Dream Visions

More on Dreaming Phantom Bells | Blog Your Blessings

In the original post on being awakened by phantom doorbell sounds, I mentioned that I have also experienced being awakened by the sound of a telephone ringing, but not for some years. I was surprised to hear from comments on this blog that lots of you have had the same phantom doorbell experience.

I think there are at least a couple of reasons why people are not awakened by phantom telephone ringing these days. One is that in the past 20 years or so we have become used to answering machines and voice mail, so we are not the slaves to the telephone that we used to be. Instead, we rush to answer the door.

Also, with the prevalence of ringtone options on mobile phones, the sound of a ringing phone is no longer distinctive. The sound a mobile phone makes can be anything from a baby’s giggle to a hiphop hit. Phones no longer literally ring. In fact, some make no sound at all to announce a call; they just vibrate.

Recently, in a book called Magical Uses of Thought Forms, by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and J.H. Brennan, I ran across the statement that people often hear a bell or ringing sound that is their own inner self trying to get their attention. It is a call to listen to their own inner voice and to pay more attention to spiritual messages.

Wow! Just like our dreams, which are our inner self trying to communicate with us through sensations, stories, images, and sounds. The phantom doorbell may be spiritual wake-up call, a message from the inner us (our spirit) to the outer us (our conscious mind) to wake up to our own inner life.

In other words a helpful message from us to ourselves, a dream that calls attention to what is really important: our spiritual life, “waking up”. I would call that a blessing. How about you?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

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Dreams vs Reality | Blog Your Blessings

I just found a great quote on dreams and dreaming that I think sums up the teachings of Robert Moss, lama Tenzin Wangyal, and other dream researchers and teachers often quoted on this blog on the topic of active dreaming.

It may sound flippant at first, but I think it is well worth thinking about. What do you think?

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. —Douglas Everett

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

How to Remember Your Dreams | BYB

Some people say that they do not dream, but that is an illusion. We all dream. Some of us do not remember our dreams. Certain things can interfere with dreaming, such as being constantly awakened, or taking certain kinds of medications.  

Constant Awakening Prevents Dreaming 

As you probably know, there are several levels of sleep. Most dreaming, the dreams we remember, occur during the so-called rapid-eye-movement (REM) levels of sleep.

Unfortunately it takes our bodies anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes to reach the first REM cycle of the night. If you are awakened before that, when you go back to sleep, the process starts over. 

Sleep laboratory researchers have found that by awakening people over and over before they reach the REM cycle, they can keep people from dreaming—at night. After awhile, though, people start dreaming uncontrollably with their eyes wide open. In other words, without being allowed to dream, they start to hallucinate. 

If your only choice is to try to sleep in a noisy or insecure environment, your sleep cycles may be short-circuited by constantly being awakened before you get to dream. Medical residents or interns and others who only get to doze while on call in hospitals for days at a time are good examples of this kind of sleep deprivation. 

Stop Suddenly Awakening

If you can do without the jarring sudden awakening caused by an alarm clock, studies show, you are more likely to remember your dreams. If someone in the household can quietly awaken you, that could replace the alarm. Best practice is to get enough sleep (always a good health idea) and allow yourself to awaken naturally. 

Stay still for a few moments when you first wake up. Spend that time gently allowing yourself to recall any dreams. 

Check Your Medications

If you take sleeping pills, you may be suppressing your dreams—or suppressing the memory of them. If you can learn to sleep without pills, you will have a better chance of remembering your dreams. 

Some other medications may interfere with dreaming. Unfortunately they may be something you cannot safely do without. Remembering your dreams is valuable, but no one is suggesting that you risk your health over it.

Still, if you are doing the other things suggested in this article, and you still can’t remember your dreams, you might consider asking your doctor if another medication would do the same job without the side effect of suppressing your dreams. If you plan to do that, I suggest doing a bit of on-line research on the negative health effects of dream suppression and presenting those to your doctor. That way s/he will be more likely to take you seriously.

Form the Intent to Remember

Research shows that just the act of regularly trying to recall your dreams daily and making an attempt to write them down encourages your mind to remember them. It is as though you are proving to your subconscious mind that you are willing to pay attention, and so it tries harder to reach you.

Dream recall may not happen immediately. It could take a few days, weeks, or even months. But if you make a habit of trying to remember your dreams, and you make brief notes of any dream feelings or ideas you do recall, gradually your dreams will start to come back to you. 

