers and militaristic men hell bent
on governing the world with their influx of debit based currency and death dealing
devices creating their nightmarish agenda upon humanity to only benefit their secret
society. The hand is symbolic of behind the scenes deal making, pacts with the devil
selling out their souls for temporary earthly gain of wealth, power and control. I am
currently working on a series of hand gesture art that will help me manifest humanities
need to openly communicate in a more productive and creative way to help benefit all
and not just a few
.We can all evolve quicker and more effectively without these secret
societies obstructing the intellectual and spiritual evolution of humankind. Let us all end
this NIGHTMARE
About the Artist; J. Myztico Campo is a Cuban born, NYC raised self taught Visionary
Surrealist whose work has been displayed in various galleries in the U.S. He has a variety
of creative passions besides painting that involves music/filmmaking/murals/poetry &
photography. To see and hear more of Myzticos work visit his website:
http://myztico.mosaicglobe.com
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange
By Lucy Gillis
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
********************************
An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis
This month, Arthur Gillard interviews author Robert Augustus Masters.
An Interview With Robert Augustus Masters By Arthur Gillard Responses (c) Robert
Augustus Masters
Robert Augustus Masters lives and works near Vancouver, British Columbia. He
specializes in cutting-edge integral psychotherapy, counseling, spiritual deepening, and
awakening work. Robert describes himself as increasingly finding freedom less through
transcendence than through intimacy with all that is, a perspective which illuminates his
deeply transformative workshops and therapy sessions. Some of his recent books include
Darkness Shining Wild: An Odyssey to the Heart of Hell and Beyond: Meditations on
Sanity, Suffering, Spirituality, & Liberation, Divine Dynamite: Entering Awakening's
Heartland, Freedom Doesn't Mind Its Chains: Revisioning Sex, Body, Emotion, &
Spirituality, and The Anatomy & Evolution of Anger: An Integral Exploration.
For more information, please see his bio at Integral Naked -
http://in.integralinstitute.org/contributor.aspx?id=120 where you can also listen to an
informative and entertaining audio dialog (to listen to the dialog you simply need to join
free for one month). Integral Naked also hosts a Question and Answer thread with Robert
which continues to cover a lot of territory including dreaming and lucid dreaming:
http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/1910.aspx
Robert's website includes essays, poetry, a free online newsletter and descriptions of his
workshops, therapy and apprenticeship programs:
http://www.robertmasters.com/ Of particular interest is his essay on "An Integral
Approach to Healing" - http://www.robertmasters.com/Work_Section/integral_part.htm
--------
Arthur: Do you remember your first lucid dream? How old were you?
Robert: I don't remember what was probably my first lucid dream -- in large part because
in my early years I had trouble separating waking state and dreaming state phenomena --
but I do remember becoming lucid during two types of dreams that started when I was
about 5 or 6. In the first, I would find myself at the top of a tree or standing at the edge of
a cliff....I'd leap off, feeling ecstatic, totally unafraid of hitting the ground below (which
invariably received me the way that a pillow receives a weary head).
The other type of dream in which I'd become lucid was far from pleasant: In it, I'd be in
my bed, tucked under the covers, feeling a strange chill in the air (and here I would
become lucid), a grey-lit iciness that was very familiar -- for I had this dream hundreds of
times -- and into the room would come my mother, initially looking like herself, but soon
mutating into a hideous, malevolent creature bearing down on me, trying to tear the
covers from me, at which point I, in heart-thumping terror, would wake up. The fact that I
was lucid did not seem to make any difference; I felt consistently powerless. Not until I
was 8 or 9 did I free myself from this lucid nightmare: One night, as my monster-mother
drew near me, I got up and attacked her; she fought back, but I persisted, and she faded
into the background. It was the last time I had the dream.
Arthur: Has the nature of your dreams changed over time?
Robert: My dreams have changed as I have changed, and I have changed as my dreams
have changed. My dreaming self and my waking state self have been, and are,
inseparable. Looking at, into, and through what's arising with undreaming eyes, whether
waking or asleep, continues to be both grace and a discipline; the actual process of selfing
(that is, of animating, occupying, and reconstituting "me") has been and is an object of
awareness, however infrequently, both in dreaming and waking states.
During times of intense dream exploration, I have had an abundance of deep and amazing
dreams. When I became interested in lucid dreaming as a young adult (23 or so), such
dreams arrived quite often; for a while, I'd exploit their possibilities, but eventually I tired
of such adventuring, and more often than not simply let them go their own course.
Sometimes dreams have arrived that have dramatically altered my life course. For
example, when I was 22, unhappily immersed in a doctoral program that didn't really
interest me, I had a dream of drowning -- a deeply surrendered, blissful drowning -- that
led me to, in a matter of just a few hours, to leave my doctoral studies for good.
Mirror dreams come to mind... As a child, I had a recurring dream of looking into a
mirror and seeing my reflection slide and eddy into freakish contortions. The face I'd see
looked terrified, its horror eloquently expressed with bizarre flourishes borrowed from
whatever had most recently frightened me, be it an ad for a Frankenstein movie or the
witch scene from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". I knew what was going to
happen before I stared into the mirror, and yet I always looked. The mirror, usually
outlined with a compelling brilliance, dominated whatever room in which I found it. Only
in these dreams did I truly face my fear; in the daytime I did whatever I could to avoid it.
I had no such dreams (as far as I can recall) as an adolescent, but had further variations of
them arise once I got a bit older. When I was 22, I had the following dream: I'm at a
party, moving from room to room, socializing. Someone offers me some LSD; without
any hesitation, I take it.
Soon the party is blazing with hypervivid colour, crawling with archetypes, seemingly
bursting with untranslatable significance. The walls melt and writhe. An acid trip.
Finally, I move or am moved toward the bathroom. The ten-foot journey is as hilarious as
it's weird; before I complete it, I realize that I am dreaming. My experiencing seems to be
concentric rather than sequential. The bathroom. As I close the door, I feel very excited
and almost painfully alert. There's a mirror on the wall. I immediately recall my
childhood dreams of looking into a mirror. The mirror beckons, widening.
Looking into it, I see my wide-eyed reflection. Its features wriggle and shift into a series
of faces, some of them incredibly hideous and far from human. But I'm not afraid, for I
know that these visions are LSD-induced. I continue looking, as my ancient fears parade
by, showing their faces. I relax, settling more and more deeply into my seeing.
Three years later, I had another mirror dream: I'm in a dimly lit house, feeling very
uncomfortable. The mood is both sluggish and sinister. I go into my room, and lock the
door, then enter its bathroom, and look into the mirror over the sink. My eyes seem to be
extraordinarily close together; in fact, there's no gap between them. I realize that I am
dreaming. In the mirror there is one large eye, between and slightly above the place
where my eyes ordinarily are. Dread and fascination fill me. The eye is a glowing blue,
unblinking, unwavering, and of immense though unexplainable significance to me. I feel
as though I'm drowning in its gaze, which I very dimly intuit is my gaze. I force myself to
look below the eye, at the smooth pink flesh where my everyday eyes ought to be. For a
while I see only skin.
Then, as if through a poorly focused lens, I see my two eyes. They are firmly and tightly
closed. I leave the bathroom. My room is too small. I decide to leave the dream, and it
immediately shatters.
It took me a while to understand why my lucidity in the dream had not lightened or freed
me. Though I'd become aware of the overall dream, I had been utterly unaware that the
self ("me") of the dream was also part of the dream. My identification with that fearful,
isolated "I" kept me feeling afraid and isolated. My lucidity in the dream had been like a
vast moat, surrounding but not touching the role I had assumed in the dream. The mirror
gave me an opportunity to see what I was doing; the eye in the mirror was an "I" that saw
through me. When I finally noticed my two "regular" eyes in the mirror, I saw only skin-
deep, not seeing that I was asleep to my situation.
Here's another mirror dream, from when I was 48: Becoming aware that I'm dreaming, I
leap up to fly, but fall back, twice. Then I surrender, inwardly asking to be taken where I
most need to go. I'm in the air, a few feet above some pavement. Suddenly I'm pulled
backward and downward at a tremendous speed, my body almost totally vanishing during
my "flight." I land in an underground, poorly lit room. Its walls are all floor-to-ceiling
mirrors, all equally sized and all bizarrely distorting my reflection. Though fairly large,
the room feels quite compressed. I'm in the middle, afraid but not panicked.
Slowly, I walk toward one wall, seeing all sorts of mirrored "fragments" of myself. A
dark, eerie, heavy feeling saturates the room. Everything is sickeningly greyish. I gaze
into my reflection's eyes, seeing less of the hallucinatory than I expected. Then I walk
into and through the mirror, finding myself in an even more compressive space. It's
extremely uncomfortable; if I wasn't still aware that it was a dream, I would surely escape
as quickly as possible.
No exit in sight, though - just claustrophobic greys, amorphous and hideously alive. I
keep moving, as if through jelly - fatly quivering, ever denser protoplasm - existing both
as a dreambody and a disembodied observer.
Finally, I can barely move.
In despair and helplessness, I drop down on my knees, crying and wordlessly praying,
aching for release. As the observer, I see my eyes turned up, my hands in prayer position
in front of my chest, my face deathly pale.
Surrender. Suddenly, I am vaulted into another world, vaguely sensing that I am in a
hospital, watching a group of doctors tending a covered-up patient.
A series of events transpire [which I cannot recall], ending in joy.
In many lucid dreams, I have moved or have been pulled toward places of luminosity,
often dissolving in their radiance. Sometimes, though, I have gone in the "opposite"
direction, going deep into the Earth, into mineral and dense dark. In the preceding dream,
I'm being pulled below the surface.
Let's permit the image of being in the grey, underground room to unfold itself, to
"speak":
When underground, I don't appear to myself as I usually am. When I see myself reflected
all around, I don't appear to be myself.
Wherever I look, I see my reflection, so long as I remain in the centre of the room.
Though there is a lack of illumination when I am underground looking at myself, there is
enough light to see. The ceiling and floor are the same; above and below are the same
underground. I am mirrored from all around when I am below the surface.
My surface appearance is broken into many components when I am below the surface.
When I remain in the middle, I can see, but am distant from what I see. Wherever I turn,
there I am.
When I leave the middle, thereby decentralizing the space, I can more clearly see
particular reflections. When I no longer occupy the centre, I can pass through what I am
looking at. Stepping through one self-image puts me behind them all, and this happens
when I am below the surface, and am willing to "face" myself, however unpleasant that
might be. When I remain in the centre, when I am the centre, I am encircled by what I
fear.
[Note: I have no explanatory summary for all of the above - its insights are intrinsic to its
totality as an image. It speaks not of one meaning for me, but of many, from prenatal to
transpersonal, each of which could be mined for more significance.]
Once "I" am through the mirror, things get worse - but did I not ask to be taken where I
most needed to go? Only when I am "decentralized," down on my knees, no longer
fighting my helplessness, does "release" occur. I haven't so much given up - submission
being but a kind of collapse - as surrendered (surrender being more expansion than
collapse), opening to a sacrifice of self that's anathema to the usual me.
Arthur: What do you see as the nature of dreams - are they models of reality constructed
by a brain unconstrained by sensory input and interaction with the environment? Are they
visits to a subtle energy realm or astral plane?
What do you think of the view, held by some spiritual traditions, that the dreaming
process is similar to what we experience when we die?
Robert: What a question! To me, dreams are the mind's contents made visible through
three-dimensional story-like formats while the body sleeps.
Psychoemotional theater fleshed out and broadcast by the mind, constellated around and
expressive of certain feelings, urges, intentions, pulls.
Self-made, self-starring, self-revealing private motion pictures. The original home
movies, usually forgotten before they're really seen.
Like movies, dreams range from the banal to the sublime. Some films can open us to
unsuspected or dormant dimensions of ourselves; so too with some dreams. There are
movies that can make us look deeply at ourselves while we watch (and also indirectly
participate in) them, just as there are dreams that serve the same awakening function.
Dreams may just be internal noise (like most of the thoughts we have, or that have us,
while "awake"), and they may also be profoundly relevant harbingers of needed changes.
Dreams can simply be hangovers from the previous day's activities (both outer and
inner), no more meaningful than the random thoughts creating mini-logjams behind your
forehead on a busy day, and they can also be doorways into unimaginable vistas of being,
portals to and from What-Really-Matters.
