Stumble it!
The Path is Clear
I’ve finally resettled. It’s been difficult to think about dreams and consciousness as my attention has been on the material needs. You know, Maslow’s sweet hierarchy dictates shelter and food first, dreamy blog updates second.
But there’s a lot going on in the consciousness studies community, and I am well poised now to share the latest news, trends, and happenings from my home beneath the redwood trees in Northern California.
For starters, the International Association for the Study of Dreams is hosting its annual conference in Montreal next week. I’ll be there, and I’m hoping to provide timely commentary as I tool around at the hundreds of presentations on everything from clinical research to anthropological narratives. I promised the same during the Anthropology of Consciousness Conference, but this time, I have a laptop that works.
I’m presenting as well, an ecopsychological critique of lucid dreaming and the method I’ve developed that addresses my own split from nature, focusing on receptivity and connectivity within the wilderness of the lucid dream.
I have big plans for the Dream Studies Portal in the next few months: a new look, new features, and more in-depth coverage of the dream studies community. If there’s anything you’d like to see more of (or less of), feel free to drop me a line.
Topics: ecodreaming, lucid dreaming | No Comments »
Beloved Dream Researcher Montague Ullman Passes
Montague Ullman passed away on June 7, 2008. He was 92. I had the chance to see him speak two years ago in Boston, and was delighted to see how engaged Ullman still was with the dream studies community - a community that he is largely responsible for building.
Teacher of notable psi researcher Stanley Krippner, Ullman established one of the first dream laboratories at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York. Ullman and colleagues focused on dream telepathy amongst other mysteries. Later in his career, Ullman was the first to discuss the implications of the new physics (ie non-locality, implicit order, etc) on cognition theories and dream research.
Ullman’s work laid the groundwork for the modern dream studies movement, and my generation is indebted to his tireless service and brilliant theoretical work.
Here’s a recent paper of Montague Ullman’s that captures the breadth and depth of his contribution to psychology.
Topics: news | No Comments »
Journey West
The journey West - No, I’m not talking about death. I mean the move back to California. I’ll be on the road for the next two weeks, making my way across the US, my dreamy little caravan of one.
So may these next two weeks treat you well, and may your dreams haunt you lovingly.
Topics: news | No Comments »
How to Deal with World Calamity
I’m having a hard time watching the news about the calamities in China and Myanmar. As of right now, there are 12000 people buried alive in the Sichuan Province, awaiting rescue. The numbers dead in both countries are impossible to comprehend. How can we, as consumers of news, deal with this information without just zoning out?
My friend Bonita, a holistic health educator, sent out this email below, providing ways to cope. These are healthy responses to tragedy, and can help clarify the confusion and guilt that often come with hearing about world events. Included at the bottom are resources to contact if you are the position of providing aid.
This Saturday, May 17, as people take action globally to support Burma, I invite each of us - in addition to making donations and/or writing to urge our governments to help get more aid to the Burmese people - to take a few minutes for personal reflection.
1. Perhaps we can take a quiet moment to breathe, and let into our hearts the reality of the people who are suffering in Burma and China. Perhaps we can experience our sadness, anger, frustration, compassion, hope… And send the people of Burma and China our prayers. May their suffering be eased. May they receive help and support. May they be comforted. May compassion and justice guide the way.
2. Perhaps we can connect with a sense of gratitude in our own lives. How can I live my life with gratitude for all that I have? For the food I eat, for my health, my family, my friends, my home, and other physical comforts… What can gratitude teach me about how I want to live my life?
3. Perhaps we can extend ourselves just a little to do something for someone else, something that we wouldn’t normally think to do, to help create more happiness, comfort, ease or peace in their life. How could I ease the suffering of someone who I have contact with in my daily life? What could I do today that would help make someone else’s life better?
Below are some links for organizations that are working to provide relief to the people in Burma and China.
American Burma Buddhist Association is accepting donations for Burma:
http://www.mahasiusa.org/cyclone.html
Avaaz, which brings together internet technology and democracy, is raising funds for Burma:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/
World Vision is accepting donations for China and Burma:
http://tinyurl.com/6l5qg6
Info about Global Action Day:
http://www.burma-network.org/index.php
Medecins sans frontieres (doctors without borders):
http://www.msf.org.uk/default.aspx
Topics: news | 1 Comment »
College Students and Sleep Deprivation
Continuing with the theme of sleep deprivation, here’s a new article from Science Daily about the collegiate rites of passage into our sleepless culture. College kids are lampooned as being slackers, but they are actually one of the most sleep deprived segments of Western culture.
Ha - I’m amused that I’m writing this post at 11pm, three hours after the sun has gone down. Goodnight!