Writing Down Your Dreams 

Any notebook will do to record your dreams. Maybe the term “dream journaling” sounds pretentious or time-consuming to you. If so, consider just carrying a plain little notebook all the time. You can reserve it from dream notation, or you can use it for other things, too. The important thing is to do it.

Robert Moss, who teaches people to work with their dreams, says to jot down whatever wisp of dream memory you have when you first wake up if possible. But he also says that bits of dream memory may come to you at any time of the day, so you should be prepared to jot down whatever you can whenever you remember it. By doing that, he says, you often end up remembering the whole dream.

Never Give Up on Your Dreams

Remember that we all dream. If your circumstances can be changed to make dreaming and dream recall easier for you now, do so. Make sure your bed is comfortable and the room is quiet. (Falling asleep in front of the TV is not helpful!)

If you cannot change your current circumstances, sometimes they change themselves. The baby learns to sleep through the night, the doctor changes your prescription, the noisy neighbor moves away, and so on. 

Meanwhile, never give up. We all naturally dream. And we can almost all learn to remember our dreams. It just takes a little more work for some of us than for others.

Remembering your dreams is worth the effort. It can be an aid to mental and physical health. It can also be entertaining and enlightening. 

Sweet Dreams to Paulie and to You

This post was inspired by a comment Paulie made about the post that said orienting your bed north-south (instead of east-west) increases dreaming. Somehow, although I can see the comment in the control panel area of this blog, it has not shown up on the page with the post. So I want to say thank you to Paulie for the comment.

Please keep trying to remember your dreams. It is worth the effort. 

And thank you to all the other readers of blog, too, especially those who take the time to comment. I consider all of you to be a real blessing.

Sweet dreams.

Defining “Dreams” | Blog Your Blessings

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?

Dream Interpretation Books | BYB

I have never much liked dream interpretation books. You know the kind: “If you see black dog, it means…”

Experts and personal experience both say that the same symbols mean different things to different people. They even mean different things to the same person at different times.

Dream symbols are culturally based. So the same symbol may mean a lot to people in one culture, and nothing in another.

Some of the dream books I’ve seen are clearly old and out of date, featuring objects that modern people would never dream about, because they are not part of our lives. Maybe our grandparents (or theirs) would have dreamed about gaslights, or ice delivery men, but we would not.

Most of the old books are quite sexist, and many contain racial stereotyping that is just unacceptable today. So they are not only useless but also unpleasant.

As I have written here before, the dream studies and research done over the last few decades by psychologists and other clinical researchers have shown that whatever symbol system you feed to your subconscious mind—whether consciously studied or absorbed from your culture—will be used to communicate with you in dreams.

So another way to look at dream interpretation books (and people, courses, and web sites) is this: Are these the symbols and meanings that you want to store in the deepest part of your psyche and use to communicate with your inner self? In some cases, the answer would clearly be, “No!”

On the other hand, I’ve been thinking lately that if you do find a set of symbols that you like, a dream interpretation scheme that you are happy with, why not deliberately study and absorb it?

Why not chose a set of symbols that will be beautiful, meaningful, and uplifting for you? Why not choose a set of symbols that are relevant to your own life? And then study them till you make them your own?

Giving your inner self a large vocabulary of meaningful, relevant, and beautiful symbols with which to construct your dreams might make your dreams not only easier to interpret but more pleasant, too.

Sounds like it could be a real blessing, a blessing that you can give yourself. What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I hope you are blessed with beautiful dreams that are meaningful and helpful for you.

Senoi Dreamwork | Blog Your Blessings

I’m still reading Creative Dreaming, the wonderful dreamwork book by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., that I reviewed in a previous post.

I keep finding more and more good information in it. In particular, there is a whole chapter on Senoi dreamwork that is worth the price of the book all on its own.

The Senoi are often mentioned in connection with dreamwork, but often without much or any explanation of who they are and why they are important. The Senoi are a tribal people of what is now called Malaysia.

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, the Senoi were studied in their homeland, while they still lived in their traditional way. What the anthropologists discovered was startling!

The Senoi were a peaceful people who lived in the midst of warring tribes, and everyone let them alone! Despite their entirely peaceful ways, they were considered to be powerful magicians by surrounding tribes. So no one in the other tribes wanted to mess with the Senoi.