Dreams don't so much tell us about ourselves, as they are our selves (our multi-selved
selfhood), all dressed-up for the part; various aspects, dimensions, qualities, elements,
and action tendencies that constitute us intersect and interact with each other, as if they
are in fact discrete entities/things independent of each other. We ordinarily identify with
one of these, dreaming that we are indeed that. This is true not only of everyday dreams,
but also of most lucid dreams.
Prior to truly awakening, we are simply dreaming (including dreaming that we are not
dreaming), whether physically awake or not. This, however, does not mean that dreams
are not real; they are just as real as the self-sense about which they are arranged. A dream
is a real mirage, just like us. The more real things get, the more dreamlike they seem.
A dream is a story (ranging from simple cartoon to complex myth) that we are telling
ourselves, a story through which we are constructed and reconstituted. Becoming aware
of the actual story doesn't necessarily end it, but rather simply allows us to participate in
it in the best possible way.
Let's now go into more detail regarding body, self-sense, and dreaming. The sense of
literally being inside our physicality can be extremely convincing.
Not surprisingly, our dreams generally display much of the same sense of "within-ness."
In dreams, our waking-state body is perhaps most commonly represented - besides as
itself - through the metaphors of dwelling-places and vehicles, with the dream's "I" (or
what we might call the dream-ego) usually appearing more or less as a replica of our
waking-state "I," ordinarily located inside somewhere, whether in a long-ago living room
or behind the wheel of a suddenly brakeless car.
In our dreams, our body is a perceptual convention, a bit of theater, as much a prop as
anything else in the dreamscape. We could, while dreaming, view our dream-body as a
metaphor, a choice, a creation, but instead we usually just identify with it in the very
same way that we identify with our physical body in the so-called waking state.
"I," now taking stage as the dream-ego, is still preoccupied with being at the helm of the
body, while at the same time being lost in the dramatics of the dream, taking everything
therein as real. While dreaming, we may engage in activities that would be impossible or
extremely unlikely in the waking state, yet we - while dreaming - rarely see anything
unusual in this. We look, but usually don't look inside our looking.
As in the waking state, all that will usually alert us - or snap us out of our trance - is some
sort of crisis, a not-to-be-denied intensity of perceived danger, as perhaps best
demonstrated by full-blown nightmares. We may awaken for a few moments within a
nightmare, but ordinarily not so as to explore and make good use of it - rather, our
common intention then is still to flee, to escape, to get back to sleep or at least into a
more comfortable or secure circumstance.
Even in lucid dreaming we still generally take ourselves to be the "I" of the dream,
regardless of "our" apparent freedom of choice. Much of the appeal of dream lucidity lies
in the possibility of having more power and control in our dreams. Such power or control
can be very useful when "fleshing out" the intention to turn around to face a dream
adversary or difficult situation we have been fleeing, but not so useful when it merely
reinforces the dream-ego.
In fact, the very desire to be lucid during a dream, to be a somebody who can lucid-
dream, creates the same difficulties as the desire to be awake during the so-called waking
state, to be a somebody who can meditate or be aware.
The "I" who stars in or centres a lucid dream is actually just part of the dream, no more
than a convincing personification (and embodiment) of the witnessing or self-reflective
dimension of the dream. However, when the dreamer becomes the object of awareness in
the midst of his or her dream, then the dream itself, at least in my experience, usually can
no longer hold its form, and all its contents dissolve into unmappable, space-transcending
Luminosity.
Short of such dissolution, there is usually some sense of embodiment in lucid dreaming
(although there sometimes may be a sense of being a self without any body, existing as a
point of attention in the dreamscape, a point that may or may not be personified).
For many years, I experimented with intentionality in lucid dreaming:
jumping from great heights; flying far and wide; dissolving my body; suffering lethal
injuries; traversing space instantaneously; diving deep into solid earth; passing through
walls; letting my body be as malleable as plastic; meeting various spiritual teachers;
having archetypal encounters; facing adversaries with violence, love, shapeshifting
suddenness.
Nevertheless, however unusual or thrilling my lucid dream-doings were, they were still
mostly centered by the very same sense of self around which my daily activities were
generally organized.
After a while, it became more interesting to leave the dream alone, to simply abide in the
midst of it, and see where it took me. Dreaming or waking, lucid or not, ecstatic or
depressed, the work was basically the same, to simply be as present as possible,
uncommitted to - and unidentified with - the intentions of any particular "I." And what
did this do to my dreambody? Freed it, at least to some extent, from what I "normally"
took it to be, thereby permitting it to more fully be a medium for simply maintaining
relationship with my environment.
Arthur: Do you see consciousness as continuing in some form in deep, dreamless sleep?
Have you ever experienced lucidity in that state, and if so, what was it like?
Robert: Consciousness continues in deep, dreamless sleep, but without any form. No
objects, no appearances, no self. In this state, we are almost always unconscious of being
conscious. Nevertheless, we can be awake during deep, dreamless sleep, as various sages
have taught. I've had direct experience of this, though it was not the "I" of everyday
discourse. The phenomenology of this is without sensation, feeling, cognition, or any
temporal or spatial sense, bearing no discernible characteristic other than that of unbound,
featureless, effortlessly sentient presence. No-thing-ness.
Here is what I have experienced as the state of deep, dreamless sleep spontaneously
metamorphosed into the state of dreaming sleep: First, out of nowhere and nothing, there
arose colour and movement, without any discernible shape. Then vague forms began
appearing, diaphanous and softly swirling, taking on a bit more solidity. When I - in the
form of alert, undivided attention - "entered" this nebular fluxing of colour and shape-
making, it almost immediately became more densely three-dimensional and vividly real
in a conventionally sensory manner, literally taking on substance all around me, including
as a dream-body closely resembling my physical body.
Arthur: What role have lucid dreams played in your spiritual life, or your life in general?
Have you, for example, had insights or spiritual breakthroughs in dreams? Has a lucid
dream ever anticipated developments in your consciousness or understanding which
occurred later in your waking life? Have you had shifts in perspective or values as a
result of lucid dreaming?
Robert: Lucid dreams have played a big role in my life. Being in them and experimenting
in them taught me firsthand that I am more than my body, more than my mind, and more
than my sense of self. Facing difficulties and challenges while lucid dreaming has
deepened and stabilized my ability to face difficulties and challenges while in the waking
state. Deep insights and realizations have often arisen during lucid dreaming. I remember
a dream I had when I was 34: I'm lucid and flying to meet a spiritual teacher I love. I am
being knowingly propelled by my desire to see him, my movement being so fast that I
cannot see any scenery. A few seconds later I find myself sitting in a room in the upper
floor of an unknown stone building. I am waiting, but without any tension. There's a
window in the room, and the air is very fresh, and the colours remarkably bright. I feel
something touching my lower torso, and look down. To my surprise, I see a baby body,
no more than a month or two old. I am holding him, cradling him, already in love with
him. He meets my eyes, and I leave the dreaming state in ecstasy.
The next morning, I told my partner at that time that I'd met our son; prior to this, we'd
had no desire whatsoever to have children, but within days had mutually and easily
arrived at the decision to conceive him. A few months later, she was pregnant. Six
months into her pregnancy, I had the following lucid dream: I'm in a unknown yet very
familiar room. A boy, perhaps six month old, is sitting on the floor gazing at me. As I
look into his eyes, I say, "Hi, Dama." Before this we had not considered any name for our
baby-to-be, and nor did we know that that little one would be a boy. Three months later
Dama arrived. He did not cry once during his delivery and arrival; a short time later, he
was in my arms, gazing at me as he had in my dreams.
Arthur: Could you tell us how you incorporate dreamwork into your therapy sessions or
workshops? How does your approach relate to the various schools of therapy (gestalt,
Jungian, etc.?) Are there any examples you'd like to share?
Robert: I frequently incorporate dreamwork into my session and groupwork, using a
number of approaches. I may use Gestalt, having you act out the relationship between
various parts of your dream; I may use psychodrama, having you act out a part of your
dream; I may use bodywork, having you deeply experience and openly express different
emotions and states that arose in your dream; and I may use all of these, and more, in
working with one dream at one time, making room for you to really "get" your dream,
and not necessarily in just one way.
An example: A woman in a group for women with cancer describes a dream in which she
is being pursued by a very large bear. She is clearly frightened by it, and awakens before
it reaches her. I talk with her a bit about her dream -- she is nice to the extreme, meek-
voiced and energetically small -- then ask her to get on all fours and act like she's the
bear. She is embarrassed, but goes ahead. Move around, I say, and let some sounds
emerge.
Again, more discomfort, but she does as I ask. She continues this for a bit, then I ask her,
as the bear, to immediately speak to the frightened woman
(her) in the dream. Without hesitation, she says, "Don't run away from me, "
and says it with considerable emotion. I ask her to say it again, and she starts to cry. Now,
I say, imagine you are that frightened woman, and respond to the bear. She does, and
goes back and forth for a while between the two positions. Finally, she doesn't need to
move anymore, for both positions are now coexisting easily within her, and she, on her
own, is starting to realize what the bear actually is -- an expression of her own disowned
power, enlarged by her fear of embodying such power. Her voice is fuller now, her
presence much stronger. As she reclaims her "bear" energy, she fills out more, laughingly
saying that she wants to give all the women in the room big bear hugs.
Another example: A young man (in a group session) is describing a dream in which he is
prone, seemingly limbless, struggling to move forward. Limbs do eventually materialize,
but only as flimsy, stick-like things viewed as from a distance. His voice is low and
monotonous, tinged with a remote sadness.
He sits as though defeated. I listen closely, noticing no intention in myself to speak. We
gaze at each other in a not-uncomfortable silence.
Breathing in, breathing out. There's a subtly increasing warmth in my belly and chest,
then a sudden image of a terrified baby.
His eyes are a bit more open now, still distant but seeming to call from somewhere
behind the distance. There's increasing movement in me now, amorphous but gathering
momentum. I don't feel any desire to talk about the dream nor to "interview" him -
something far more compelling is inviting me to act. My breath is a little fuller now, my
belly looser; the feeling of presence in the room is getting stronger.
Now the waiting-time is over.
I ask him to lie face-down on the carpet, and to attempt to move forward without using
his limbs. He struggles in silence, and cannot move forward.
Breathe more deeply, I whisper in his ear, and let your struggling have a sound, a sound
that expresses the actual feeling of it. He groans and writhes with great intensity, looking
as though he's pinned to the spot. Or stuck. His back appears rigid yet oddly soft, his
spine like a suffocating serpent. My own back is subtly writhing, my hands tingling. My
intuition to touch him suddenly intensifies, and I begin to massage his back, loosening the
muscles on either side of his spine.
Soon he is crying very hard, his sounds both adult and baby-like. I have him reach out in
front of himself, but he still cannot move forward. Then I ask the group, all of whom are
very moved, to make a kind of tunnel over him, everyone on hands and knees,
alternatingly positioned (shoulders next to neighbor's hips), pressing down on him, but
not so heavily that movement is impossible. Everyone knows what to do; there's an
unspoken link between all of us, centreed by an obvious caring for him.
He starts to panic. I have him exaggerate his sounds for ten or fifteen seconds, then tell
him to move forward, using his legs, his arms, everything he's got. For a minute or so, he
struggles, moving ahead very slightly, wailing like a newborn, and then suddenly he
explodes with strength, lifting up the bodies curled over him, screaming very loudly.
Adrenaline races through me, not in fear, but in readiness.
I make a triangle-shaped opening with my hands and press it against the top of his head,
encouraging him to keep coming. He pushes mightily, still screaming, moving forward,
pushing and surging, his movements serpentine, his body feeling to me more like
cascading rapids than solid flesh. Another minute or so, and through he bursts, spilling
into my arms. I hold him close, while he cries uncontrollably. At this moment, I am both
mother and father. And the newborn I am holding is not only him, but all of us, including
me. My interpretations of what has happened pale beside the raw presence of his pain, his
need, his sheer bareness of feeling, and - when he at last opens his eyes - his love.
He didn't move; he was movement. Birthing-movement, ancient and yet so nakedly now,
messily precise, eventually unclouded by amniotic or psychosocial shrouding, eloquently
transparent to Being. Nothing special in all this - just a few trembling petals of the
everfresh, hyperbole-demolishing Wonder of being here.
