E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Subscribe Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Volume #10 Issue #10 October 2003 ISSN# 1089 4284 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Download a cover for this issue http://tinyurl.com/opal "Toys in the Attic," Jennifer Pandora Jonsson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o C O N T E N T S ++ Editor's Notes N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E Resources ++ News: ASD Online PsiberDreaming Conference September 21 through October 5, 2003 ASD Online Auction: October 1, 2003 ++ Cover Artist: Jennifer Pandora Jonsson ++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange Lucy Gillis ++ Article: Titanic Nightmares Scream Warnings About Real Damage Linda Lane Magallón ++ Column: A View from the Bridge Welcome Home, Dave! An Iraq Pictorial ++ Column: The Waves: 06. Journey to the Lucid Crossroads Nick Cumbo ++ Article: Nightmares Resources Online Richard Wilkerson ++ Dream: Going Upstairs Stan Kulikowski ++ DREAM SECTION: Dreams from September, 2003 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX D E A D L I N E : October 15 deadline for November 2003 submissions Focus: Psychosynthesis and Dreams XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to: http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple Send Dreaming News and Calendar Events to: Peggy Coats Send Articles and Subscription concerns to: Richard Wilkerson: o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Editor's Notes o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Welcome to the October 2003 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and dreaming online. If you are new to dreams and dreaming, please join us on dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com and we will guide you to the resources you need. To join send an e to dreamchatters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or if you are interested in sharing dreams for world peace, please join the World Dreams Peace Bridge http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org We are right in the middle of the online ASD PsiberDreaming Conference which lasts through October 5, 2003. There is still time to join in the festivities. For a minimal charge ($35) you can join some of the world's foremost experts on the subject of Psi dreaming for two weeks of cutting-edge papers, discussions, workshops, and chats. If you've ever had a precognitive dream, a lucid dream, or simply an 'unusual dream' that never quite made sense, this is the place for you. All the presentations are still in the conference area, so if you missed the first week, you can see view the presentations. If you were at last year's conference, I needn't tell you this is a not-to-be missed set of events. Once you have registered, you can enter the bulletin board area and participate in the many activities. Each day new papers and presentations are added, and afterwards there is discussion with the authors and researchers. Other discussions spontaneously occur as well. There are chat times and a special dream-inspired art gallery selections. The event occurs over a two week period and last year brought in fabulous reviews. http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003 Speaking of the Association for the Study of Dreams, the October Auction is about to start! The proceeds from this auction go to ASD. You can donate or bid on items such as dream art, signed books by famous dream authors and much, much more. http://www.asdreams.org/auction Lucy Gillis has brought Electric Dreams readers a wide variety of lucid dream experiences that have delved deeply into the topic. But she also gets questions from people who are just not sure what lucid dreaming really is. " My initial impulse was to write back and say 'When you have a lucid dream you'll know it.' However, that really doesn't help a dreamer who wants to have a lucid, but is not entirely sure what to expect. In response to questions like those above, I put together a very brief and simple essay for the dreamer who is just beginning to learn about lucid dreaming and about his or her own dream landscapes." Be sure to read the Lucid Dream Exchange selection for October. Jean Campbell's "The View from the Bridge"(The World Dreams Peace Bridge) is a wonderful example of how a dream sharing community can impact a nation, a world, a universe. This month Jean has two guests. Kathy Turner gives you an update on the events in September, and Bridge member's son returns from Iraq with pictures you won't see on T.V. Read about how to join the support the project below. Nick Cumbo newsletter and column reports on the explorations of the Sea Life community. Sea Life, the main web forum at Dreampeace, aims to bring together a circle of dreamers from around the globe, collaborating in dreaming adventures, and 'dreaming with and for the earth itself.' The Waves: 06. Journey to the Lucid Crossroads This moon, the people at Sea Life, took a journey to a mutual dreamspace known as the Lucid Crossroads. The Lucid Crossroads, was originally created, by Russell (Pantalimon), a dreamer from the UK, using 3-dimensional graphics, to form the basis