Topics: news | No Comments »
Why do Nightmares Happen?
I missed this excellent podcast about contemporary nightmare research when it was released last fall. NPR interviews New York Times science journalist Natalie Angier and dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley about the whole mess: theories about the cause of nightmares, common nightmares, as well as how to deal.
Here’s the link for NPR’s Anatomy of your Nightmare.
Also, I’m noticing that a lot of people find my site looking for information on children and nightmares. Be sure to check out my dream research resources, and here’s a quick primer on nightmares in children from familydoctor.org.
Topics: nightmares | No Comments »
The Good Night - a Lucid Dreamer’s Review
I finally saw the movie “The Good Night,” a romantic comedy about a man who discovers lucid dreaming as a great escape from his boring life. I really enjoyed the movie, and recommend it for all dreamers, if for no other reason to see how the mass media is viewing LD.
I promise - no serious spoilers in this article! Rather, I want to take a look at how The Good Night confronts lucid dreaming - does it perpetuate stereotypes or move the culture forward? The short answer is a little of both.
Stereotypes of Lucid Dreaming
The most obvious stereotype is that lucid dreaming is the preferred way to get all the sex you want. The main character is bored with his life and the destructive relationship with his live-in girlfriend, and suddenly he begins having erotic dreams about a beautiful woman. He learns the tricks and, night after night, continues the romantic exploration in his lucid dreams. When he gets bored of even this, he imagines three versions of this woman in bed.
We’ve also seen this stereotype of lucid dreaming before - most famously mocked in the animated film Waking Life. It’s not wholly untrue; lucid dreaming can be a wondefrully safe place to explore sexuality. But unlike the movie, these sorts of dreams usually necessitate some work from the dreamer, who must face issues of trust and “letting go” in order to to maintain access to this ecstatic realm. This is the work of Tantra. These dreams may start light, but they tend to shift into dark places unless the dreamer can let go of the need for controlling the fantasy. More on this later.
Another stereotype is lucid dreaming = controlling the dream. The lucid dreaming guru is played by Danny DeVito, who quickly sizes up the pale and pudgy Gary and says, “Looking for some control?” I rant about the claim of dream control way too much for my own good, so I’ll just say here that what makes lucid dreaming a verifiable altered state is not manipulation of dream content but rather a confluence of the analytical mind and the more ancient emotional and visual centers.
Conscious volition plays an important role in lucid dreams, but that role is more accurately described as “willful intention.” Mastering intention is the first of many challenges for lucid dreamers, but it’s just the beginning. Danny DeVito’s character ruminates that his best moment is bedding Cleopatra in a bathtub. To me, this is the mark of an intermediate lucid dreamer at best, because his conscious mind is still dictating the fantasies.
A final stereotype perpetuated in The Good Night is that light switches don’t work in dreams. This is right out of Waking Life, and it’s not true. Unless, of course, a dreamer believes it is true. This is an example of the expectancy effect, in which the dream world performs a certain way due to internalized assumptions. Besides, if you need to flip a light switch to determine if you are dreaming or awake, you are dreaming.
A better reality check is presented in the movie: looking at your hands. This technique comes out of Carlos Castenada’s works about the fictional Yaqui shaman Don Juan. Reality checks are about making mental habits to seriously consider “Am I aware?” In other words, be here now. My personal favorite reality check for lucid dreaming is moving through thresholds.
Moving the Culture Forward
The Good Night has a lot of good information about lucid dreaming that I have never seen in the mass media before. Danny DeVito says at one point that lucid dreaming is “full on emotional exploration, sometimes emotionally alarming.” This is more a more accurate understanding of the cognitive landscape of the state, and goes against decades of myths that strong negative emotions have no place in lucid dreams. This leads me to believe that the writer Jake Paltrow has had personal experience with lucid dreams.
Penelope Cruz also has a wonderful line in a dream, reminding hapless, powerless Gary that “anything you need to make it great is in you.” It’s not ironic that the woman of Gary’s dreams has to tell him that his ability to love is what he desires most. This is a solid psychodynamic process, in which an internalized helper comes to a dreamer and “re-awakens” him or her into living more fully.
Lucid Nightmares
Finally, The Good Night depicts that controlling dreams can become an addiction and even lead to lucid nightmares. The mechanism behind this trend is not clear. As Gary continues to sleepwalk through life, and focuses only on controlling his dreams, the sexual fantasies go sour. This has been noted by many dreamers, including the historic account of Frederick van Eeden. To his great consternation he noted that “Demon dreams” began to follow his lucid-control dreams.