Arthur: In many of your books you mention dreams in the context of the spiritual path of
awakening. What do you see as the connection between our experience of dreaming and
lucid dreaming, and our experience of life while physically awake? Or our experience of
death, for that matter?
Robert: Our dream-life reflects our physical waking life, and our physical waking life
reflects our dream-life; the two realities may seem very different, but in fact they are
remarkably similar, and share considerable overlap. The mind I have while dreaming is
basically the same mind I have while physically awake. The bodies in the two states may
seem to be very different, but at the level of body-image -- where we spend a lot of our
mental time -- they are very similar. The "I" at the centre of our dreams is pretty much the
same "I" that's at the centre of our physical waking experience. Dreaming is what the
mind tends to do when it's disembodied -- daydreams while "awake" and sleep-dreams
while, well, asleep.
At death and after death, no longer anchored to the body at all, the mind -- and this is just
my intuition -- doesn't do much else other than dream, and it's not the kind of dreaming
we can pinch ourselves out of, for there's no body to which to return; what's called for is
real lucidity, the capacity to recognize that what's happening is dreaming, on whatever
scale. The content doesn't really matter; a dream is a dream. Given that what happens
after death is what is happening right now, we might as well stop flirting with awakening
practices, and really get into them, regardless of the state we're in, doing whatever work
is necessary so that such practices can take deep root in us. Lucid dreaming, lucid
waking, lucid living, lucid being...
Arthur: In Darkness Shining Wild you describe the following dream as taking place
shortly after the 5-Meo-DMT experience in which you almost died:
"I spent most of that first post-5-Meo night sitting up in bed (Nancy slept on and off
beside me), helplessly absorbed in extremely gripping, three-dimensional replays of the
horror I had experienced, now and then trying to comfort myself with the thought that
this wouldn't, couldn't, last for more than a few nights. The waves of remembrance did
not come gently. I was throbbing, shaking, struggling to find some semblance of calm in
the psychospiritual riptides that were tossing me about like a piece of shore-bereft
driftwood. A hellride minus an offramp.
Hour after hour I endured, feeling as though I would never return from the madness that
was infiltrating me. Finally, just before dawn, I fell asleep and very soon found myself in
a lucid dream.
I had often had such dreams, frequently using them as portals for all kinds of adventure
and experimentation. As such, they were normally quite pleasing to be in; I would know
that the body I "had" in the dream was not my actual physical body, and so could then
freely engage in activities that would mean disaster or even Death in the "waking" state.
If I was afraid in a regular dream and then became lucid during it, I could usually face the
fear, interacting with it's dream-form until some kind of resolution or integration
occurred.
But not now. Yes, I knew I was dreaming, but I could not work with the fear therein. The
dream was saturated with an enormous, otherworldly terror which was coupled with
savagely hallucinatory disorientation. In the midst of this I stood, my dreambody but a
ghostly sieve for its surroundings. I knew that if I left the dream, I would still be in the
very same state.
At last, I let myself go fully into the dream, despite my conviction that I very likely
would not return. Now I was completely inside it, utterly lost, immersed in an edgeless
domain of look-alike, spike-headed waveforms, each one sentient and subtly scaly,
moving protoplasmically in endless procession in all directions. Just like my 5-Meo
setting, but without the speed.
Suddenly, I was overcome by a completely unexpected, rapidly expanding compassion.
All fear vanished. A few moments later, I somehow cut - or intended - a kind of porthole
in the bizarre universe that enclosed me, as cleanly round as the shrinking aperture of my
consciousness at the onset of my 5-Meo journey.
Through this opening the countless alien forms spontaneously came streaming,
immediately metamorphosing into flowers, birds, trees, humans: Earthly life in all its
wonder and heartbreaking fecundity. Then the dream faded, and I lay radiantly awake,
deeply moved, feeling as though the hardest part was now over.
It had, however, just begun."
- Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, pp.22-24
When I first read this dream, I felt puzzled as to why this didn't resolve the crisis for you.
Upon further consideration, it seemed that in a way it reflected in miniature form your
course through the dark night described in that book. Would you agree with that? How do
you see this dream as fitting into your Darkness Shining Wild experience, and did dreams
play any role in your healing process?
Robert: I would agree. This dream also foreshadowed my eventual emergence from my
crisis roughly nine months later (on my birthday). I had many lucid dreams during those
nine months, and none of them liberated me from my crisis. Did this mean that they were
not helpful? No. They helped me to stay wakeful during that hellish time. In one, for
example, my compassion for my agony (in the form of a man going insane) arose,
supporting and paralleling my fledgling compassion for my agony during waking times.
In hindsight, I recognize that it would not have served me to have had an exit from my
suffering before my nine months were up; I needed to stay with it until I was no longer
capable of resurrecting who I'd been before my 5-MeO-DMT hellride.
Arthur: You have some familiarity with entheogens/psychedelics and much experience
with the naturally occurring "altered" states of dreaming and lucid dreaming, as well as
vast experience with states of consciousness reached through meditative and other
spiritual practice. How would you compare lucid dreaming with entheogens and
meditative experiences as tools for exploring consciousness or to promote growth or
awakening?
Robert: Where entheogens tend to dynamite the gates, lucid dreaming and meditative
practice help open them, the key being in our hands. Once we're through the gates, we're
usually presented with an abundance of experiential possibilities, ranging from the
merely sensory to the ineffably revelatory.
With entheogens, we're mostly just awe-filled spectators, however intimately connected
we are to what's going on, at an impossibly rich banquet of sights, sounds, feelings, and
perspectives; with lucid dreaming, we're much more likely to be participants in what is
unfolding, seeing it alter in accord with what we are doing; with meditative practice,
especially deep, stable meditative practice, we are neither spectators of nor participants in
what is happening, but rather clearings of consciousness at once apart from and
profoundly intimate with what is occurring. Such meditative practice may also occur,
albeit rarely, during lucid dreaming (you might, for example, try closing your dream eyes
during a lucid dream and letting yourself rest in Being) and entheogenic intoxication.
There's no substitute for meditative practice and meditativeness, which can be accessed
during any state or experiential possibility, even if we dream otherwise. Entheogens may
catalyze some degree of awakening, and lucid dreaming may give it a stage, but
meditativeness gives it the ground it needs to truly take root.
Arthur: In a Q&A thread on the Integral Naked forum, you mention an upcoming book
on "dreams, dreaming and the dreamer." Could you elaborate a bit on what subject areas
you'll cover? Are you planning to include exercises for the reader?
Robert: That book is some years away, and so I haven't made any plans regarding its
subjects areas, other than the very general topics of dreams, dreaming, and the dreamer.
Arthur: Thank you for a fascinating interview, Robert. Do you have any parting words of
advice for those pursuing lucid dreaming in the context of personal or spiritual growth?
Robert: Experiment. Take risks while you are lucid. Pay attention to the role or roles you
are playing in the dream; notice what hooks or attracts you, but don't forget to examine
the you who is feeling hooked or attracted.
Remain aware of the dreamer as much as you can, whatever state you are in.
Experiment some more. Move from lucid dreaming to lucid being, letting awakening's
alchemy get so far under your skin that you have no choice but to fully participate in it.
********************************
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams and lucid
dream related articles and interviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange send a
blank email to:
TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You can also check us out at www.dreaminglucid.com
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
The New Age of Pisces
© 2006 Linda Lane Magallón
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Bewitched by a 2-millennium spell, we sleep. But the inky black night is not forever.
Unbeknownst to us, the earth continues to rotate and the nighttime thrall gradually
loosens its hypnotic hold. We start to stir. In the dim light of the approaching day, we are
roused to consciousness. When full awareness returns, the enchantment of slumber is
broken. We wake to a whole new perspective of our previous preoccupation. We were
dreaming! For two thousand years, we were dreaming.
There's a quiet revolution lying dormant in the land of sleep. As earth progresses along
the path of the Vernal Equinox through the astrological cosmos, the Age of Pisces rolls
over in bed and turns to face the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Dozing obliviously, we
may not know we're due for a wake-up call from Uranus, the revolutionary ruler of
Aquarius. The light is beginning to glow, as the earth turns ever onward. There are
already signs of the coming day, should we care to raise our heads out of the covers and
look. But when sleep paralysis remains an impediment, we're likely to misconstrue a false
awakening for the real thing. As we struggle towards lucidity, we will still have to
traverse the era of the false dawn.
Is the Age of Aquarius going to be a Utopian fantasy or an Apocalyptic horror? How
about neither? The first idea is wrought with rosy Piscean idealism; the second is a
projection washed with the black and blue of Piscean pessimism. The Apocalypse was
John the Evangelist's biblical vision of the End of Days. It occurred at the beginning of
the Age of Pisces, as a fixed prophecy of a fated future, and has been haunting us ever
since. It's an old repeating nightmare designed to panic us into submission to a
dictatorship of fear. Only now are we wakening to the testable fact that such stress
mongering is neither just nor healthy.
During the Christian era, the world has been dominated by a god with Piscean qualities
and values: sacrifice, denial of the physical and denigration of the flesh. A hallowed saint
could raise nightmarish suffering to an ecstatic art, where the only dream of worth was
communion with that god. But the average person had to trade the bleak possibility of big
dreams for the hope of bliss in the afterlife. In the meantime, her normative dream was
yet more confirmation that life is a battle between good and evil. There was nothing to do
but lie down and take it, then stumble to her feet to relate tales of sleep time trauma
turned folklore and myth.
Pisces, the fish, is an apt symbol for the age. The constellation consists of two fish, tied
at their tails (their tales?) and pulling in different directions. The path of the Vernal
Equinox first traversed the fish looking backwards and Pisces has truly been fixated on
the past. The Equinox is currently positioned below the belly of the second fish. Since
Pisces #2 is pointing forward, in the direction of Aquarius, we are beginning to feel his
pull, right down to our guts. Yes, there's a new fisherman above the waves, luring us in
his direction, but we're still very much living below the surface. This about-face in fishy
orientation is what we call the "New Age." But it's not the Age of Aquarius yet. It's
actually a new phase of the Piscean Age a stage I call the Neptunian Transformation.
For the most part, the "New Age" is a long way from being truly Aquarian, except in
subtle influence and developing structure. Most of the ideas and activities are still very
much Piscean. They may seem new to us, because they've been hiding in the murky deep
for so long and we're just uncovering or re-discovering them. All over our watery globe,
the liberating energy of Aquarius is bringing traditional ideas to the surface. The
detection of the historical and mythical past of dreams, the disclosure of the secrets of the
occult, the revelation of new religious views, the realization that there's an entire world of
many diverse dream cultures these are the lights that are starting to illuminate the dawn.
But this still-hazy dream recall is only a review of the previous dark night, an overview
of where we've been.
The more innovative Piscean notions are a result of a revolution instigated by Uranus,
whose eccentric orbit revealed the existence of the planet Neptune. Previously, Pisces had
been "ruled" by Jupiter (a stand-in for Jehovah and other patriarchal gods). But with the
discovery of Neptune, Pisces was reassigned this new ruler, and Pisces took to it like a
duck to water. You might say that, in terms of dreams at least, Pisces finally found her
footing. She's beginning to stand up and reveal what she's been hiding for more than half
the age. The Neptunian Transformation
allows her to display more of her real self than
ever before. And *this* is the amazing renovation-in-progress that Pisces feels in the
depths of her soul. When Pisces is energized by Neptune, dreams are no longer idolized
or ignored. We recognize that they live within us, swimming below the surface of our
daily awareness.
Neptune, the god of the sea, is a much better match with the fish. When Sigmund Freud
proclaimed dreams the royal road to the unconscious, dreams became linked with the
undercurrents of human psychology. Carl Jung metaphorically linked it with the sea.
Suddenly, the idea of the great sea of unconscious was born into our social awareness.
There's resonance with mythic stories, folk tales like "The Little Mermaid" and poetry
like "Winkin, Blinkin and Nod" in which the nocturnal sailors go trolling for dream fish.
The notion that dreams are linked with story, myth and art is very Piscean, as is the idea
that a dream has a "meaning" that can be fished out of the unconscious sea.
