If you haven’t read a book by Robert Moss yet, you’re in for a treat. His latest title, Active Dreaming: journeying beyond self-limitation to a life of wild freedom, is a welcome distillation of his approach to dreamwork. At once useful, playful and threaded with captivating storytelling, Active Dreaming is a guide for rediscovering your innate ability to live your dreams like they really mattered.

Because, as Moss might say, they may be the only thing that does.

The Stories of Our Lives

“You are going to learn an approach to life that I call Active Dreaming. This approach includes paying attention to night dreams, but it is not only, or even essentially, about what happens at night. It is a method for conscious living. When you become an active dreamer, you’ll notice that the world speaks to you in a different way.” (p. xii)

This different way, Moss suggests, begins with noticing that we live our lives as characters in a great cosmic story, but we often do not recognize the roles we play. By becoming an active dreamer, we become a chooser of our stories, rather than a victim of the limitations others have imposed on us.

“We learn to recognize that, whatever situation we are in, we always have a choice. We choose to stop running from the monster in our dreams—who may turn out to be our own power hunting us—when we brave up and turn around to confront it.” (p. xiii)

From Conscious to Lucid

Interestingly, for the first time in any of his books, Moss adopts the phrase lucid dreaming. For years, he rejected this phrase because of the pop-cultural associations of lucidity with controlling your dreams, a practice that Moss finds distasteful and unbalanced.

“It is utterly misguided to seek to put the control freak that is the ego in charge of something immeasurably wiser and deeper than itself.” (p.4)

Moss credits Robert Waggoner’s mature discussion of lucidity in Lucid Dreaming: gateway to the inner self as a cultural turning point away from the control model of lucid dreaming.

He also nods to my own influence, suggesting, “I am going to borrow a phrase employed by one of my friends in the lucid dreaming fraternity, who refers to my ‘shamanic lucid dreaming adventures.’” (p. 50)  (See my article here that Moss is referring to; as well as this blog post).

I am honored to be a small part of this cultural milieu that is ushering in a more holistic—and appropriate—recognition of self-awareness in dreaming as more than an enactment of a schema or a rational conquest of a primitive world, but rather an ability that comes with a wide range of cultural and transpersonal possibilities.

Parsing Shamanic dreaming

Bear shaman, by American painter George Catlin (1796-1872)

Moss defines shamanic carefully. As an ex-history professor, he knows the term has been used and abused.

“I am using the adjective here [shamanic] to describe a method for shifting consciousness in order to enter non-ordinary reality for purposes that include the care and recovery of the soul.” (p. 51)

Moss doesn’t ever claim he is a shaman per se, although he sometimes refers to himself as shamanic practitioner in interviews and the press.

He walks a tightrope, steering away from cultural appropriation while managing to not prematurely chop off our own (Western) access to shamanic waters either.

This is not a tightrope of postmodern political correctness, but one drawn through his own lifetime of experience in procuring natural and “altered” states of consciousness, including not only sleeping dreams, but also those visions that happen at the boundary between sleep and wakefulness, as well as those accessed through sonic driving with the drum.

Moss walks the walk, and his mission is to wake up the slumbering West to this aspect of reality, so we can start taking responsibility for our actions on this planet.

Stories Bearing Fruit

Admittedly, his stories sometimes have a fanciful air to them, and can strain credulity. I notice my inner skeptic constantly at war with my intuitive self when I read Moss.

This confusion of reason may be purposeful; it’s a function of good storytelling, allowing for deeper processes to emerge from the fractured Western ego.

After reading his book, I dreamed I was in a workshop with Moss:

Outside a house, I found a bearskin hanging on a rack. I presented it to Robert inside a long wooden house, and he told me it was mine. He motioned to put it down.  I laid the skin down on the ground and laid on top of it and began to dream a new dream…

The dream goes on, and is followed two days later by another powerful dream that awakened something old in me that has been slumbering a long time.

Soon afterwards, Moss wrote a blog post about shamanic dreaming, reminding us, “Built into the language of the Earth’s oldest people, is the understanding that the heart of the shaman’s power lies in his or her ability to dream. In our everyday modern lives, we stand at the edge of such power, when we dream and remember to do something with our dreams.”

The image used at the top of this blog post? A historic painting of a shaman wearing a bearskin.

I felt the shivers crawl up my back, recognizing the image from my dream.

This is the kind of thing that regular happens around Robert Moss; his influence is immediate, authentically reawakening our own innate dreaming abilities.

So if you’re the skeptical type who, like me, nonetheless finds yourself circling shamanic dreaming like a moth around a flame, I encourage you to look precisely where the discomfort arises.

Here, as Moss suggests, we may find our own forgotten abilities, and claims to our own untapped power.

Moss’s book goes farther and deeper than I have room to suggest here today. But I guarantee the book will delight, challenge and instruct you how to hone your dreaming abilities, awake and asleep, and in between worlds.

Find Active Dreaming on Amazon.

Cover image “Bear” by Daliborlev (CC).

With Halloween on its way, it’s high time to take a look at visitation dreams, or dreams we have of the departed.

