Robert Moss, the dream researcher, teacher and author that I keep talking about, has a radio show on dreams! You can listen over the Internet on the second Tuesday of each month, from 11 am to noon Central Time.

Here is the link: http://www.healthylife.net/RadioShow/archiveWD.htm

There is even an 800 number so that you can call in with questions during the show as he interviews other dreamworkers and dream researchers. 

What a blessing for all of us!

Dreams Poster  24 in. x 36 in.  
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People talk a lot about dreams. Usually they don’t specify clearly what types of dreams they are talking about. There isn’t just one kind, or even two (good or bad. There are many kinds of dreams, and to be able to make sense when discussing dreams, we ought to define them.

Processing Dreams

Many people have been convinced that all dreams are just the body’s way of processing memories and experiences. In fact, that is a large category of dreams.

Sorting out our thoughts, experiences and ideas does seem to be one important purpose of dreaming.

Anxiety Dreams

Anxiety dreams are not exactly nightmares (usually), but they are unpleasant. They express our worries about things that may or may not ever happen. In some cases, anxiety dreams may be a way of preparing to deal with difficult situations. In others, they may be a symptom that we need to learn how to handle stress better—and maybe drink less caffeine?

Prophetic Dreams

People who consistently keep dream journals find that they often have prophetic dreams. Sometimes the dreams are quite trivial. Other times they prepare us for events we cannot prevent or prepare us for tragedies that we can avert by being ready.

Because of a prophetic dream (also called a precognitive dream), we have had a chance to think of what we would do, the shock has worn off, and when the event happens, we are calm enough to take action that can save lives or prevent serious injury. 

Clairvoyant Dreams

People over the centuries have witnessed events happening elsewhere, even thousands of miles away, in their dreams. There are records of people dreaming of plane crashes and natural disasters, recording the dreams, sometimes putting the dreams into official records, and then receiving verification via the news media. 

Dream, Explore, Discover  Art Print by Svensson, Torleif

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Communication Dreams

People all over the world have experienced dreams of communication from a loved in times of crisis. Sometimes the loved one has been dead for many years. Other times the loved one appears at the moment of death to say goodbye. Sometimes the loved one appears with a message of warning or other important information, or even with reassurance that the loved one is safe.

Message Dreams

Sometimes dreamers receive messages that are actually intended to be given to others. Often the message dream is for a relative, friend, coworker or neighbor and can be given right away.

But sometimes it is for an acquaintance one has yet to meet. Then, when the recipient appears, the message is given, and the dream is fulfilled.

Astral Dreams

Astral dreams are said to occur on the inner planes of existence, in the spirit world. They tend to be symbolic, like a bare black stage set with only the most essential props and actors spotlighted. Some people may never have astral dreams. More likely most people simply do not recognize or remember them.

When you have an astral dream, it may be the mind’s way of dramatizing things that you subconsciously know but have been ignoring. Or they may be an indication that someone else is trying to communicate with you in your dreams.

Nightmares

Nightmares can occur in any of the dream forms. Most likely they are a dramatization of your fears, but they can also be the result of actual memories. Such memories may require therapy to make the dreams go away.

Nightmares caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be crippling in their realistic sensations and intensity, and they definitely require professional treatment by a therapist who specializes in PTSD. Dreams can seem very real. They can be horrifying.

The fear of having PTSD dreams can cause people to avoid sleeping (which is dangerous) or to self-medicate with prescription (or nonprescription) drugs or alcohol. Doing that can also be dangerous.

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Diagnostic Dreams

The body always knows when we are ill or hurt, but we may consciously ignore it, especially if there is no pain. Many people have dreams that tell them of serious undiagnosed problems such as cancer. Those who pay attention to their dreams and know how to interpret the images from their subconscious are warned.

Many a dream has caused someone to get a checkup that saved their life by resulting in early treatment of what could have been a fatal disease or condition.   

Healing Dreams

Occasionally people who are very ill have dreams that seem to bring healing. Is the dream healing in and of itself? Or is the dream announcing the healing? No one knows for sure.