Ironically, the tools for this fishing expedition provided by Jung, Freud and their
contemporaries aren't dream tools at all. Pisces is slippery, fragile and allergic to analysis,
so she tends to keep it at fin's length. Thus, Freud and Jung had to provide waking tools,
like free association and amplification, which depend on the exercise of non-sleeping
imagination. This post-dream work occurs when the dream is already done. It really
doesn't have anything to do with the process of dreaming but rather prods and expands
and analyzes dream "reports". That is, it relies on verbal memories and written records of
dreams long after the original event has happened. It's a very "hands-off" approach that
keeps the dreaming at a safe distance (in the past, of course) and keeps our waking egos
in our "comfort zone." Supposedly we need this witness inhibition to deal securely with
our unconscious demons. We aren't encouraged to take a first-hand view and get into the
action, for that is contrary to the passive Piscean perspective. Neither are we encouraged
to develop a first-hand relationship with the dream. Rather, we treat it as a "thing" that's
supposed to come to our aid. This attitude is in for a big modification when Aquarius
rises above the horizon.
The Aquarian revolution is about a switch in values, from a dominator paradigm to a
partnership paradigm. No more can Pisces be a passive follower with her head stuck in
story; now she's being called to be an active, voting member of the Aquarian community
council. An effective council member needs to know what's actually happening in both
the physical world and the world of dream. Suddenly, the link between the dreaming and
the waking life of the dreamer becomes crucial, as is the link between dreams and the
link between dreamers.
In the meantime, during the Neptunian Transformation, we sleep as fish floating
dreamily beneath the surface of the sea of unconscious. Round and round in mandala
circles we drift in the current, washed wherever the undertow takes us. We only seem to
stir from our liquid lethargy to flee the monsters of the id.
As Piscean fishermen and fisherwomen, we gaze back from the waking world into the
mysterious murk, looking for omens and signs in the dim remembrance of slumber.
"What does this mean?" we question, hoping to catch sight of an animated jewel slipping
between the waves.
And so we weave our dreamwork nets with the warp of theory and the woof of technique
and cast them into the ocean, dredging up day residue and fish fragments. Taking symbol
snapshots, we freeze them in a perpetual moment of time. Former living creatures
transform into memory clips and written recordings. In our ignorance, we call them
"dreams." As dead objects, we can work on them as we please. We slice and dice them,
seeking understanding in their skeletal remains. How strangely colorless they appear,
here in the glare of daytime bias. Greedy for mystical meaning, truly needy for nutritional
narrative, we pick over the remnants and quickly, intuitively decide it isn't enough. It's
not okay for these sorts of "dreams" to just lay there, raw, staring at us out of dead eyes.
When these fillets don't fulfill our needs, we must expand the menu. And so we dress up
the Piscean pieces with the produce grown on the dry land of waking imagination. We
garnish them with mushroom myths and lemon wedge legends. We drown them in the
sauce of free association, archetypal amplification and Oedipal illusion. And should we
invite other diners to the feast, the opinion onions and potluck prejudice of their after-
words simply adds weight to the groaning table.
What can we call the concoction created at this banquet? Waking-work-on-dream-
reports, perhaps. This sort of "dreamwork" assumes that "dreams" are mere afterthoughts
about the event and not the events while they are happening. Likewise, a "dreamer" is the
person who reacts to the incident in the waking state, not the one who acts within the
dream world. "Dreaming" isn't in-dream activity but the imaginative embellishment of a
poorly remembered and poorly recorded sleep time event. Or maybe it's *just* waking
imagination, no sleeping dreams need apply.
There's an old saying that goes, "Whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish." I think
we've yet to discover our dreams! We'll have to stop swimming in self-absorbed circles
*in the waking state* to realize that dreams aren't what's left after we embellish them
with waking imagination.
Or maybe they are, and we should just leave them be. Then call what goes on before and
during sleep something else entirely. A new Aquarian term without the old Piscean
baggage. A term to indicate what we do ahead of time and during the dream to keep us
aquatic creatures active and alive, rather than apathetic and oblivious.
This way, we find significance not in symbol fragments washed up on the shore. We
don't ask, "What does this mean?" at arm's length. Meaning is enmeshed in the very sea
life that surrounds us. We live life in sleep as we act life in the waking state. And in the
acting, in the living, we don't have to talk endlessly about meaning. We actually
experience it, first-hand.
The Aquarian waking is not going to be easy for Pisces, and she knows it. It's far easier
to continue to slumber than to get out of bed. At the moment, she identifies with being a
sensitive soul who requires gentle handling. Her hope is that she can rouse herself to the
situation without dashing hopes or diminishing ideals, but I'm afraid this delusion is a
pipe dream if Pisces thinks she can continue to swim in the tsunamis of old beliefs. It's
not that hopes and ideals will disappear, just dependence on the old tales and myths.
Out in the fresh air, we can see clearly that we don't "have" dreams, like having a
common cold, nor do we "own" dreams to manipulate as we please, nor do dreams
"serve" us like slaves to our waking passions. The dream isn't a personal tidal pool or
merely an oceanic feeling. It is a vibrant reality of distinct, yet networked individual
entities. It is an ongoing story we continue to live from the inside-out, a virtual adventure
while we sleep.
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights)
--------
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
World Dreams Peace Bridge
August September View from the Bridge
A month and a bit
Kathy Turner
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Dreams seem to be naturally rhizomic. A hat becomes a person becomes a sky becomes a
light. Image links to image in fast memory connections. An endless dance.
On the Bridge our central interests are peace and dreams. All of our ideas flow into and
through these two principles. But what we link up to these concerns is sometimes truly
amazing.
This month and a bit review traces just some of the major rhizomic connections we have
been making: the war on Lebanon and continued destruction of Iraq; weeds and flowers;
dealing with awareness of the sadnesses of others; dreams and peace events.
Of the invasion of Lebanon and continued destruction in Iraq
The barbarous and senseless Israeli invasion of Lebanon shocked many of us on the
Bridge. The worst moment was the massacre in Qana. Thirty seven young children and
some elderly people killed as they tried to shelter from the Israeli bombing of their
village: too afraid to leave as others had been killed doing just that. But it was not just
Qana that shocked: it was the merciless Israeli bombing of ambulances; of citizens, of
attacks on hospitals and on the bombing of the capital of Beirut; it was the 1 million
refugees (1/4 of the countrys population); it was the disastrous environmental
destruction as Israel bombed a power plant and flooded the Mediterranean with oil; it was
the destruction of Lebanons infrastructure of roads and airports and water and electricity;
it was the silence or even active support given to Israel by particularly the US and the
UK.
The invasion tested us on the Bridge too. Some were horrified, sending message after
message of information; some remained silent; some expressed afterwards that it took
them some time to realize that the horror expressed in email after email was not anti-
semitic just horror at war and what the Israeli government was doing.
In the midst of this we found out that the young Iraqi woman raped and murdered along
with her family by US soldiers was Abeer Qasim Hamza. She was just 14 years old. Ilkin
said her name is Fehriye in Turkish and added with such sadness: meaning
"honorary". But they took her honour by the worst way.
Ilkin asked that this months DaFuMu be for Lebanon Children/ Civilians and Peace".
And Kotaro from Japan (gently remembering and older war, and an older destruction:
unconditional surrender in World War II in August of 1945) reached into his heart of
compassion at the horror of Qana in Lebanon now and found a blue dragon. He wrote:
The bombing at Quana damaged my heart so much. Last night, all the way in the train to
my home, I was chanting the Heart Sutra in my mind as I could sit down on. Then,
suddenly an odd image appeared clearly in my heart. It was a horrible darkness, at the
bottom were the fires, and I could see a blue transparent pipe was climbing up to the dark
sky. This image was fullfilled with my heart sutra chant. I could not recognize what it
was but as it was so clear.
And Anna replied reminding us again how it is balance that is needed:
Yes, the Blue Dragon -Water IN Fire- not just after.
I keep thinking & feeling that we NEED the Fire- it is not to eliminate it, but to use it
well -and that can only be done when it is balance. Our human way -to always try to go to
extremes, not respecting the natural balance of all things...we try to draw a straight line
renting the spiral of life, and it damages. We in the US seem to want all for ourselves at
time (I write with shame and confusion) -not seeing how, as in the yin/yang image, that
leads right to nothing for us or anyone. where if we'd only surrender to balance- some for
all -ALL (us too) might prosper more...
I cant see images sent to the list -I can well imagine the Blue Dragon, though, the Beast
of Fire in Water, our ally.
And Victoria, our archivist, finds one of her earlier dreams of a dragon. It too has the
dragon in a place of respect, though fear accompanies the dream:
During some of this dream I had a sense of fear; of being out on a limb without obvious
support from anyone. I was in very dark woods and something with a big dragon's eye
that sometimes looked like a cat's eye or the eye of another animal as looking at me. This
thing was tremendously powerful and worthy of respect. When I made myself look
beyond my fear I could see that it wasn't trying to attack me; that perhaps it was new. Just
because something seems big, doesn't mean it can't feel shy too.
Our dreams and images of balance meet up with the growing instability in the Middle
East. Ilkin reports the terror she feels at the escalation in violence in Turkey as the PKK
(Kurdish terrorist group) uses the summer tourist season to attack Turkey and as the
Turkish government discusses both sending Turkish troops to Lebanon (as part of the UN
peace keeping force) and as it prepares to enter northern Iraq to attack PKK camps.
The occupation in Iraq and the instability in the Middle East was increasing
Ilkin begs us to try to understand what is happening. She writes: I was telling about my
worries for a long time (I was telling about the gathering of troops at the border)...I can
only repeat what I wrote to Jean and some other friends several times, again and again;
"please, please follow what is happening at this area of the world closely"...
Today as I write this months review, Mary sent in the latest news from Turkey of a
bomb blast in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey's southeast, with 7
of the dead being children.
Of dreams
Of course some of our dreams link directly to the terrors we hear about daily. One dream
was from Mary: It was something about terrorists trying to blow up something (I hear an
explosion and see smokey-cloudy-gray color all around me) at the Michigan and
Canadian border..
Is it a precognitive dream? For Mary it was very specific and had a clear link to previous
dream my guess is this is coming from my last dream about seeing the red Canadian
logo on the plane that "almost" crashed into a very high-tall mall.
Joy was our dreamer for the DaFuMu this month and a very appropriate dreamer too as
she is from Lebanese background. Her first dream is stark:
I dreamed a child took me by the hand to show me something that he had found
disturbing. It was indeed terribly disturbing: an animated diagram of a child who had
been playing alone in the tall grass outside his town, smashed by a helicopter's circle of
destruction so that only his upper half remained. I wished I hadn't seen it and I was glad it
was a line drawing rather than a graphically realistic horrifying bloody image. But there
was no escaping it. It was on the Internet; it was on a bag of bread. It was a reminder of
what really happens to the children of war and the imagination can do the rest.
Later as I woke, that anonymous dream-voice that speaks sometimes on waking said
cynically, if I remember right now: "There are one thousand one hundred eleven of them
- but the one doesn't matter." I thought the point must be that of 1,111 every one is ONE
and every one matters.
Another dream from Joy:
When I hoped to dream something more healing post-DaFuMu, the most vivid dream I
had was that someone had picked the two green lemons that I'd been watching slowly
grow on my little lemon tree. I recognized them immediately - one almost full-grown,
one small, both still very green -and I was so angry. Why would someone do this?
Couldn't they see these were nowhere near ripe yet, and now they'd never ripen?
Joy comments: I always wanted a lemon tree especially for flavoring Lebanese food -
almost every meal has a lemon in it - and just this year finally got a dwarf lemon tree that
I can move indoors in my non-Mediterranean winter. Pulling my cherished first new
lemons from the tree before they have a chance to grow and ripen is surely an overly-
gentle symbol for killing the children of Lebanon. Where does the healing come in?
Which Joy answers immediately herself with the memory of a book called The Lemon
Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan. The book
concludes with an account of how Jewish and Arab children have together planted seeds
salvaged from one desiccated lemon tree planted long ago behind one stone house. Here
is a review of the book: http://www.bookpage.com/0605bp/nonfiction/lemon_tree.html
Sonia gives us her first dream: a very appropriate one. The memory of her German
ancestors; their involvement in the holocaust helping where they could; their dream state
now (opening to happiness):
In the first dream I was in a big mansion as the other dreamer stated she was however,
my time period was the present except in the attic of the house. I have been in this
mansion in previous dreams, but the attic was always old and had no life to it. This time I
went upstairs and I heard lots of talking and laughing behind the door. I opened the door
and the first thing that came to my mind that these were people that had lived in Germany
during the holocaust. There clothing matched the time period and both my grandparents
(that are now deceased and Germans) were there. Everyone looked nice and healthy and
were gathering for a big meal. Besides my grandparents I had never seen any of these
people before.