For hundreds of years, early November (conveniently poised between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice) has been celebrated as a time of harvest and plenty, and also a time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin. Is it the death of summer, the lengthening nights, or the dark knowledge that some won’t make it through the hard winter to follow?

Who can say, but the metaphor connecting the harvest and the dead is part of the myth of agricultural societies around the world, as disparate as the ancient Celtic cultures with their celebration of Samhain and the Mexican celebrations of the Day of the Dead.

Spirits and Dreams Go Way Back

It’s no secret that a preferred method of contact with the departed in these bridging times is through dreams and hypnagogic visions.  As writer Robert Moss has noted, the dead come calling for different reasons, and not all of them seem to be about satisfying the grief process, as some psychologists have wanly suggested.

In fact, dreams of the dead can differ wildly in content, emotional embrace, and timing.  Perhaps something else — something  a little more ancient – is at work.

Historically-speaking, dreams of the dead are some of the earliest transcribed accounts of dream life.  Aristotle mentioned them, as did Lucretius, in part to comment on the widespread folk psychology that the characters in people’s dreams actually seem to be the spirits of the departed.

Don’t forget that in the ancient world Thanatos (God of the Dead) and Hypnos (God of Dreams) are brothers.  I could go on to cite ancient China and Egypt, as well as hundreds of contemporary indigenous cultures, who also have made the link between dreams and ancestors, but suffice to say that dreams have always been noted as a natural place for the deceased to mingle with us.

Mythologically speaking, dreams take place in the underworld of our minds.  Cognitively speaking, themes of mortality, depression, and sickness outnumber themes of happiness, bliss, and rapture in dreams 4 to 1.  It would seem we are predisposed to go down the dark road when we dream –- in fact, one recent dream research study found that the longer a dream narrative is, the more negative in theme and emotional content it becomes.  The road to the land of the dead is paved with strong emotions, both positive and negative.

But Aren’t Dreams Made of Cinnamon, Spice and Everything Nice?

I love to bring this point up, because our culture defends itself against the dark truths of dreaming cognition with the cheap belief that dreams are light & fluffy, random, and mostly about our mother’s sex appeal.   And what to make of the Euro-American re-scripting of the very word “dream” to mean idle fantasy, wishes of kisses, and hopes of happiness?

But behind the strained smile of the newscaster’s sound bite, there is an uncomfortable silence. It is in this silence, before being laughed off as “what a crazy dream!” that the power of the dreaming mind takes hold.

Common Traits of Visitation Dreams

Meanwhile, ordinary people around the world continue to have visitation dreams that greatly affect them.   Some say the dreams actually change their lives forever. According to Kevin Kovelant, a consciousness studies professor at JFK University, visitation dreams often have these features:

• The dream feels more real than the usual dream: more clarity, focus, and steadiness of mind.
• A “felt sense” that the person is really them, not just  a memory. “That was grandma – I know it was her.”
• Very little plot: usually the dream narrative consists of the interaction between the dream ego and the figure of the deceased person.
• Strong emotions are commonly reported: love, forgiveness, anger, fear.
• A “physical” touch between the spirit and the dreamer, usually a hug or a reaching out.
• The deceased dream figure often looks younger and healthier than when they passed on.
• Sometimes accompanied by the feeling of “weight” or “presence” on the dreamer’s bed.

Dreamworker Robert Moss breaks down visitation dreams into 13 themes. Here’s my favorites from Moss’s interesting book The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead.

5 Reasons Why We Dream of the Dead

The spirit comes for forgiveness – either to give it or asking for it.

The spirit brings a warning related to the dreamer’s health.

The spirit bring helpful information for the dreamer.

The dead has a message for the dreamer to pass on.

The spirit needs guidance from the dreamer.

But Is it Really Them?

Of course, the question begged is whether or not the dream means something about life after death,  especially after the dream visitation passes on information that the dreamer did not previously know and is later verified.  These uncanny stories will never convince a skeptic… until the skeptic gets a knock on the dream door himself.

Kovelant, who is lecturing about visitation dreams on Halloween in Fremont, CA, recently related the following documented story:

In 1925, a North Carolina man awoke from a dream in which his late father — looking very much alive — instructed him to “find my will in my overcoat pocket.” Checking the pocket, the dreamer discovered a note leading him to a certain chapter in the family Bible. Between two pages in that chapter, the will was cached, according to 1927′s Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Kovelant also has noted that there has been little serious research into the actual phenomenon of visitation dreams.  Rather, most publications use the subject to advance (or denigrate) a pet theory on the nature of the universe, such as the existence of an after-life, or of the possibility of soul travel.

More often than not, of course, is the cultural narrative that dreams of the dead are “part of the grieving process.”  This perspective does have validity, of course: dreams of the recently passed can be very comforting to mourners.  These bereavement dreams are surely a sub-set of what we largely clump together as “visitation dreams” today.  However, sometimes the visitation dreams comes 20 to 30 years later….long past the traditional “stages of grief” have passed.

Early in the 21st century, visitation dreams invite more questions than answers.  And as the veil between worlds grows thin tonight, maybe you should prepare yourself for a visitation.

