EcoDreaming: How Nature Speaks in our Dreams

“God sleeps in stone, breathes in plants, dreams in animals, and awakens in man”  – Hindu Proverb

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Big Dreams & Archetypal Visions

Big Dreams are usually discussed in the popular media as dreams we remember for the rest of our lives. These could include emotionally intense dreams, powerful dream journeys, and visitation dreams.

However, the “dreams we remember for the rest of our life” are not the Big Dreams that contemporary dream researchers have demarked, but rather a watered down “catch-all” category that is based on the dreaming public’s perceived importance of particular dreams, rather than a set of features and characteristics unique to the experiences themselves.

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September’s Moon Dreaming Post

Listen to Miles Davis’s classic Moon Dreams while you read!

Today, the day after the full moon, I looked back into the research on the Moon’s Effect on Dreams done by the College of Metaphysics in Missouri. When I first blogged about their lucid dreaming and moon proposal this past February, I was skeptical because the research program did not seem to have any experimental controls in place.

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Track Dreams with the Moon

Everytime the moon is full, I get dozens of visitors who are looking for information on the connection between the full moon and dreams. It’s like clock-work. Oh, it is clock-work.

So, here’s a great way to research how the moon’s cycles effect our dreams. Check out Erin Langley’s site: dream-people.net. This is a database that is open to the public once you register. The site allows you to code your dreams into certain categories, mostly “ancient” categories that have been arguably constant for humans for thousands of years. Examples include: dreams of ancestors, of rocks, plants, the moon, magical objects, certain animals, etc. The information is then cross-referenced against the date of the dream and, of course, the moon calender.

Not only can you input your own dreams here and track changes throughout the months and seasons, but you can search the categories and get raw data for how many dream reports in the entire database included that particular element, the associated moon position, as well as the astrological chart.

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Does the Full Moon Effect your Dreams?

Tomorrow is the full moon, depending on your ancestral tradition it is known as the Buck Moon, Thunder Moon or the Hay Moon. In all traditions, it’s gonna be big and round. But more pertinently, will this rising stone of Artemis effect your dreams?

Studies on this subject are hard to find, but almost everyone has an opinion. So I am asking my readers to chime in with their opinions, perspective and stories on this ancient question.

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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.

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Guide to Nature Observation

Here’s a new article about Reconnecting with Nature. This is a quick beginner’s guide to nature observation that I try to practice several times a week close to home. This practice is the dayworld side of my dreamwork.

The guide is a synthesis of different practices developed by psychologist Eugene Gendlin, naturalist Jon Young, and archaeologist Paul Devereux. I brought the practices together when studying the perceptual effects of ancient rock art in Nicaragua. It really works well for me so I want to share it.

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Psychogeography and Dreams

One of the most original dream-related sites on the web, urbandreamscape.com, has begun a blog detailing their dream incubation experiments: the Oneironauticum.

Jennifer Dumpert and associates discuss their participation in on-going group dreaming projects with an emphasis on how dreams and waking life meet through the perception of landscape and cityscape. It’s part slumber party, part experiential research, and sounds like a lot of fun.

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Lucid Dreaming, Shamanism and the Paleolithic

I just uploaded a new essay about the deep history of lucid dreaming and its potential role in Paleolithic rock art.

There’s always a danger of projecting our ideas about dreams into the past, especially the deep past, but as archaeologist David Lewis-Williams has reminded, humans cannot refrain from dreaming. I take this a step further and suggest that our ancient ancestors were quite capable of incubating visionary states within their dreams.

Click here to read: The Prehistory of Lucid Dreaming.

Lost in transition

I”m in the middle of a move so my life has been a bit frazzled lately. Transitions are rough times, but they also have a very magical quality to them. I”d like to submit, quite seriously, that moving is an altered state of consciousness.

This does put U-Haul in a rather awkward position, but consider all that is involved with moving. All the regular boundaries must be dissolved – physical, mental and otherwise – and for a while there we are suspended in between. Neither here nor there. We leave behind not only our ecological niche, the place where we draw our water, but also our habits, routines and conditioning. We leave our community and enter unprotected spaces. Our diets suffer because we can’t control our food intake as well.

Then there’s the shock of re-entry. I don’t know what’s more dangerous, actually: moving someplace where you know no one or someplace where everyone knows who you used to be.

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