Psychologist Scott Sparrow has noted this disturbing trend as well, writing that in the height of his experimentation with lucid dreaming, “all kinds of angry people began showing up in my dreams, and turning rather demonic to boot.” This dark side of lucid dreaming is usually not talked about, which probably leads hundreds of people to give up their explorations prematurely.
This is the realm of the lucid nightmare, where the dreamer is aware but unable to change the dream any longer. At this point in the lucid dreaming process, I recommend working on self-compassion, and trying to meet what happens in the dream rather than manipulate it away. The Good Night shows this process accurately, and Gary stops trying to force rendezvouses and instead turns back to his own creative passions.
Not bad for a romantic comedy!
Topics: dreams in the media | 4 Comments »
The Dream Institute Now Online
I’m happy to announce that the Dream Institute of Northern California is now online, making it easier than ever to see what innovative dream events are planned in the center of the American dream scene: Berkeley, CA.
If you live in the Bay Area, make contact and drop by for one of the Culture Dreaming sessions (a group creation, never the same twice) or one of the lecture and discussion series in the evenings. Getting ten or more dreamers together in a room can be powerful, and the Dream Institute is making that easier in CA.
The Dream Institute also has an ongoing series of discussions about dreams and nature, co-hosted by teachers from John F. Kennedy University. I participated in the first eco-dreaming lecture back in September, and spent my time ranting about dreaming and the Apocalypse. Good times.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sleep Deprivation and Western Civilization
Check out this amusing and poignant narrative about sleep deprivation and the American Dream as it is practiced in the deep South. The author concludes with a list of facts about sleep deprivation and dreams from the National Sleep Research Project.
Parents might find this statistic particularly interesting: A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours of lost sleep for parents in the first year!
And if you’re interested in reading more about what sleep patterns looked like before the Industrial Revolution, follow this link to the Fabulous Forager. The whole “8 hours of uninterrupted sleep” is not a human norm but actually an artifact of electric light and the rise of factory life.
According to anthropologists Carol Worthman and Melissa Melby, our way of sleeping is really unique. They write,
“Specifically, patterns of solitary sleep on heavily cushioned substrates, consolidated in a single daily time block, and housed in roofed and solidly walled space, contrast with the variety of sleep conditions among traditional societies. These conditions include multiple and multi-age sleeping partners; frequent proximity of animals; embeddedness of sleep in ongoing social interaction; fluid bedtimes and wake times; use of nighttime for ritual, sociality, and information exchange; and relatively exposed sleeping locations that require fire maintenance and sustained vigilance” (p. 71)
In comparison, the Western mode of sleep sounds really boring. Limited sleeping partners, prescribed bedtimes, monolithic hours in bed, and no donkeys nearby. That’s probably why Worthman calls our sleep habits the “Lay down and die” method. Except now, more and more people aren’t even getting their eight hours, making us the grumpiest civilization in history.
Well, here’s a prescription that Carol Worthman reports happens all around the globe: the afternoon siesta. So, don’t grab a Red Bull; take a nap instead! You’re in good company.
Further reading:
Worthman, C.M. and Melby, M. (2002). Toward a comparative developmental ecology of human sleep. In Carskadon, M.A. (Ed.) Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social, and Psychological Influences, pp. 69-117. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Topics: history of dreams | No Comments »
New Tibetan Dream Yoga Blog
Check out this new blog on Dream Yoga and Lucidity by
Dream Yoga is an ancient lucid dreaming practice that views dreaming as a meditative path. In Tibet, this practice arose several thousand years ago as the Indigenous Bönpo culture blended with the Buddhist colonizers from India.
As such, Dream Yoga represents something very rare in the history of civilization: arguably one of the only Indigenous knowledge bases still intact within a state-level religious institution. While Tibetan Buddhism maintains the perspective (and all the trappings) of the priestly class, its practices are shamanic to the core.
At the center of the practice of Dream Yoga is the meditation that our senses deliver up a piping hot slice of illusion, and nothing more.
Not that illusion isn’t real; it’s as real as we believe it is. Rather, our senses and thoughts are reflections of a deeper reality that lives in a realm that cannot be known in the usual ways (reason and the chatty liguistic mind). This is the realm of transcendence, of non-duality, and of the clear light. Tibetan dream yoga practices are designed to help seekers open up to these realizations, not through metaphor or parable, but through the fire and ice of experience.
Me? I’m not there yet. I’m still playing around in the backdirt of transcendence, kicking up the treasures and the coprolites of illusion. But these practices are sound for anyone wishing to train their minds at any level, without the dogma. Dream Yoga is also a great antidote to the Western conquest of lucid dreams.
Topics: lucid dreaming | 3 Comments »