You won’t be alone.

Keep in mind, this is not a boring academic conference, but an open forum for everyone who is interested in the strange and amazing possibilities of dreaming.

Keynote presenters this year include award-winning author Robert Moss, parapsychology researcher Charles Tart, and altered states of consciousness expert Stanley Krippner.

Some of the other presentations and workshops include the topics of remote viewing, precognition, dream telepathy, mutual dreaming, psychokinesis, lucid dreaming, visionary dreaming, prodromal dreams, dream healing, the nature of dream reality, and dreaming as a spiritual practice.

I am also giving a paper titled “How to Transform Sleep Paralysis Nightmares into Lucid Dream Journeys.”

If you have never been part of an online conference, you’re in for a treat.  The papers roll out over the duration of the con, and readers can leave comments and ask questions to the presenters.  It’s a rare opportunity to converse with dream experts about their work and maybe even interpret your dreams.  Also, the discussion forums or online cafes are a popular way to meet dreamers from around the world and discuss theories and experiences.

Finally, a dream art gallery will be online, and anyone who participates can upload their dream-inspired art to be viewed.  But probably the most popular event is the annual dream telepathy and mutual dreaming contests.  Test your psychic mettle in a controlled dream telepathy experiment!

The conference is sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Dreams, which is running a deal that will get you entry into the conference for free if you become a member of the IASD.  Students can also get a $15 break if they register with a valid student ID.

When you register, make sure to tell them that you heard about the conference from dreamstudies.org.  Hope to see you there!

Moss has an approachable style to working with dreams, and he never ceases to inspire me.  In fact, his classic book Conscious Dreaming came into my life just as I was wandering around the American West, looking to find a graduate school where I could learn about dreams, consciousness and psychology.  I was excavating a village site in Yosemite Valley at the time.  The park service was putting in a new parking lot –  pretty much anytime you kick up a rock in Yosemite Valley you have to call in a team of archaeologists because it’s all sacred ground.

In the evenings, I went back to my tent and read Moss’s incredible stories of his shamanic lucid dreams, and how he learned to value the dream’s path over his attempts to control the experience.  Moss isn’t too worried about our conscious and sometimes childish attempts at dream control, though.  He writes, “Dreams are wiser than our everyday minds and come from an infinitely deeper source.”

Every morning, back in the trench (which was literally over 2.5 meters deep at one point), I would try to bring that magical way of being back to my waking life of digging trenches, fanning mosquitos and finding ancient tool remnants.  Archaeologists are very materialistic, you know, so it’s difficult to talk about such things casually.

But Moss reminded me about giving thanks to the dream, and I also did the same when I disturbed the soil of the Miwok’s traditional grounds.  It’s a small token in the scheme of things, really, but the perspective is essential to making amends.

Time moves differently when you can bring the reality of gratitude into the dream of the waking world.  Both worlds benefit.

Anyhow – Moss’s blog is great reading, and he’s been very prolific recently.   Highly recommended.

Some featured presenters include near death researcher PMH Atwater, author Robert Moss, ex-government Psi researcher Dale Graff, and dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley. Also, Beverly D”Urso, who is one of Stephen LaBerge’s first lab subjects, is presenting on how to increase lucid dreams.

My presentation is on October 2 – the title is The Construction of Self from the Void of Imageless Lucid Dreaming. This is the first time I have presented material from my MA thesis on lucid dreaming since my defense, and it includes a radical method for uncovering the spontaneous (and sometimes deeply weird) dimensions of lucid dreaming.

Check out the full schedule here.

Moss writes:

Here’s an open secret: Dreaming isn’t really about sleeping; it’s about waking up. Dreams wake us up to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. They can tell us what we need to know and alert us to actions we need to take.

What I like about this article is that Moss does not stray into the sweet, sticky morasse that most pop-psychology pieces indulge in: that dreams are “messages from our subconscious mind” to our waking ego. Nay, instead Moss briefly discusses recent neurobiological research that suggests that dreams are inherently tied to our desires, concerns, and motivations. In other words, yes, there is meaning in dreams but it’s not necessarily a deeper source than our waking ego, but instead characterized by more flexible kinds of thinking.

Moss goes further, suggesting that dreams have a biological function. This is actually contrary to many researchers” beliefs in the field, most charismatically led by Bill Domhoff. Others will agree that dreams can have a psychological function, but it’s a post-hoc slapped-together social prop that has nothing to do with how dreams arose biologically, sort of like how your average scapulamancy reading has nothing to do with the biomechanics of pig locomotion.

But Moss’s rendering of human evolution is also much more flexible than most dream researchers as he considers psi phenomena to be evidence for dreams” evolutionary function. That’s pretty bold, and definitely an area of research that needs some more heavy investigating (as well as investing). Sadly, evidence for this possibility will remain anecdotal (because we all have stories, don’t we?) until a change in the dominant paradigm for Western science allows the Academy to look at the research that has already been done….

Perhaps Moss’s piece in Parade Magazine is an indication of this shifting worldview?

For more of Moss’s views on the possibilities of dreams, I recommend his Conscious Dreaming.