Problem-Solving Dreams

As we have discussed before, problem-solving dreams can occur at any point in sleep or just before or after it. The solution can be literal and complete, or it can be symbolic, or just a hint.

Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are rare. They are dreams in which the dreamer becomes aware that he or she is dreaming and takes control of the dream. That last part is the most important. Dreams in which one simply becomes aware of being in a dream and wakes up or goes into a different dream are called prelucid dreams.

Many people have prelucid dreams. Few learn to gain control of them and turn them into lucid dreams. 

Lucid dreaming is a form of meditation for adepts of some spiritual belief systems. In those spiritual systems, people may study and practice for years to achieve it.

Yet in some cultures people have been trained from babyhood to take control of their dreams, and in those cultures virtually everyone can do it. 

Shaman Dreams

In some cultures shamans, or those with the potential to become shamans, are identified by the special dreams they have, dreams that contain specific imagery that only shamans see.

Shamans in many cultures do much of their work, including finding out information or finding cures for diseases or injuries, in lucid dreams or active dreaming.  

Mixed Dreams

Most dreams seem to be a mixture. Parts of a dream may be processing the day’s events, while other parts contain messages. Dreaming is complex. Dreams can and often do have several layers of meaning. 

Other Types of Dreams

Probably there are other kinds of dreams, but these definitions should be enough for discussion purposes and to help identify dreams for yourself and others. Talking about your dreams and working with others on their dreams is worthwhile. It can also be fun. And to me the ability to get and share information from dreams is a blessing.

Dream Clouds Plaque Photographic Print by Katano, Nicole

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The fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy reminded me of a famous RFK quote: “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (also assassinated 40 years ago this year) said, “I have a dream…” In fact, he said that on several occasions about different dreams.

Both men were using dream to mean something that they wanted to have happen. At first that may seem to be a different usage from the “dreams” we have at night. But take a second look.

John Lennon said, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

Lennon also wrote, “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” That was his dream.

In some cultures, to have a good dream, as in the dreams RFK, MLK, and John Lennon had for the good of their people, is to be obligated to work to make that dream come true. And in reading about the Senoi people of Malaysia, the Tibetan lamas, lucid dreamers of many cultures, and dreamworkers like Robert Moss, we have found that dreaming can cause things to happen. So the two definitions of dreams (day dreams and night dreams) begin to merge.

In Europe and the U.S. in recent centuries we have been taught to think of night-time dreams as passive experiences, surreal and fantastic, having nothing to do with “real” life. Now we know that we can learn to use our night-time dreams to help make our daytime dreams come true.

What could be more of a blessing than that?

When I started working with dreams, years ago, Patricia Garfield was one of the two best authors on dreamwork that I found. She is a clinical psychologist who also works with her own dreams.

Currently I’m reading the second edition of her book, Creative Dreaming, and I highly recommend it.

Garfield’s books are different from those of Robert Moss (Conscious Dreaming, Dreamgates, and Dreaming True). She spends a bit more time explaining the research that has been done on dreams and the methods that she recommends for getting/shaping the dreams you want.

She writes very clearly and simply, so her books are fun to read and easy to understand. I also think that she is a bit more detailed in explaining how to work with dreams. So it seems easier to understand her methods and put them into practice.

Garfield gives great practical advice on transforming nightmares into pleasant dreams. She also has a lot of interesting information on how to use dreams to get answers. And she devotes a whole chapter to Native American beliefs about dreams and visions, and what we can learn from their methods.

This is a great book, and I’ll probably write more about it later. Meanwhile, give it a try, and let me know how it works for you.

Creative Dreaming was published several years ago, so you should be able to find it in the library. You can definitely find it on Amazon, where I got mine.

Sorry I haven’t blogged for awhile. I got a new job—but with a long commute. Then I got sick. I’ll get back on schedule with blogging as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, I feel really blessed to have a great job, working with fun people.

Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss is currently my favorite book on dreams and dreamwork. You can see that my copy is pretty battered. I not only use it; I also carry it around and share it with others.