What was the source of their power? Senoi life was centered on dreams and dreamwork!

Each morning everyone in the extended family shared their dreams. They helped each other interpret their dreams, and they trained their children in dreamwork.

From babyhood on, Senoi were trained to control their dreams and to use what they gained from dreams to live a happy, peaceful, creative, and fulfilling life.

If a Senoi child had a nightmare, she or he was coached in turning the nightmare around, killing and/or befriending the dream enemy, and demanding a gift. The gift must be a song, poem, artwork, play, or invention that could be brought back and shared with the village.

Senoi dreamers learned to pursue pleasure, including sex, and to enjoy adventures in their dreams. Always, they were to bring back creative gifts to share with the community.

The most famous writing about the Senoi was published in the late 1940s by an anthropologist named Kilton Stewart. What he had learned from the Senoi (and learned to practice himself) was so amazing that others began to attack his work. They said it could not be possible, or true.

Unfortunately by then Kilton Stewart was dead. His mentor, another anthropologist had also died without leaving many notes.

Others went to Malaysia and were told by authorities that Stewart was wrong. By then, according to Garfield, the Senoi had been forced out of their ancestral lands by the new Malaysian government and forcibly resettled in camps, where they were forced into lifestyles that destroyed their old ways.

The new government did not want it to be known that they had so persecuted and oppressed such a peaceful and creative people. So the researchers who had set out to debunk Kilton Stewart were easily convinced that there had never been a Senoi society like the one Stewart so vividly described.

Patricia Garfield had written about the Senoi and had tried their methods. She knew that they worked.

Determined to find out the truth, Garfield went to Malaysia herself and persevered until she found independent guides and translators who would go with her. She sought out the remaining Senoi and interviewed them carefully.

She describes that adventure in her book. Kilton Stewart was fully vindicated by the testimony of older Senoi who described their traditional life in their old homeland exactly as he had. Stewart was right!

For more on exactly how to use the Senoi dreamwork methods to enhance your own life, and that of your family and friends, you really should read the book, Creative Dreaming.

I feel very blessed to have found Creative Dreaming, and I think you will, too.

Creative Dreaming | Blog Your Blessings

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 | BYB

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.

Here’s Something to Dream On | BYB

Recently I got an email message about a special “Dreaming” issue of a wonderful art zine called Astarte’s Mega-Zine. You may not have heard of it. It’s fairly new and probably not on the newsstands. But the writers include well-known artists and authors such as Lucia Cappaccione.

In looking at past issues I have recognized most of them from their bylines in national magazines. I’ve even taken workshops from some of them.

I’m very excited that this innovative visual and written arts publication is devoting a whole issue to dreaming. If you go to the website and see what the issue includes, I think you will be, too.

Just as studying symbol systems helps your subconscious mind communicate with you, viewing and reading vivid imagery—visual and written—can also enrich your dreams.

Following is the entire message, links and all. I didn’t want to wait till I got my copy of the magazine to tell you about it.

We all need dreaming in our lives.

When I set the theme for issue 5 of Astarte’s Mega-Zine as
“Dreaming”, I never expected the enthusiastic response I got
from the Go-Make-Art Panel of Experts and other contributors.
Wow. Have we ever got some inspiring reading and projects
for you!

http://www.Go-Make-Art.com

Also new on our site this month:

- Jacqueline Sullivan audio interview
- Hanna Andersson art in The Spotlight
- New Panel of Experts members: Seena Frost & Clare Goodwin

… and the Dreaming issue, of course.

Check it out:

http://www.go-make-art.com/products/astarte.html

If you aren’t a subscriber yet, perhaps it is time.

Go-Make-Art. It’s good for you!

Stacey
Go-Make-Art.com

PO Box 801
Marshfield, Wisconsin
54449
US

I hope you will take a look at the Astarte’s Mega-Zine website, order the “Dreaming” issue (or subscribe), and share your experiences after reading it and absorbing the imagery.

When the email arrived, announcing this “Dreaming” ezine, I considered it a blessing. I hope you do, too.

Let us know how (or if) it affects your dreams.

Dream Symbols and Living Spirits

Dreams and symbols are both vast and interesting topics. There is a lot to think about, and both subjects touch on many disciplines: psychology, anthropology, mythology, and so on.