of a meeting place for dreamers from around the world. For our annual October Nightmare issue, we have two selections. Sometimes with nightmares we forget that they are multiply determined; that they are not just eruptions of the unconscious but eruptions from a wide variety of determinants. In the article "Titanic Nightmares Scream Warnings About Real Damage" Linda Lane Magallón uncovers a depth of nightmare that require we look more closely at our psychophysiology determinates. Prepare for Titanic Nightmares! I am also including an online summary of nightmare resources. This not only includes article listings from past Electric Dreams issues, but also help from the Association for the Study of Dreams and the CyberDreamwork National Nightmare Hotline information, a free phone number to discuss dreams and nightmares. Our Global Dreaming News director is on vacation this month and so if you expected to have something run this month and its missing, you can get that in next month's news by sending your request to Peggy Coats at web@dreamtree.com Our Dream Section editor is still on vacation, so I have quickly pieced together some of the dreams sent in over the last month. Apologies for the mess, and let's hope Elizabeth returns soon! Also, I am pulling out Stan's dream in its own section as he gives so much care and attention to his dream texts. See Going Upstairs by Stan Kulikowski. Next month we have a focus on using dreams with Psychosynthesis. If you have articles or comments, send those to me at rcwilk@dreamgate.com before Oct 15th. If you have dreams you want published enter them anonymously in the form at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple Or you can put them in the dream flow directly by subscribing to: dream-flow-subscribe@yahoogroups.com -------------------- For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to stop by one of the many resources: http://www.dreamtree.com http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library NEW from Nick Cumbo, Electric Dreams in PDF: http://www.dreamofpeace.net/community/electricdreams/ -------------------- Cover at: http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed10-10cov.jpg "Toys in the Attic" Jennifer Pandora Jonsson -Richard Wilkerson /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ***************************************************** ASD's 2003 PsiberDreaming Conference September 21, 2003 - October 5, 2003 http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003 **************************************************** Join some of the world's foremost experts on the subject of Psi- dreaming for two weeks of cutting-edge papers, discussions, workshops, and chats. If you've ever had a precognitive dream, a lucid dream, or simply an 'unusual dream' that never quite made sense, this seems the place for you. Announcing ASD's Second Online PsiberDreaming Conference, September 21, 2003 - October 5, 2003. For two weeks participants worldwide will enjoy online experiments, psiber games with prizes, chats, and discussions on paranormal dreaming in the shared meeting space of virtual reality. Last years conference ended with rave reviews: ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Bravo!", "Incredible!", "a wonderful experience," "amazing!", "topnotch", "I am really thrilled," "great conference," "please, please do this frequently," "I don't know how many accolades I can give you, too many to count, I believe. The conference was simply great!! Good presenters, topics, participants, and great energy." ------------------------------------------------------------------ If you missed the first, make sure you attend the second! http://www.asdreams.org/psi2003 -------------- o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Cover Artist Jennifer Pandora Jonsson "Toys in the Attic" http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed10-10cov.jpg o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Artist Bio: I became interested in dreams and dreaming as a teenager, when I began having "serial dreams" that lasted on and off for years, with multiple characters and vivid, if incomprehensible, plots and subplots. Last year during Lent my church sponsored a workshop on dreams and dreaming, based on Jeremy Taylor's work in the book "Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill." The workshop and resulting discussion group were of great help in starting to remember dreams in more detail and to puzzle out some of the symbols. (I was an English major in college but symbolism went right past me–there are some funny stories about this, maybe another time...) I keep a dream journal under my pillow. The idea is to write out a few sentences about what I remember upon waking and fill in the details and possible meanings later on. Since I have two huge cats, both of whom have specific ideas about when breakfast should be served, I almost always wake up in the middle of a dream! The trick is to get the few sentences written down while fending off tap-dancing felines–don't try this at home, I am a professional. I don't always get to the last step about details and interpretations, but when I do, I can usually latch on to one or two clear "ahas." I have painted on and off since I was a child and started taking formal painting classes quite recently, after reading some of Alice Miller's work. Words don't adequately capture a lot of the emotions that surface in my dreams. I have nightmares often. This painting is quintessential of what my nightmares tend to be like; stark, vivid, unsettling. In this dream I was in a bland bedroom when something above caught my attention. I looked up and saw these objects pressing down through a crack in the attic floor. I woke very distressed, and take the meaning that there are still things about my childhood that I need to remember or discover before they "crack through my head." I am 34, a legal secretary, and I live in southern California. Jennifer Pandora Jonsson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange Lucy Gillis o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o I sometimes receive email from readers who are not exactly sure what a lucid dream is. Even though they understand the definition of a lucid dream (knowing you are dreaming *while* you are dreaming), some aren't quite sure what that really "feels" like. I get questions like "I flew in my dream last night. Does that mean it was a lucid dream?" or "I talked to someone I know who is dead. I knew this wasn't right somehow - was that a lucid dream?" My initial impulse was to write back and say "When you have a lucid dream you'll know it." However, that really doesn't help a dreamer who wants to have a lucid, but is not entirely sure what to expect. In response to questions like those above, I put together a very brief and simple essay for the dreamer who is just beginning to learn about lucid dreaming and about his or her own dream landscapes: SO, WAS THAT A LUCID DREAM? ADVICE FOR THE NOVICE LUCID DREAMER (c) 2003 Lucy Gillis As your interest in lucid dreaming grows and you begin practicing some lucid dream induction techniques, you may notice that your "ordinary" or non-lucid dreams begin to change. If you have never had a lucid dream before, but experience some dreams very different from your usual kind of dreams, then in some cases you may not be sure if you were lucid or not. As an example, perhaps you never fly in your non-lucid dreams. One night, you dream that you need to get somewhere fast. Suddenly, you decide to fly instead of rushing about on foot. In this case you weren't lucid, but your ordinary dreaming has changed. On the other hand, you might be sure that you were not lucid, but like the above example, you behaved as though you were. For instance, after experiencing my first few lucid dreams, I once dreamed that some milk had spilled on a shelf. I wanted to wipe it up, but there were no paper towels or dishcloths handy. Instead of going to get something to clean up the mess, I just stood there and thought to myself "I'll just make cleaning motions with my hand until a cloth materializes." I then moved my hand in circular motions over the spill, pretending that I was wiping it up. When I woke, I knew immediately that what I had done in the dream was not my usual dream behaviour. I didn't act as I normally would by going to get a dishtowel, (meaning that I didn't mimic waking life responses, which at the time was typical of my dreams) instead I behaved as though I knew I was dreaming. Yet, I was not lucid during that dream; at no point did I think anything like "I know I'm dreaming, that's why I can make a dishcloth appear." My first impression of the dream was one of disappointment. I was so close, yet I hadn't taken that next step and realized I was dreaming. I admonished myself for failing to become lucid. I was being hard on myself, which was not helping future expectations at all. However, a friend and accomplished lucid dreamer, matter-of- factly pointed out that I was not 'failing to become lucid', I was instead incorporating lucid skills in my non lucid dreams. She was right. As time went on, even my non lucid dreams were evolving and becoming richer now that I was open to new ways of dreaming, new ways of thinking and doing things. So as you practice your lucid dreaming techniques and read more about lucid dreaming, remember to keep an eye on your non-lucid dreams for clues that your dreaming self is expanding its horizons and opening to lucidity. If you notice a dream where you were close to being lucid, but not quite there, don't let it be a disappointment. Think of these dreams as "progress reports" indicating that you are incorporating lucid dreaming skills into your non-lucid dreams. You are expanding your dreaming repertoire! Learning to lucid dream is not a progression where each dream is "more lucid than the last". Even long term accomplished lucid dreamers experience varying degrees of lucidity throughout their dreams lives. Just as your waking consciousness isn't always operating at a high degree of clarity (we all daydream from time to time, get tired, get distracted), your dreaming consciousness is also not operating at one continuous level of awareness. Illness, preoccupation with problems or other matters, lack of sleep, etc., are just a few things that can affect both waking and dreaming consciousness. Therefore, in not all lucid