Born in Australia, Moss has recorded, studied and followed his dreams for decades. His dreams led him to England and then to the United States, from a career as a successful journalist and best-selling novelist to a teacher of dreamwork and author of dream books.

His dreams even led him to buy a particular house in a particular town in Upstate New York. Then they led him to Native American elders who could help interpret them. The elders told him that he was dreaming the traditional shamanic dreams of their people.

Moss’s books are clearly and simply written, easy to read, and filled with vivid, true stories of people and their dreams. There are lucid dreams, shamanic dreams, and dreams of future events.

Best of all, he explains clearly how to work with our dreams, how to help others interpret their dreams, and how to work actively with dreams, going back into the dreams to get more information. It is amazing how so much information and instruction can be so entertaining to read.

Moss and his dream groups use a nine-step program for understanding and working dreams. They use contemporary techniques derived from indigenous cultures around the world. His method helps you understand your past, shape your future, get in touch with your deepest desires, and receive guidance from your higher self.

Moss believes that dreams prepare us for future events, so that we can avoid disasters or at least be prepared to cope with traumatic events. And he tells some compelling stories that seem to prove his point.

His skills as both a top journalist and a best-selling author show through in his writing. It is clear and easy to understand. You won’t notice his skill perhaps—this is not showy writing—but you will enjoy the book more and understand the concepts more easily because of it.

He takes ancient wisdom and methods that have stood the test of time and makes them easy for modern people to understand and use. That is quite an accomplishment, and he can do that because he has experienced it himself.

Robert Moss is not just reporting on other people’s ideas and experiences. He is a master of dreamwork (though very unassuming about it), and he is able to explain it so that we can understand it.

After reading any of Robert Moss‘s dream books (and you’ll be happy to know there are others), you will probably want to gather a few people into a group to work with dreams together. By following his instructions, you can do that—and have fun doing it.

If you do start your own dream group, or if you have one now that you work with, please stop by and leave a comment to let us know what you are doing and how it is going.

I hope to someday be able to take one of Robert Moss‘s dream workshops. Now that would be blessing! Meanwhile, I feel wonderfully blessed just to be reading his books.

Another handy book on lucid dreaming is Lucid Dreams in 30 Days by Keith Harary, Ph.D., and Pamela Weintraub. Published in 1989 by St. Martin’s Press, it is a slender paperback that sold for about $6 originally. You can still buy it on Amazon.com.

Dr. Harary is a psychologist, internationally known for his research on altered states of consciousness. He has written dozens of scientific and popular articles and a couple of dozen books.

Pamela Weintraub, was a senior editor at Omni magazine and a contributor to the health and psychology sections of Discover, Ms., Longevity, and other national magazines.

The book offers a complete, step-by-step plan for learning to dream lucidly. You can work your way through the program in 30 days or work at your own pace, taking as long as you want to.

The text is clear, simple, and easy to understand. The authors waste no time getting to the point.

Yet they provide all the background information you need to do the dream exercises they provide. In fact, they cover an amazing amount of ground in such a small book, and they do it well.

Each chapter has a section for each day of the program. Each section is several pages long, with stories, explanations, background information and dream exercises. The chapters and sections are as follows:

Week 1 Waking Up to Your Dreams

Day 1-2 Dream Recall

Day 3 Temple of Dreams

Day 4 Vision Quest

Day 5 Life is But a Dream

Day 6 Dream Rehearsal

Day 7 Edge of Consciousness

Week 2 Lucid Dreaming

Day 8 Reality Check

Day 9 I Love Lucidity

Day 10 Dreamer’s Guide to the Universe

Day 11 Who’s Flying Now?

Day 12 Whirl Without End

Day 13 Dream Weaving

Day 14 Free Dreaming

Week 3 High Lucidity

Day 15 Altered States

Day 16 The Adventures of Gumby

Day 17 High Lucidity

Day 18 Winds of Change

Day 19 Shifting Sands

Day 20 Trading Places

Day 21 Free Dreaming

Week 4 Creative Consciousness

Day 22 Dream Therapist

Day 23 The Healer Within

Day 24 Double Vision

Day 25 Dream Lovers

Day 26 Forbidden Fantasies

Day 27 Extended Awareness

Day 29-30 Toward Higher Consciousness

What I don’t like about this book is the authors’ seeming lack of awareness of how our dreams affect others. They also don’t quite seem to realize that encouraging people to focus on their sexual fantasies about people they know and see every day could turn into a dangerous obsession.