The second dream I am not sure was even a dream because it happened so fast. The shape
of Christ (made with pure white light) appeared with a black background. It was hard for
me to see, but I had no doubt who the shape represented. The shape moved closer and
closer and then disappeared and I woke up.
And Rita sends us a chapter of her book detailing her own dreams and experiences of
healing [her] ancestral war wounds. The book is beautifully titled: Following my
dreamlines - living from the inside out
Of weeds
Where does our discussion of weeds begin? It is hard to say. Seeds as a symbol of
peace (and conflict) weave throughout our discussions. Jean reminded us that one of the
very first dreams was from Jody: The New Age Seed Company.
But weeds specifically: where did the discussion start? Probably unconsciously we made
a link to an article that Jennifer sent us from Starhawk (environmentalists and peace
keeper) in which she links the idea of exterminating weeds to the use of force in war as a
means of stopping something we dont like. Interestingly, that unconscious link came
through in a conscious request from Kathy to our two great flower photo senders (Kotaro
and Jennifer) for some pictures of weeds.
We received beautiful images of weeds from Japan from Kotaro and wonderful native
flowers from Joy in the US. More, we entered a whole discussion where the question of
weeds and invasion wove together.
Joy sent us her thoughts in which she weaves her love of native American plants with
stories of hollyhocks in China and Tibet and a mediation on how to roam and not be
invasive.
People tip the balance to where Mother Nature, who has to work with what she's got,
takes it from there. To name examples near my home, people scarcely know what the
hills of coastal California used to look like before oat grass arrived (with cattle, in the
historic past); and much of eastern Nevada will never be sagebrush again since cheatgrass
took over (all within about the last 5 years).
I don't want to take the analogy TOO far as there are things I'll do to a plant or plant
community that I'd never advocate for a human or human community! - but it goes back
to what I remarked about the world scene a week or two ago: we have to start where we
are. If we apply more awareness and a different set of values, we may be able to
influence future change to be less catastrophic and devastating.... in whatever realm we
can influence.
I'm pretty dedicated to defending an all-native flower garden. Almost all-native. I might
plant some hollyhocks.
Now this is important to me: I don't want anyone to run with my analogy and say that
people who go where they're not native become weeds. People are people; we belong to
the whole world; we wander and people new places; it's our nature. We also cling
tenaciously to ancestral homelands. We also, alas, invade and conquer. The extraordinary
thing about people is our capacity as individuals to choose to behave like cheatgrass or
hollyhocks.
Cheatgrass cheats by getting a head start: it sprouts in the fall while the native plants are
dormant, so by spring it's robbed their water and nutrients. By summer lightning season,
it's dropped its seeds and dried to a fine tinder. Flash! - a fire rages across the landscape,
killing everything. Next spring, the cheatgrass seeds germinate unharmed and miles and
miles of sagebrush country (with all its native wildflowers and birds and lizards and
voles) have been converted forever into rolling golden hills of beautiful waving
cheatgrass growing so densely that nothing else can ever again take hold. That's called a
cheatgrass invasion.
Hollyhocks were my dad's favorite flower; I used to plant them for him. They grow as
well here in the high desert as they do in an English country garden. When I went to
China this summer I was delighted to see them flourishing among brown rock walls in
the mountain villages of Sichuan. When I tell people back home, they wonder, "How did
they get there from England?" - before it occurs to them that it might have been the other
way around! So far my searching turns up equally-authoritative claims that they're native
to China and they're native to the Middle East. Trade between China and the Middle East
is ancient indeed. This woman of Middle Eastern descent and her partner of Chinese
descent rode a bus onto the Tibetan plateau marvelling at all the hollyhocks along the
way without knowing which of our ancestors first carried a pocketful of seeds which way
along the Silk Road.
I've never heard of a hollyhock invasion. I choose to be a hollyhock, big and adaptable
and colorful and slightly goofy-looking. I'd like to thrive and be loved anywhere, gently
without crowding anyone, and make a few seeds of brightness that the future can take or
leave.
And Diana takes the point to a longing: I wish life was as elegant as our ideals. But it
always gets so complicated.
Of relating to the sadnesses of others
This month Sonia asked a question that must arise for anyone who deliberately opens
his/her mind to the pain of others. She asked: How do you deal with the pain of knowing
how others are suffering? The more that I try to do for peace and make an effort to help
others the more intense the pain seems to get. I become aware. By pain I mean like an
emotional sadness. A sense of helplessness.
Joy found her answer in the Buddhist practice of Tonglen quoting from Pema Chodrons
book:
"The essence of tonglen practice is that on the in-breath you are willing to feel pain;
you're willing to acknowledge the suffering of the world.
."The essence of the out-
breath is the other part of the human condition. With every out-breath, you open. You
connect with the feeling of joy, well-being, satisfaction, tender heartedness, anything that
feels fresh and clean, wholesome and good. That's the aspect of the human condition that
we wish were the whole show.... You connect with that and you breathe it out so that it
can be experienced by everyone.
Olivia (just spinning in) has her own methods that are remarkably similar. She wrote:
How do I deal with the feelings? I just let them wash through me, go and blow my nose
if I must, and if it's something that makes me feel angry and helpless I send up a prayer,
often in the form of light enveloping the victim, if it's related to pain, or death.
Rita has gentle methods too for dealing with our awareness of pain: I allow whatever I
feel to move through me, whether it is pain, sorrow, joy or happiness. It is rather simple
in a way if I don't get my head in the way labelling it or doing something with it.
Kotaro sent a small opinion making the difference between understanding and
feeling the pain of others: To understand the pains of others is completely different
from to "feel" them or at least to try feeling them. So in this meaning, our imagination
and creative efforts will be needed at first.
Of dancing and action
And finally, one last rhizome. Some of those on the Bridge have been involved in peace
activities this month:
Sonia organized An EarthDance International Festival, held on Saturday, September 16
(http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/peacemonthevents.htm ). Some of the proceeds
are to be donated to the World Dreams Peace Bridge project: Aid for Traumatized
Children http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/aidforchildren.htm Jean and Stephen
were there, adding to the fund raising by distributing soft toys (a gift from Mary) to
children for a small donation.
Jean and others are working on the Tidewater Peace Alliance Celebration of UN
International Day of Peace on September 21st.
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/peacemonthevents.htm
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Dream: Moving On
Stan Kulikowski II
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
DATE : 6 oct 2006 07:50
DREAM : moving on
=( yesterday was a thursday. in the morning i had to get mother up early for a doctor's
appointment at the hospital. she did some psych tests of memory but the doctor refused
to allow me to sit with her.
it seemed he wanted to inquire about my relationship in case i was taking advantage of
her obviously weakened condition, but he said that he was satisfied that i was keeping her
in good stead. he said that i ought to get her out of the house as often as i could and
perhaps should get a pet for her to keep, but neither is something she ever wants to do. it
seems doctor examinations are never ending now which mother always dislikes them
sucking large chunks of money from insurance and doing nothing that really helps her. i
can see her point but feel that i should get her medical status confirmed so she will have a
local family doctor with the facts of her health and care. my laptop computer finally
returned from repair of the lightning strike last month so i could at last start digitizing my
dvd video project for the fourth time. i got to bed around midnight as usual. )=
the paddle wheel steamboat moves quietly on the surface of the river much like the
morning mist that lifts off the water. the constant slush slush of the paddles as they churn
the river is just about all that is heard at this early hour of the day. the pilot in the
steering house up on the top layer makes certain to find where the final sand bars have
settled before leaving the deep current and making for the docks of the city on the shore.
mary temple is a proper lady with her hair all tucked up under her hat, wearing thin
leather gloves with a small ivory button under the wrist. she is one of the upper society
of the merchant families, not really old money of aristocrats but comparing herself
favorably to their kind. she is emancipated enough that she never wore a whale bone
corsette, but retained the several layers slips and petticoats beneath her proper wool dress
and vest. she was definitely not one of those young women who called themselves
flappers and smoked tobacco openly whenever licensenous saxophone music played.
mary waited while the passengers disembarked for the city then the cargo being offloaded
was towed from where it had been strapped to the open deck. she was not going ashore.
she never did while the river boat made its stops in the various cities along the journey.
mary had no interest in the tourist promenades of the town. she had a more serious
purpose for her travel and would just wait aboard until the journey continued upriver.
since the riverboat was a side wheeler, there was a small open deck on the stern that faced
out into the water. there she would while away a few hours with another passenger she
had met. he was a little older than her, and seemingly from a century earlier, dressed in
stiff starched collars and heavy wool fabrics. they had got on well when she confessed to
an interest in fishing although she had not any experience with the modern poles and
tackles since her father had taught her with nothing but cane poles. she enjoyed the
splash of the bobber and the way it settled itself into its place on the water when casting it
out. they never seemed to catch any fish who were wise to avoid their bait just off the
docks, but mary did not mind as the pleasure in fishing for her came from the waiting on
the water, not the scurry of landing an unfortunate creature.
before lunch the captain of the boat came to shoo them off the deck and put an end to
their fishing reveries. it was time for the new cargo to be loaded and so they must retire
to their suites to endure the hot part of the day, napping in light linen. on her way to her
room, mary saw the thin children along the halls with their dark hollow eyes. they were
sick and so never seemed to go ashore, not strong enough to stand in the light so they
kept to shadows along the walls much like mice. it did not bother mary that no one else
ever seemed to notice these children and went about their business as if they were not
there. she saw them and felt a little sympathy toward them, but she had never been a
mother and lacked some of the more tender tendencies that more experienced women had
toward the young.
by evening her male companion returned for her and they went to large gaming room
where passengers normally spent their idle nights.
today, being ashore, the attendance was small but an orchestra from the town had been
commissioned to fill the hall with music. this was one of the main intentions of her
journey, to study classical music as she had always wanted to direct an orchestra in
performance, but this was a profession that accepted no women. so she studied from the
side, behind the curtains waving her ivory baton in imitation of the actual director in front
of the musicians. her companion waited with her patiently, but they were joined by an
older man who seemed from an even earlier century with wild hair that stuck outward
from his head like it wanted to abandon his scalp. this man had been a successful
conductor and though he held his baton in an old fashioned style and never moved his
head toward the active sections producing the music in the modern way, mary was still
grateful for his tutelage. so the three of them waited out of sight behind the curtains
while the music swelled and swayed. tonight was beethoven and a fine rendition it
proved to be.
when the evening of music had ended and the muscians were packing up their
instruments with little discussion, i went ashore with the few patrons for a final nightcap
upon the town, leaving mary and her companions backstage as they usually spent their
time. also as my custom, i drank too much and spent too much effort trying to talk with
strangers who had no interest in the things i had to say. the ride back in a small service
bus was uneventful except that the driver drove way too fast for safety, but he seemed
well familiar with the road. he deliberately drove over a swell in the pavement so the rear
wheels left the pavement at one point and gave a satisfying double thump when bouncing
back. i was glad to get back to the riverboat in one piece if not a little scattered from my
entertainments.
mary seemed to wandering the boat approaching a state of disarrangement. as she went
to the end of the bar with its array of liquor bottles, her clothing seemed to tatter and
disintegrate into small scattered pieces as she approached the doorway that lead to the
galley. reaching to door with her hand, it felt surprisingly hot to the touch so she opened
it. the other side was ablaze with flames that paused with the breath of fresh air she had
admitted by opening the door, then from the center a ball of fire swelled up and rushed
upon her startled face. the ends of her hair and the edges of her clothing caught fire
rapidly as the wave of flame approached her.
they say you can never remember the moment of your death because you are not really
there to experience it. how many times this riverboat explodes when its boilers catch
from the galley fire is something no one will ever know.
the next morning, as usual, the boat is ready to disembark and continue its perpetual
journey up river. not as usual, mary is dressed in her travelling clothes with bags packed
to finally leave.
her siamese cat is meowing from its box cage.
"i am ready to move on." she announces to her male companion, the one just slightly
older than herself. since i have seen her plight and the manner of her death, she is finally
ready to acknowledge it.
this is a major change in her status and she thinks that she is able to understand part of it
at least.