dreams will you experience the same level or degree of lucidity. In some dreams you may recall your waking life with great clarity, be fully cognizant of your dream environment, and be relatively uninfluenced by the dream content. For example, you may dream that you are carrying luggage and running to catch a train, when you see a tiger in a tutu waving at you. The absurdity of the situation makes you realize that you're dreaming. You recall that you are really asleep and now, not only do you not need to run to catch train, but you also don't need to carry any luggage with you. Ignoring the tutu-ed tiger, you decide to create a totally different scene and do something else. Sometimes however, your lucidity may not be so 'clear' or 'strong.' Using the above dream as an example again, you realize that you are dreaming and that the tiger in a tutu is no threat, but you may still experience the urgency to race to catch your train. Instead of running, however, you decide to fly to your train. You are aware that you're dreaming, but you are still caught up somewhat in the dream plot. In both cases, you were lucid. But in the first example your lucidity was at a "higher degree" or "level" than the other. Does that make it better than the second example? Only you can decide which dreams are more rewarding to you: being detached from your dream scenes and stories, or participating in them with the knowledge that it's not a waking life situation. You may also experience varying degrees of lucidity within the same dream. Again using the train, the tiger, and the tutu example: at the beginning of the dream you may be very lucid, choosing to ignore the whole scene as you attempt to create another. But as the dream progresses your lucidity may fade or falter and you find yourself once again running to catch the train, or getting involved in something else entirely, forgetting that you are dreaming. You may regain lucidity later in the dream, or you may continue to dream non-lucidly until you wake. Many people, myself included, have tried to categorize levels or stages of lucid dreaming, using terms like semi-lucid, pre-lucid, partially lucid, low-level lucid, etc. Personally, I found that when I tried to categorize each of my lucid dreams into a nice neat package, the attempt seemed to curb my lucid dreaming - I had fewer and fewer lucid dreams. Ideas of limitation and differing levels seemed to dull my dreams - my non-lucid dreams too - as though draining the richness from them. When I decided to become looser with my labels (after all, I wasn't recording only certain lucid dreams for laboratory study) and just have fun with dreaming, my dream life once again became more rich and creative, much more fun! My advice to the novice lucid dreamer would be, to not get caught up in categorizing or labeling your dreams too striclty or trying to define them in only one way. Don't put limitations on your dreaming self. Keep practicing, using whatever technique works best or is most comfortable for you. And don't fret if some of your dreams are "not quite lucid," instead, congratulate yourself on a great job of expanding your dreaming horizons! ******************************** The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles and interviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange send a blank email to: TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can also check us out at www.dreaminglucid.com o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Titanic Nightmares Scream Warnings About Real Damage © 2003 Linda Lane Magallón o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o I was scared of my parents. They could retaliate when disturbed. It took something far more frightening than them to make me knock at their bedroom door in the middle of the night. The first time, they allowed me to climb between them. I felt protected from what seemed to be an even greater nocturnal threat. When I knocked timidly at the door the second time, they growled, "Go back to sleep. It's just a dream." If what I was experiencing was "just a dream," then why did I still feel the horrible aftereffects? For me, the Dream World was a place of terror and struggle. A place of overwhelming tidal waves and nuclear explosions. Where there were wolves and bears and huge spiders on the wall. Where I met aliens and monsters and unknown terrors from the deep. Where a dark force attacked and strangled me as I lay in bed. Where my parents made strange demands and friends and family metamorphosed into bizarre caricatures of themselves. Where the Men In Black pursued me down endless empty corridors, nightmare after repeating nightmare. Where I was a frightened passenger in a car which would slide sideways across the road and fall off a cliff into a bottomless abyss, again and again and again. I'd be shocked awake, trembling, with an upset stomach or fear coursing through my body. I'd jerk upward with my heart sounding a heavy bass note in my chest and immediately curl into a defensive position, arms around my face, side to the world. And later, with clenched fists. I can recall sleeping with the overhead light on, in the exact middle of my bed, wearing my robe and