These authors know the techniques, but they seem a little weak on the ethics and metaphysics of dreaming. Lucid dreaming can be very powerful. Please don’t do anything in your dreams that would be unethical in daily life.

Oddly enough, the authors discuss the possibility of psychic dreaming in the very next section, including the research indicating that people communicate in their dreams. Yet the implications never seem to have sunk in. They just don’t seem to get it!

Research has shown that everyone is psychic to some degree, though most do not realize it until some event brings it to their attention. And you certainly aren’t likely to know if they are psychic, even if they do know it.

In North America people generally keep such things to themselves if they are smart. In some parts of the U.S. letting other people know that you are psychic could have serious legal and economic repercussions. You could be ostracized, lose your livelihood, even lose custody of your children.

So you may not know that the object of your fantasies feels your attention on them. They may become aware of it through your dream visit or through your fantasies in preparation for the dream. And a lucid dream or out-of-body visit from you may be extremely unwelcome or even damaging to them.

Lucid dreaming may be a great way to commune with your spouse while separated by business or military duty. But it is a very bad idea to use lucid dreaming to indulge in sexual fantasies about your neighbor, a coworker or your boss’s wife. It could also have practical, unpleasant, real-life repercussions for you.

Needless to say, indulging violent or nonconsensual fantasies, especially with underage or helpless partners, is just asking for very, very bad karma. That is to say, you would be damaging your own soul.

At the very least, the concentration you need to do to make such things happen in your dreams could create or strengthen an obsession, making it harder to refrain from acting out the fantasy in real life. That is dangerous!

Except for that weakness, Lucid Dreams in 30 Days is a useful and interesting book and a real bargain. I recommend giving it a try.

There seem to be some people who do not believe that lucid dreaming exists—or could exist—despite thousands of years of recorded experiences of other people in various cultures, including ours.

I guess that should not surprise us. European and American cultures have denigrated dreams, inspiration, and thinking for oneself for a couple of millenia at least.

Lucid dreaming got lost in the general repression of metaphysics and the supernatural, I guess. Oh, people still had lucid dreams, but they didn’t dare talk about them, much less teach others how to have them.

Elsewhere in the world some of the most populous nations have also done their best to squelch metaphysical knowledge and thinking for the last few generations, including the wealth of traditional knowledge about dreaming. Not everyone accepted the party line, but many, perhaps most, did.

Still, it always amazes me that people trust dogma over actual experiences of others, even scientifically documented experiences. Sometimes they even trust dogma over their own experience. That just mystifies me.

So I’m especially grateful for the adventurous souls who are willing to consider new ideas, try new experiences, and make up their own minds. (I think dreaming can be a great adventure!)

There’s a great quote from the (historical) Buddha about trusting one’s own experience. He didn’t want people to have faith in him or his teachings. He wanted people to try out the teachings (if interested) and make up their own minds about them. Sounds healthy to me.

So, thanks for stopping by and sampling the ideas, research, and traditional lore about dreaming. Thanks for commenting, yay or nay. What matters is not that you agree, but that you give some real thought to the topic at hand—dreams and how you can work with them.

In fact, plenty of you do just that. This blog has, so far, even more comments than posts. And for that I feel truly blessed.

Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., popularized the term lucid dreaming back in the early 1980s with the success of his best-selling book, Lucid Dreaming.

He is not the only lucid dream researcher, and as we have seen with the Tibetans, he is certainly not the first. But LaBerge is the most successful at communicating the idea of lucid dreaming in a way that people in Europe and the United States can understand. LaBerge gets people excited about trying lucid dreaming.

Since the original best-selling book, LaBerge has written several others on lucid dreaming. I’ve been reading a book-and-CD set of his, Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life, published by Sounds True in 2004.