"i am staying to continue." the nameless man tells her. he has no reason not to resume
the familiar passage ahead. mary nods her head to him politely and turns to walk off into
the mysterious light that exceeds the sun.
=( awake at 07:35. the woman aboard this ghost ship is totally unknown to me. the name
'mary temple' is no one i have ever known, indeed everyone comes from a time of my
grandparents and before. i had the feeling that they had not all died in the same incident
that i saw which killed mary, but had collected from various river craft over a longer
period of time before. certainly the plague ridden children in the shadows were unlikely
to be passengers aboard a gambling boat. i wonder that someone as prim and proper as
mary seemed to be would be there except for her desire to take part in concert
entertainment. this dream is mostly third party style observation except for my brief
appearance in the one episode of evening drinking ashore, but i manage to return in order
to view the rerun of mary's sudden death by fire. what deeper meaning such a dream
could have for me, of course, i have not the slightest notion, but it did seem to be a
picturesque experience and i can be glad at least for that. a dream peopled mainly by
ghosts and suffering death does not seem on the surface to be an aspect of health or good
prospects. )=
--
. i lift my glass to the awful truth
=== that you can't reveal to the ears of youth
| | -- l cohen (1972) closing time
--- stankuli@etherways.com
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
DreamRePlay
David Jenkins, PhD
The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
The Nightmare: Getting Beyond the Climax
Almost everyone has them.
You know it was not ''real.'' It was ''only a dream.'' But nightmares are powerful
experiences of our fears. Shaking them off can be tough.
During a nightmare, we lose our ability to think and act clearly. Courage abandons us
and, instead, a sense of fear, often laced with guilt and shame, overpowers us. We are
attacked, humiliated, betrayed, and emotionally tortured. In a nightmare, we have no
weapons; friends become enemies; the world is unmanageable, revealing our
vulnerabilities at every turn.
How do you get rid of nightmares?
If you compare your nightmare to a story or movie, you'll see that the dream stops at the
climax the scene when the hero is in the most vulnerable situation, where the audience
gasps in horror sure that the hero will die.
Your task is to transform that climax into a resolution, by finishing the scene and
allowing your dreamer, the hero of your dream life, to triumph over adversity.
One of the easiest ways to "fix" a nightmare is to use the Movie Method:
Wanda's dream
Two men are chasing me. I know that they will kill me if they catch me. I manage to run
away but then I'm trapped on a balcony. I look down to a courtyard but it's too far away
I'm certain that the jump would kill me. I am helpless.
This nightmare had plagued Wanda since she was a teenager. Creating her own movie
script, Wanda imagined Susan Sarandon playing her. Wanda decided that, at the climax,
Tim Robbins would come in. He'd climb halfway up to the balcony and hold her hand so
that she could jump without hurting herself.
It made her laugh to imagine herself being courted from a balcony. What began as a
nightmare was already turning into a romantic comedy.
Her nightmare disappeared in a single session.
Jack's nightmare
I dream I am back at my old job. They have overwhelmed me with work. The cash
register is broken and I am dropping things all over the floor in front of the customers.
Jack had worked as a checker in a very understaffed supermarket and this had happened
to him more than once in waking life.
To fix this nightmare, the dreamer asserted himself in the situation. In his imagination,
Jack went back into the dream situation and told his managers exactly what they were
doing wrong. He told them what staff they needed on his shift. Then he went to each
customer and explained that due to unusual circumstances he would not be able to serve
them.
The key for Jack was to replay the dream to the climax and then continue it to a
resolution.
This twenty year nightmare subsided in the next dream, was uneventful in the third dream
and hasn't been seen since January 2006, five months ago.
Summary
The point, with nightmares, is make them stop. They ruin your sleep and they disturb
your daytime abilities.
With Dream RePlay, you can expect dramatic improvements in your dream life: instead
of foes and fears you can experience friends and fun. Your nightmares will decrease and
even stop after one effort when you move the story of your dream beyond the climax.
DREAM ANALYSIS BY TELEPHONE
David is available for dream consultations by phone. The current cost is $100 per hour. A
typical dream analysis might consist of a 30-45 minute discussion of the dream and a
follow up after the next dream.
David's hours for telephone consultations are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 7 pm,
Pacific Time. To make an appointment, please email him with two or three times when
you are available and your phone number. He will e-mail you back with an appointment
time, payment information and request a confirmation. David's e-mail address is
davidj@dreamreplay.com
This is a great way to begin your exploration of dream work. It is also perfect when you
don t have the time to attend a regular class but want to discuss a particular dream.
SHARE DREAM OF THE WEEK
If you enjoy reading Dream of the Week, please tell your friends about it. They can read
back issues and subscribe (free) at DreamOfTheWeek.com.
Best wishes
David Jenkins
Dream RePlay
email: davidj@dreamreplay.com
phone: (510) 644 2369
web: http://dreamreplay.com
DREAM ANALYSIS BY TELEPHONE
A phone consultation is a great way to begin your exploration of dream work. It is also
perfect when you dont have the time to attend a regular class but want to discuss a
particular dream.
David is available for dream consultations by phone. The current cost is $50 per hour. A
typical dream analysis might consist of a 30-45 minute discussion of the dream and a
follow up after the next dream.
Davids hours for telephone consultations are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 7 pm,
Pacific Time. To make an appointment, please email him with two or three times when
you are available and your phone number. He will e-mail you back with an appointment
time, payment information and request a confirmation. Davids e-mail address is
davidj@dreamreplay.com
SHARE DREAM OF THE WEEK
If you enjoy reading Dream of the Week, please tell your friends about it. They can read
back issues and subscribe (free) at DreamOfTheWeek.com.
David Jenkins
Dream RePlay
email: davidj@dreamreplay.com
web: http://dreamreplay.com
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Nightmares - An Introduction
Richard Wilkerson
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Updated from Electric Dreams 5(10).
There are a wide range of events during sleep and wake that are often referred to as
"nightmares" and it is wise to learn to distinguish between them. Most of what we call
nightmares are simply extreme reactions and fear that accompany uncomfortable dreams
that occur from time to time in most everyone, usually towards the end of the sleep cycle.
Often we are awakened by a nightmare and there can be strong feelings of sadness, anger
or guilt, but usually fear and anxiety. Often we are being chased, and it's not unlikely for
children to be chased by animals and fantasy figures, while adults are often chased by
male adults.
Night Terror vs. Nightmare
Night terrors usually occur during the first hour or two of sleep. Screaming and thrashing
about are common. The sleeper is hard to awaken and usually remembers no more than
an overwhelming feeling or a single scene, if anything. Children who have night terrors
also may have a tendency to sleepwalk and/or urinate in bed. The causes of night terrors
are not well understood, though it appears that night terrors are from a distinctly different
stage of sleep. Children usually stop having them by puberty. They may be associated
with stress in adults. A consultation with a physician may be useful if the night terrors are
frequent or especially disturbing.
Why do we have nightmares?
Nightmares may have several causes, including drugs, medication, illness, trauma or they
may have no related cause and be spontaneous. Often they occur when there is stress in
one's waking life, and when major life changes are occurring.
What can be done about nightmares?
The International Association for the Study of Dreams notes that "It really depends on the
source of the nightmare. To rule out drugs, medications or illness as a cause, discussion
with a physician is recommended. It is useful to encourage young children to discuss
their nightmares with their parents or other adults, but they generally do not need
treatment. If a child is suffering from recurrent or very disturbing nightmares, the aid of a
therapist may be required. The therapist may have the child draw the nightmare, talk with
the frightening characters, or fantasize changes in the nightmare, in order help the child
feel safer and less frightened ."
Nightmares also offer the same opportunity that other dreams do, to investigate the
symbols and imagery for life enhancement. The challenge in the last few decades for the
dreamwork movement has been to teach a variety of methods that replace the old phase
"It was just a dream." In American schools, people like Jill Gregory and Ann Wiseman
teach children coping mechanisms that allow the child to come into relationship with the
dream monsters and fears in a novel and related manner. Alan Siegel, PhD, Kelly
Bulkeley, PhD and others teach parents how to handle their children's nightmares.
Ernest Hartmann and other researchers are finding that those who have "thin"
personalities, or sensitive, receptive individuals, are more likely to have nightmares than
"thick" personalities. Pioneers like Linda Magallón, Stephen Laberge and Jayne
Gackenbach are teaching people to take control of their dreams and have the outcomes
they wish rather than becoming the dream's victim.
CyberDreamwork offers a Nightmare Response Line
Nightmare Response: 1-866-DRMS911
This is not therapy, but a qualified person will get back to you.
The International Association for the Study of Dreams offers a Nightmare Resources
page. Here you will find among its members the top researchers in the field.
http://asdreams.org/nightmare/index.htm
NIGHTMARE BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY IASD
Special Issue of Dream Time, with many researchers articles on Nightmares and
Children. Much of the work is applicable to adults. Volume 15 numbers 1&2
Winter/Spring 1998 Available via ISD www.asdreams.org
Garfield, Patricia (online) http://www.patriciagarfield.com/idx_library_childs.htm
Nightmares and what to do about them.
Wiseman, Ann Sayre (1986, 1989). Nightmare help. A guide for adults and children. Ten
Speed Press.
Krakow, Barry, and Neidhardt, Joseph (1992). Conquering bad dreams and nightmares.
Berkeley Books.
Hartmann, Ernest (1984).The Nightmare: The Psychology and Biology of Terrifying
Dreams. Basic books.
Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory on the Origin and Meaning of Dreams. A new
book by Ernest Hartmann, M.D. is now available for ordering through Plenum
Publishers.
Siegel, Alan; Bulkeley, Kelly (1998). Dreamcatching: Every parent's guide to exploring
and understanding children's dreams and nightmares. Three Rivers Press.
MORE ON NIGHTMARES
Cushway, Delia, and Sewell, Robyn (1992) Counseling with dreams and nightmares.Sage
publications.
Kellerman, Henry (Ed.) (1987). The Nightmare: Psychological and Biological
Foundations. Columbia University Press.
Titanic Nightmares Scream Warnings About Real Damage
Linda Lane Magallón
Electric Dreams 10(10), 203.
Dreamgate.com/ed
Lazar, Moshe (Ed) (1983). The Anxious Subject: Nightmares and Daymares in Literature
and Film.Undena.
Downing, J., and Marmorstein, E. (Eds.) Dreams and Nightmares: A Book of Gestalt
Therapy Sessions. New York: Harper and Row, 1973
Ok, that was the basic stuff. Now for very advanced players, and article on cultivating the
personality that can handle nightmares
.
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of Dreaming
Richard Wilkerson
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
This article was originally published (2000 Oct).Electric Dreams 7(10) as a kind of
preliminary exercise in the exploration of horror and developed later in Transgressive
Dreamwork (see http://dreamgate.com/pomo/ ) but I feel that it begins to create
alternatives to fleeing from nightmares, or abolishing them. In this sense, it's more in the
tradition of Jungian Shadow work, but with some postmodern twists.
There is a lot of jargon in this file that may be cleared up if you read my article on
Deleuze and Guattari's postmodern philosophy,
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/articles_rcw/deleuze98.htm
I.
Signs and Subject, all well greased and in place. All social/familial taboos in operation.
All tasks of production and consumption completed and finally Brian goes to sleep. Some
time later that night Brian awakes, too frightened to scream, heart pounding and he is on
some kind of roller coaster ride in a land without gravity. Brian just had a nightmare.
There has been a break in the flow and the insertion of a nightmare machine in the
factory of the unconscious. It shreds its way through signification (what is what) and
subjectification (who is who). The usual codes have unraveled, and the flow of de-coded
signs circulate in things that are only themselves. Brian' ears are red and buzzing, and he
wonders why they are on his foot. He hears a old voice of a therapist asking what he
thinks the ear on the foot represents, and now he knows the therapist must be mad,
speaking about what the falling mast might mean symbolically as another wave pushes
his ship under the swell. Both a breakthrough and a breakdown of a world that revolves
around the subject. Now the subject is whirled around. Around may not be the right word,
as around implies a center and there is no center here.
Standard wisdom dictates that we move away from offensive and frightening scenes.
These reactions keep us out of trouble, keep our hands from being burned by the stove,
keep germs off our food, keep our bones from being broken by cars and cliffs. However,
this aversion reaction also keeps us in line and in alignment with early training that may
no longer be valid. Taboos may be said to function in the same way. There are boundaries
we are taught not to transgress, or there will be Hell to pay. But were these boundaries
put into place by a perfect parent, guardian or teacher? Unlikely. And in a society whose
parameters and values change at an unparalleled pace, one's value programs need to be
upgraded more than once a generation.