Cyber Celt wrote an interesting comment Sunday on my post about dream symbolism. This comment made me stop and think:

As you study symbols, do you notice how many are similar across different cultures. The raven, the wolf, the whale, the sun . . .

Well, I consider Raven, Wolf, and Whale to be spirits, not symbols, so cultures that actually interact with them both as real animals in nature and as spirits might have similar impressions of them.

The Sun, another spirit, shows very different faces to different cultures. She was the harsh and fearsome lioness to the predynastic Egyptians, a lovely female spirit to the ancient Japanese, and a dazzling young man to late pre-Christian Mediterranean cultures.

In modern cultures it appears that the spirits get turned into symbols, and the symbols often stray far from actual experience. Sadly, modern people don’t seem to realize that—or even miss having actual experiences, as opposed to making assumptions based on abstract ideas or commonly accepted symbolism.

Also, one symbol set is often derived from another, as symbols are passed from one culture to another, and as the needs of cultures gradually evolve.

So, yes, I do see similarities among some sets of symbols, but I try to accept each symbol set as a whole system, on its own merits, and not assume that the meanings that appear similar to me are universal—or even related to each other—if that makes any sense.

Archaeologist Mariya Gimbutas wrote some interesting things about the difference between living spirits and symbols (though not specifically about dreams) in her final book, The Living Goddesses.

It seems to me that most books and most of what is taught in school are too oversimplified. They make so many assumptions of universality (conveniently skipping the many facts that do not fit), that they are very misleading. The simplest cure for that, I guess, is to read the authentic teaching stories and mythologies of many cultures from every part of the world.

But if you read anthologies, you are often reading stories that were chosen (perhaps unconsciously) for how well they fit into the belief system of the author. So naturally they seem similar. And often the stories are also “retold” to make them fit even better.

I recommend reading books and papers by anthropologists and folklorists who go out and interview actual members of each culture and translate the stories as accurately as they can, without “retelling” to suit themselves.

A recent favorite book is Singing Story, Healing Drum, by Kyra Van Duesen, a folklorist who spent years interviewing shamans and storytellers in several different cultures and language groups in Siberia, letting the people speak for themselves. Siberia is a vast region of Asia that includes quite a few countries, some of which come from entirely unrelated language groups, so the cultures are different as well.

Van Duesen seems to have done a good job, as both the essentials of shamanism, shared by many cultures, and the specifics of the different cultural groups shine through. I love that book and highly recommend it.

Another great book on symbolism and spirits is The Spell of the Sensuous. One of the essays is on how becoming literate completely changes the way cultures think. The author shows how the thinking and the language changed rapidly even between the time of Socrates, who taught orally, and his own student Plato, who was a writer.

The author points out that preliterate cultures think concretely, based on actual experience of the senses, while literate cultures become more and more abstract, farther and farther from actual experience. That makes sense to me.

It is very hard to enter into the worldview of another culture. In many cases, you would have to learn a very difficult language and actually live with the people for years, participating in their culture, to begin to understand their reality. Without doing that, there is no way to know for sure if what appears to be the same dream symbol actually means the same thing.

For example, to some cultures the spider is a male trickster, called Iktomi by the Lakota and Anansi by some African peoples. Does that mean he has all the same characteristics? Not necessarily.

The nomadic peoples of the Great Plains observed the trap door spider, which tricks its prey into falling into a hole. I don’t know what kind of spider the Africans had observed, or how what they saw fit into their way of thinking.

To cultures that weave cloth, the spider is often female and benevolent. For example, to the Pueblo peoples, the Navajo, and ancient Greeks, spider is the weaver of the world (Grandmother Spider) and the patroness of weavers (Ariadne).

But there again, we are talking about spirits, not just symbols. The people believed that the spirits actually spoke to them in dreams and visions. They didn’t consider them to be symbols, though they often used symbols to represent the individual spirits.

Wow, this stuff is complicated to discuss…but it is the kind of stuff I think about much of the time. I love it!

Thanks, CyberCelt for your thought-provoking comment. I originally replied in another comment, but I ended up writing so much that it was too hard to read (because I can’t format comments properly with this blog theme). So it seemed best to just make it into a post.

I love it when blogging becomes a conversation, and I hope there will be more of that here. Dreams and dreaming should be discussed from many perspectives.