It is hard to evaluate lucid dreaming CDs from just listening to them. What matters is how well they work. And it is hard to know whether or not they work.

If you are dedicated and focused enough to play a lucid dreaming CD every night, you could probably learn to do lucid dreaming without the CD. And once you can do lucid dreaming, it it hard to tell whether a new CD would be helpful to someone else.

This set is inexpensive and beautifully produced. It lists for $19.99, but I got it for $13.50 on Amazon, and you may find a good used copy for even less. So it is a great value for the money and well worth trying.

Laberge has a good reputation in his field. He has been teaching people to do lucid dreaming for quite awhile. Chances are he knows what he is doing.

If you have used this set, I would love to know what you think of it. Please leave a comment and share your opinion and experience. Meanwhile, as soon as I have results to report back, I’ll let you know.

Tibetan lamas teach that lucid dreaming can be used as a path to enlightenment. They teach a number of practices, called dream yogas, using lucid dreaming as a spiritual path.

Both Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, the indigenous Tibetan belief system, teach that daily life is an illusion, a sort of dream. So lucid dreaming, the practice of controlling your dreams, is considered to be perhaps as real as daily life.

Tibetans have other meditation practices for becoming aware that daily life is a sort of dream and for remembering that fact at all times. One of the most famous and powerful is dzogs chen, which is practiced by the Dalai Lama.

Some of the training for the dzogs chen practice is, in fact, much like the hypnogic imagery method for lucid dreaming. The practice itself is much like lucid dreaming in that you must learn to remain aware in every waking moment that what you are experiencing at any given time is not quite real. That keeps you from being lost in the illusion.

The dream teachings say some lucid dreams are, and some are not, out-of-body experiences. In either case, they say, the dream body is made of energy-mind and mimics the tendencies of the physical body. That is, you will probably pretty much feel and look as you do in daily life.

The instructions for using dreaming as a spiritual path are known in Tibetan as rmi lam gyi gdams pa . There are various versions of the dream teachings, as the various Tibetan religious sects have their own teachings.

Lucid dreaming and other dream yogas are among the many Tibetan esoteric practices described in The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part Four: Essoteric Instructions, A Detailed Presentation of the Process of Meditation in Vajrayana, by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, translated by Sara Harding. The book comes out in January, but you can preorder it from Snow Lion Publications now.

These teachings are from the Kagyu or “Red Hat” order of Tibetan Buddhism. They say that in the beginning, one must accept

…two vital points: unbroken mindfulness in the day, and rigorous techniques of esoteric instructions at night.

There are four impediments to recognition: excessive emptiness, excessive sleepiness, excessive wakefulness, and excessive complacency. Once these are dispelled by remedial esoteric instructions, the dream is recognized to be just that, and that is dream recognition [lucid dreaming].

Moreover, like the dream, all phenomena are essentially empty and as such can appear as anything at all. Thus the two truths are combined.

For more information read the cover story of the new Fall 2007 issue of the Snow Lion Publications Buddhist News & Catalog (newspaper). To request a free copy of the newspaper-catalog, call 1-800-950-0313. Or visit the website:

http://www.snowlionpub.com/

Here are some ways to tell whether or not a dream was lucid.

It probably was a lucid dream if, during the dream, you

• Made a reality check to see if it was a dream.
• Told other dream characters that you were dreaming.
• Attempted to stabilize or control the dream.
• Tried to fly, walk through walls or mirrors, or other normally impossible feats after realizing that you were dreaming.
• Woke up as soon as you realized it was a dream.

It probably was not a lucid dream if you

• Have a hard time remembering what happened after you thought you were having a lucid dream.
• Dreamed that you were dreaming.
• Treated odd dream characters or deceased people as if they were normal in the dream.
• Did not notice weird objects or events as illogical during the dream.

If, however, you were able to deliberately change the course of the dream while dreaming, because you knew that you were in control of the dream, then it was almost certainly lucid. That includes doing superhuman things (like walking through walls) because you know you are dreaming.

If you have had lucid dreams, please tell us about them.

If you are able to do lucid dreaming deliberately, will you tell us what method you use?