In fact, this is the classic definition of the neurotic. The neurotic is a person who
encounters offensive, frightening scenes and backs away. But they keep backing away
until there is no further back to go, becoming deeply compressed within themselves, and
no longer venturing out the front door, no longer touching anything without washing their
hands, no longer peering over steep cliffs.
Societies too become neurotic, become paranoid, and then begin trying to control
everything, the media, the way children are raised, what we eat and drink, who we talk to.
Modern societies have tried to do away with these tyrannical systems, but in doing so
have not replaced them with anything, and so our values have become confused,
conflicted, fickle. One group tries to save trees, and tries to save the jobs so they can feed
their family. The higher, synthetic truth that will bring together opposites is harder and
harder to find. When people don't have an inner value to call on, they look around, see
what the neighbors are doing, and follow suite. There is no real inner status, so outward
signs of status become important.
Dreamworkers have always been aware of this condition of the retreating self/society and
the machines that keep it in place. Spiritual dreamwork discusses these issues in terms of
enlightenment and salvation. That is, there is a veil of illusion we call our lives, and the
paths that allow us to transcend these illusions. Psychological dreamwork discusses these
illusions in terms of neurosis and psychosis, and the appropriate level of challenges and
supports are set up to allow the individual to make choices from places other than
overwhelming affective/emotional states. Postmodern dreamwork addresses these
illusions more as social constructs and looks for ways to subvert repressive forces and
open up creative lines of escape. In this view, the nightmare is not something for the
subject to escape from, but a path to escape the neurotic subject.
II.
What are those gaps in the dream, those shifting scenes of the dream?
The self passes through various states as it (they) rolls around the body without organs.
Some of these states are quite discontinuous. Freud and Jung both addressed this
discontinuity. They knew it was more than a lapse in brain activation.
Interestingly, recently, the REM theory of dreaming collapsed. In 1953, Aserinsky, a grad
student of Nathaniel Kleitmann, found that when you waken a person whose eyes were
moving rapidly during sleep, they tended to recall dreams. Eventually the REM cycle was
found to be fairly regular and that it activated parts of the neo-cortex through fairly
random neural bursts. Since then, Alan Hobson and his friends have insisted that
dreaming is simply the sleepy mind dealing with these random firings and gaps are times
when there are pauses in this activation.
Over the last few years, a whole new picture began to emerge from the studies of a
neurosurgeon who followed the dreams of patients with brain damage. Mark Solms noted
that the activation sequences that the brain needed to dream (or more accurately, to recall
dreams) was *independent* of the REM activation. Oh, REM brain stem activation got
this new Dream-On sequence going at times ( a spiral like activation that cycles through
our motivation centers, our spacio-temporal-imaginal centers, our higher visual centers)
but so did other things, and once activated, it follows its own independent activation.
But all these notions seemed dated, or limited, when considered within a Deleuzio-
guattarian engagement. Molar aggregates scrape and fight about territory all the time, and
when this occurs over millions of years, brain structures get pushed to the limit and turn
into revolutions.
Dream discontinuity here becomes more a matter of intersecting lines disrupting the
subject of the conjunctive synthesis. At least from the point of view of the body without
organs.
The body without organs. Imagine a body that has not been organized into brains, hearts,
genitals, legs, arms, skin. A body like this has no real interior, there are just flows, almost
a perverse polymorphic distribution of intensities that offer a smooth surface around
which the dynamics of the subjects, the objects, the affects, the cognitions, the forces of
production and consumption travel, not in paths where the end is known, but in partial
paths, in trajectories. An egg, crisscrossed by forces, dynamics, vectors. As we approach
the surface of this egg, the intensity drops to zero and everything begins to slide.
In waking life, the ego uses narrative bridges to compensate for this discontinuity. Even
when we wake up, the technique for learning dream recall is journalling.
But when sleeping, the access to the neurotransmitters that allow identity structures to
rigidly hold together and produce grids, thereby reterritorializing dominate cultural
axiomatics, disappear. That is, the dream state is full of narratives and subjects, feelings
and thoughts, repressions and productions, and these work in a way that is unfamiliar to
the subject, who upon waking may recall a "dream" but in fact is only recalling the last
slice, the one it can identify as a story.
Disjunctions appear as gaps between dreams because the subject relates to them from its
experiential story-frame. Deterritorializations may be experienced as apocalyptic or may
be seen as loss of consciousness. Each dream story, while it is being produced, is like a
child playing on a train track, and a track at the intersection of an infinite vortices. The
subject consumes the dream as narrative, but can only rarely use that narrative structure
to reterritorialize its identity. Again, probably due on the bio-chemical level to the
dissolving or wavy grid of control that occurs during dreaming. (Interestingly activated
first by the very spot that leucotomies -earlier called lobotomies - are performed, ie
dopamine, active-producing, connecting, interest-producing, action-producing, desiring
centers).
Gaps in the Dream. Freud saw them as a cover-up, but one in which a sharp mind could
follow back by association, to a source. Oedipus gouging out his eyes, then retracing his
steps of the crime. Whether one goes for the theory of being able to recover authorial
intention or not, the process, free association, did emerge as a skill by which the subject
could begin to produce his/her own streams and lines of escape.
Jung, in his charming Hegelian way, saw the gap as a portal being held open by two
unreconcilable opposites, two things that the ego just could not let go of, yet could not
have, two horrors, two beasts in eternal struggle for one reality they could never both
inhabit. Through this portal held by the struggle emerged the uncanny transcendent.
OK, perhaps its just another tyrant awakening in the desert and slinking off to Bethlehem,
but when the dream becomes one of many sites where the intolerable may first occur to
us, where the molar limit produces molecular cracks and bleeds the brood of the night,
then here is a factory that produces the un-containable rupture across which the nomad
may skate.
III.
Like desire (and madness) dreams seem to be the most powerful when they bring us into
contact with radical otherness. Daniel brings Nebruchanezer into contact with a dream
that transforms the religions of Babylon. Joseph brings Pharaoh into contact with a dream
that alters the state of Egypt. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is written after a Robert Lewis
Stevenson encounters his own Hyde in a dream. Freud and Jung encounter desire and
madness in dreams and create and alter the course of psychotherapy.
This radical otherness is better characterized as a continual process of becoming other,
which begins in the desire to escape bodily limitations. These limitations can be both
cultural as well as natural. To regress back to representations for a moment, in dreams we
often find ourselves up against our own cultural and psychophysical limit-expectations.
We stop at red lights in our car in a dream. We open dream doors. We walk upstairs and
eat meals. Yet in other dreams we fly, we breath water, we walk through walls, men
become women, we can be several identities at once, we become animals and crooks, we
have sex with taboo people and inanimate objects.
And perhaps most radically, we stop being we. I am not the center of my dream, but just
one trajectory intersecting the dream.
*zzzzz* Desire as productive, creating breaks in the flow and connecting one desiring
machine to another.
*zzzzz* Dreams/nightmares as productive, and what they are producing and how does
this work? Careful, does each dream produce a singularity, or can we abstract and
generalize since we have all been caught in the same habits of western culture?
*zzzzz* Dreams/nightmares in their different phases of deterritorialization of subjective
space, their territorialization of brain space, the teterritorialization of ?
*zzzzz* If you must remain psychoanlaytic, how about a slight shift? Instead of seeing
nightmares as a failure of the censor, what happens if we posit that the nightmare is a
deflection of something so ungraspable that it can only be said to be a successful
censoring of that experience.
*zzzzz* Dreams/Nightmares as ruptures between the binary thinking of
conscious/unconscious, wake/sleep, aware/not aware, here/not here?
*zzzzz* What might have young Felix or Gilles have thought to themselves when they
first had to tackle Descartes Dream problem about reality and knowing?
*zzzzz* How might the dream/nightmare be seen as a co-patriot of disfamiliarization?
In ancient Delphi, people would sleep on the steps of the temple of Apollo, seeking
(incubating) the dream that would allow them access to the oracle inside. Mythically, this
access to the truth was a later imposition of Apollo on a pre-Greek people who practiced
dance and rites that were assigned by the Greeks to Dionysos. Pan is one of his entourage
and was said to have taught Apollo dream work at Delphi. In the Dionysian groups, the
questions or problems, if that is what they really were, were danced along the hillsides
and meadows and involved transformations in ecstasy. This moving-into may be
distinguished from Apollo's seeing-from afar. With the dominance of Apollo, the dramas
were all contained in the amphitheater and the ecstasies relocated to the dream (and the
one oracle, who was imprisoned in the center of the temple and surrounded by the priests
who did all the interpreting of visions and dreams). This same set-up was found in the
cult of Asklepios (Aesculapius in Latin). At these popular dream healing sanctuaries the
amphitheater was ever near the spa. The patients would be cured when they encountered
Asklepios or one of his family or animals in a dream. The becoming other, so to speak,
was limited to particular containing vessels. Still, Dionysos is seen as Apollo's dark
brother and has his own months where he is still the god at Delphi.
Like Dionysos, the nightmare remains nomadic subject, the free autonomous subject
which exists momentarily in an ever shifting array of possibilities as desiring machines
distribute flows across the body without organs.
------------------
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From the Dream Section editor Kat Peters-Midland :
This months dream section is short, but it has some very interesting dreams of a black
bird biting, hearing voices on a haunted pager, digging for gold, and a yellow rattle snake
following
Dream title: The Repetitive Car Ride
Dream date: none given
Dreamer name: Dream-Keeper
Dream text: I am riding in a van going through city and states with no real destination in
mind. I am not driving but my mother is. My father never seems to be there. We then
decide that we want to go fishing and head off down the road to a pond of some sort. But
then we change our minds and decide to go somewhere else. We set off on this road that
feels so familiar. As we drive I notice that the bridge that we are crossing runs out. And
we have to jump the water to get to the shore or the road at the end of the water. But yet
we aren't shocked that the road runs out but it feels like it's just another route. But as we
cross I get jumpy and we always barely make it. And then the dream stops there.
Dream comments: I have had this dream several times and most of the time as I am
coming out of the dream I tend to feel as if I am falling and I hit the ground in the dream I
wake up and the strong pull is gone.
Dream title: bitten by a black bird with red markings on it
Dream date: 10-01-2006
Dreamer name: precious2god
Dream text: I dreamed I was upstairs in an abandoned house. It was a house that I was
interested in buying. There was a hole in the roof and I saw a black and red colored bird
fly in. I put my hands up to cover my face and it bit me on my finger.
Dream comments: My older sister passed away 9-30-2006 - we were not close. I wonder
if it had anything to do with her
Dream title: haunted pager
Dream date: 9/29/06
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I have a haunted Nextel that had voices I knew from work. They said very
unpleasant things and scary things too .
Dream comments: It kind creeped me out a little
Dream title: Shark
Dream date: 8/1/06
Dreamer name: Sadgirl
Dream text: I see myself in the ocean and I am in a black scuba diving outfit. I see this
old ship sunken at the bottom and I am trying to get to it. The water is clear and I can see
the bubbles of my scuba tank. All of a sudden I see this great white shark and I am
afraid. I am frozen and as it is about to eat me I wake up.
Dream comments: none
Dream title: Snake
Dream date: 5/15/06
Dreamer name: Sadgirl
Dream text: I see this yellow rattle snake, where the rattle is black and has the numbers
1,2,3 on the rattle. I am not afraid of it, but I do not want to be around it, I keep trying to
move but it won't let me leave it keeps following me, and then I wake up.
Dream comments: no comments
Dream title: torn and confused
Dream date: 9/14/06
Dreamer name: anonymous
Dream text: I was in this house, in one room there was an ex of mine. My ex kissed me
and I told him I didn't want to do anything with him. In another room was another ex of
mine who I had slept with. Afterwards, I looked out of the window of the room to see the
ocean and a whale that had beached itself. A baby whale was also on the beach dead. I
then leave the room to go downstairs only to run into the man I'm currently dating. He
tries to hug and kiss me and I push him away.
Dream comments: I was told that fish mean pregnancy. I don't understand why my exs
were in my dream and why I pushed my current boyfriend away.
Dream title: Digging for gold
Dream date: 9-22-06
Dreamer name: nighttime13
Dream text: Im in a hotel pool outdoors. The bottom of the pool is sand instead of
cement. Scattered throughout within the sand is many pieces of jewelry that people have
lost. I'm finding many, many pieces and lay claim to it. I find rings with beautiful gems. I
find pearl earrings. I couldn't believe all the money I'd make cashing it all in. Then
I
awake.
Dream comments: none
--
Stan Kulikowski II
DATE : 11 sep 2006 04:58
DREAM : red potato woman
=( yesterday was a sunday. i mowed the front yard and worked in the flower beds,
cutting out thick roots that had sprouted oak and other tall shoots. mother spent the
evening watching reruns. we avoided most of the 9-11 commemoratives on the major
channels. i am tired of all of the dreary politics of death that surround the substitution of
shallow reactive security for our dwindling few liberties. we do not honor our
catastrophic dead by throwing more lives of our soldiers at oil rich countries who did not
attack us and have come to hate us even more for such heavy handed and misguided
arrogance. staying the course in this politic means repeating a wrong until it becomes
right. a dreary night for me indeed. i got to sleep around 01:00.
)=
the neurologist has his hard rubber hammer and is thumping me on both knees and
tickling the soles of my feet to see my legs jerk and twitch. apparently he is happy to see
how my reflexes respond. he thumps me a few more places and tells me that i am
recovering fine, better than expected. this makes me feel that i have accomplished
something grand.
i get up and look around as he confers with my personal therapist.
she is a good sized, meaty girl rather like one of the women from r crumb comics with
powerful long thighs but a well formed face of some beauty. she brushes back a stray
lock of her short blonde hair as she considers something the doctor has said to her. their
sense of secrecy in talking where i can not hear them makes me a little concerned.
eventually my therapist comes over to me and says that we can go now.
i am ready to leave, but as i start to walk away after her, my legs ache and the front half
of both of my feet downright hurt with every step i take. i figure the exercise will do
them good and might work out some of the pain, so i continue on. it is her job after all to
see that i do what is necessary for my condition to improve.
i follow her through an open street market where various women merchants have their
wares spread out. my therapist fingers some of the jewelry as we pass but does not stop
to buy anything. i would like to get her something expensive but i find that i have no
money in the pockets of my jeans.
soon we come to the end of the street with the market and there is an open air public
restroom constructed of flat plywood panels that have been painted in white and red. she
pulls open the privacy door and steps inside to take a piss as i wait outside.
when she is done, the privacy panel swings open. she is just pulling up her tight pants so
i can see a flash of her pink underwear. before the therapist can turn around to flush the
toilet, a smaller girl scoots up on her knees to pull the flush handle for her and takes out a
toilet bowl brush with a canister of powdered cleanser. the young girl begins to shake
and brush up the bowl to a sparkling white.
"you can never be too clean or too right." she sings to herself as she works.
i recognize that phrase. this cleaning girl is a trainee of the red potato woman. i have
read something about this in comic books but i never expected any of it to be real. the
red potato woman is something of a mystic who addresses gatherings of women on the
edge of town. she imparts wisdom to them and helps them accessorize their fashions in a
consistent but oddly ornate style. this girl has sparkling huge ear rings with a matching
bracelet that clinks on the toilet bowl as she vigorously brushes around and around with
the foaming cleanser.
there is a mirror on the back side of the open privacy panel and in it i see my reflection. i
have a bit of a shock. it is not my face that is looking back at me, but some other man a
little younger than me. he has black hair and a swarthy look. the front of my face is
clean shaven, but down the cheeks and under the jaw is a short fuzzy dark beard. i do not
like the look of this and resolve to shave it off at the first opportunity. just now, i need to
figure out why i am in the body of some one than other myself. i think i was relatively
handsome compared to this rather seedy appearance, but i guess that i have to make do
with it for now at least.
there is a train track that runs back along the edge of the town which is little more than
the single street with the market sales and a few buildings. i limp over a waiting flatbed
car that is only starting to move and leap on board for a ride. my therapist comes along
and the trainee girl scoots over moving on knuckles and knees like cripples in india who
never heard of wheelchairs. i suspect that she is not impaired in any way, just adopting
this posture as part of her penance.
my therapist takes firm hold of my legs below the knees and does some inspection with a
slight massage. as she slowly works her way up my thighs and onto my hip bones, she
rocks my body back on some sort of pivot so my spine straightens out horizontal on the
flatbed. it feels better to stretch out like this. she then lays her long firm body over on
top of mine and i wonder if we are going to have sex out here in the open like this. i do
not have anything against this proposition as she rubs into me with her groin.
we do not get any further as the train comes to a stop back at the far end of town. a short
ride, but i do feel much better as we roll off the flatbed. the little trainee girl follows us,
this time walking upright like a normal person. we pass by a kiosk selling bundles of
incense and then open tables selling silk scarves. when we pass by some jewelry tables,
the trainee girl takes up a bright pink crystal ring which does not match the white
diamonds of her bracelet and ear rings. she does not pay for it, but the vendor lady seems
to know that she is privileged as an initiate of the cult.
at the very end of the street there is a small amphitheater and at the center of a small
gathering sits the red potato woman on the grassy ground. she has a rather plain
appearance, antiglamorous but with a delicate yet wholesome feel to her like she only
feeds on organic grains and fruits. when she speaks to someone it always with some
parable or proverb.
"the future always comes with some surprise so we meet it with happy wonder when it
finally arrives." the red potato woman is holding the hands of one of her supplicants to
impart her blessing. i am listening from a distance but am clearly outside the area of
influence. as a man i would not be welcome any nearer the cult.
my therapist takes me by the hand to lead me away. as we pass a junk table at a tag sale,
i pick up a black iron lightning rod which i brandish like a sword. "you are an natural
swordsman." she tells me with a smile of some triumph in my recovery. i think i am not
that natural at it. i trained in fencing for several years when i was stan. i take a few
practice lunges and note that this body does not extend smoothly.
the red potato trainee comes over to sit on the end of a table in order to watch me go
through the manual of arms with the lightning rod. "how were you hurt?' she asks me.
"i do not remember anything about it." i tell her. "i suspect it must have been a
motorcycle crash. both of my legs and feet hurt."
my therapist shakes her head. "no, you had some unknown neurologic
degeneration, no traumatic injury at all." i am disappointed. my
brain just wimped out with some malfunction. at least disability through active
misadventure has some noble implications to it which a defect of constitution does not. i
am certain that the red potato wisdom would disapprove of this sentiment as probably
being too masculine.
the trainee girl has been avoiding me, usually cringing when i come too close and never
looking at me directly. but now, she timidly unfolds a little and glances into my eyes
with a shyness. her training in the cult has been to mistrust men and the things they do,
but since i am broken and recovering somewhat i seem less threatening. she has become
curious about me. her eyes are gray with slight yellow rays near the dark pupils and they
seem to draw me into them as she unfolds a little more toward me. i feel that her red
potato powers are taking me over.
with a very shy slowness, she reaches over to kiss me slightly on the corner of my mouth.
when she does not pull back, i move in to kiss her firmly in the center of her lips which
are incredibly soft and warm. after a long kiss, she pulls back with complete smile on her
face. her lips have turned a powder blue color. from the little crumpled serving girl
cleaning the toilets she has transformed into a radiant vision of young feminine beauty. i
do not think her confidence now was intended in her red potato curriculum so she may
not fit back into the cult as easily with this slight taste of sex on her lips.
=( awake at 04:53. the feel of injuries were the same as i experience everyday with the
diabetic neuropathy for the last two years, so my body no longer feels like it is mine, the
one i grew up
with. i do not know any of these women from waking life. the red
potato woman at the center of this reminded me of the indie film actress, jeanine
garafolo. at least she could certainly play the
part if this were a movie. at the end, i seem to be rather like eve
in the garden of eden, tantalizing the young girl with the taste of sex that the full fledged
therapist could completely provide as part of her healing processes. )=
--
------------------ END DREAM SECTION ------------------
-------------------- END ISSUE -----------------
-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-
=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=
ELECTRIC DREAMS ACCESS INFORMATION
=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=
-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-
Subscriptions:
The Electric Dreams E-zine (issn 1089 4284) is *free* and distributed via email about
once a month. You can have Electric Dreams delivered right to your email box by
sending an e-mail
Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams
Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
=================
SUBMITTING DREAMS and Comments about Dreams: EASY!
Electric Dreams will publish your dreams and comments
about dreams you have seen in previous issues. If you can, be clear what name you want
or don't want. Most people use a pen name. Please include a title for your dream and add
them at the dream temple at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
** All dreams considered anonymous, so you must carefully indicate if you do want your
name or email left on the dream. Otherwise we substitute first or pen-names.
====================
DREAM-FLOW MAIL LIST
The dreams we receive are all circulated anonymously on the dream-flow mail and
discussion lists. You can subscribe and send in dreams directly or drop them off
anonymously at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple
The archives for DREAM-FLOW are at
http://www.mail-archive.com/dream-flow@lists.best.com
Post message: dream-flow@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: dream-flow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: dream-flow-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner: dream-flow-owner@yahoogroups.com
URL to this page: http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/dream-flow
==================
SUBMITTING ARTICLES, projects and letters-to-the-editor.
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/electric-dreams/publication.htm
Electric Dreams is responsive and experimental. If you have articles or suggestions on
dreams, dreaming or dreamers - including book reviews, movie suggestions or
conferences and meetings, we will publish them. I'm especially interested in creative
interpretive approaches to dreams, including verbal, dramatization, and mixed media
approaches. Send to:
Richard Wilkerson <rcwilk@dreamgate.com>
===============
SUBMITTING NEWS and Calendar events related to dreaming. We usually have a
deadline at the 15th of each month. Send all events and news to Harry Bosma
at his special ed-news@alquinte.com address.
SENDING IN QUESTIONS, Replies and Concerns about dreams and dreaming. We
don't pretend to be the final authority on dreams, but we will submit you questions to our
network and other Internet networks. Also, you are free to post special interest requests.
Send those to Richard Wilkerson at richard@dreamgate.com
JOINING DREAM GROUPS sponsored by Electric Dreams. If you are interested in
joining a group to discuss your dream with peers, contact Richard Wilkerson,
rcwilk@dreamgate.com
JOINING DISCUSSIONS ON DREAMING. Electric Dreams supports the following
discussion groups on dreams and dreaming:
--------
DreamChatters
dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamchatters
----------
The DreamWheel
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamwheel
dreamwheel-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
dreamwheel-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
----------
DreamShare
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamshare
dreamshare-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
dreamshare-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
----------
World Dreams Peace Bridge
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/index.htm
Subscribe: worlddreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: worlddreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
ELECTRIC DREAMS - DREAMGATE HOME PAGE ON WEB:
http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams
NEED A COVER for your issues of Electric Dreams? We now provide them and you can
download them at
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-covers/
BACK ISSUES OF ELECTRIC DREAMS:
WEB:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues/
ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-articles/
Thanks to the Dream Network Journal for providing a network of dreamworkers to
contact: http://tinyurl.com/97wzo
Thanks to our many website supporters@ links! See
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
The Electric Dreams Staff (Current)
Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=
Harry Bosma- Global Dreaming News
E-mail: ed-news@alquinte.com
http://www.alquinte.com
Nick Cumbo Electric Dreams PDF Archive
http://www.dreamofpeace.net/community/electricdreams/
Phyllis Howling - Dream Wheel Moderator (eDreams list)
E-mail: pthowing@yahoo.com
Lars Spivock - Research and Development Director
E-mail: lars@dreamgate_remove_to_email_.com
Dream Section Editor
Kat Peters-Midland
http://www.rmdjournal.com/
Archive Specialist Janet Garrett
http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm
Richard Wilkerson - General Editor, Publisher, Articles Editor
Subscriptions & Publication
E-mail: rcwilk@dreamgate.com
http://www.dreamgate.com
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
All dream and article text and art are considered (C)opyright by the writers, artists and
dreamers themselves. Anyone other than the authors may use or reprint the text for non-
commercial use, but all other use by anyone other than the author must be with the
permission of either the author or the current Electric Dreams publisher.
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
DISCLAIMER: Electric Dreams is an independent electronic publication not affiliated
with any other organization. The views of our commentators are personal views and not
intended as professional advice or psychotherapy.
o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o