slippers, a heavy flashlight hidden under the covers. And trying not to dream. Titanic nightmares is what they're called, but I think that's a misnomer. As terrible as the Titanic tragedy was, it holds no candle to my experience. The Titanic sunk only once. My nightmares happened continually for almost 4 decades, although I got pretty good at repressing them. It's an ingrained habit that's with me still. Nowadays, to recall even a pleasant or mundane dream usually takes effort. But Titanic nightmares can be repressed for only so long. They're like a volcano. They build up pressure and, one night when my defenses are down, they explode. And I'm the helpless, hopeless victim of the fallout once more. After I entered the dream field, and was no longer embarrassed by my inner life, I compared dreams with my brothers and sisters. I discovered that they'd had the same sorts of nightmares, albeit not as consistently as I had. That's not surprising. I was the oldest child and bore the brunt of parental wrath and emotional manipulation. The next two oldest, my brothers, and I recall being in tears virtually every day of our childhood. This is no repressed memory. Waking life never got repressed. It would have been dangerous to ignore what was happening there. The only reason the dream world seemed a greater threat was that it was an unknown. Who knew what monsters might show up? And when? Increasingly, I became better at anticipating parental outbursts, in the waking state. However, each nightmare was an unexpected shock, coming out of the black and blue, like it did. I've been looking for answers to the whys and wherefores of all my nightmares for the past 20 years. And I've been sometimes desperately seeking relief from what provoked them. More importantly, for a cure. Not a coping measure, but something that actually heals permanently whatever has been stimulating them. A Titanic nightmare is not something that could be cured by telling myself to "go back to sleep" and forget it. This is not something I can treat with the lite dreamwork found in most dream texts. Free association doesn't work very well because I didn't repress the memory of what happened. My complexes aren't hidden under mounds of emotional fertilizer. They're right out here in the open, painfully close to the surface. I know, first hand, the terrible sad affects of tricking yourself into believing that life is rosy and you're wonderful and have no problems. My parents are prime masters of that sort of self- deception. That's part of the reason for the extraordinary tension: they wouldn't admit what was occurring, even to themselves. You ask them today and they'll say our childhood was happy with a few healthy squabbles, normal for a family. They've been able to repress the reality of the past. They were able to repress it while it was happening! So yes, I know what Freudian complexes are like. Not because I have them. But because my parents do. Having people in dream groups play "if this were my dream" is useless. They've never been in my position in their entire lives. I've heard some of those folks talk about their shadow dreams and read about their voyages to the underworld. What they call a "nightmare" is a walk in the park by comparison. They have no friggin' idea what hell is really like. The "underworld" idea barely makes a dent in the earth. The volcanic depths of a Titanic nightmare reach down to the core of the planet. I don't mean this metaphorically. I'm not talking just about how anxiety affects your moods or makes you nervous, although, if chronic, these reactions can be tragic, too. I'm talking about how continued emotional battering can result in physical and physiological damage, deep in the human body. It's been known for quite a while that stress can debilitate you with physical illnesses like cardiovascular disease. De-stressing exercises have come to be an integral part of a healthy personal regime. But the first time I read about the physiological affects of stress in a public magazine was in the February 24, 2003 issue of Newsweek. There it was, laid out in black and white, for everyone to see: Continued stress can affect your BRAIN. I'm going to quote from the Newsweek articles, followed by my own comments: 1. "(When a human being) perceives a threat, it can trigger a body-wide emergency response within milliseconds. (Hormones produced by stress) direct the body's resources to fighting or fleeing. The heart pounds, the lungs pump and the muscles get an energizing blast of glucose." This same sort of reaction occurred when I had Titanic nightmares. I'd awake to a pounding heart, heavy breathing...and a body drenched in sweat. The flight-or-fight response also galvanized my muscles to cry out or jerk awake, upon which I'd automatically assume a defensive posture in bed. 2. "The stress hormones also act on the brain creating a state of heightened alertness..." Physiological arousal accompanies the growing emotional terror. Which is why those nightmares woke me up. 3. "...and supercharging the circuitry involved in memory formation." The dream memory was so strong, it was etched onto my consciousness. It became a rut for nightmares to travel, repeatedly, for 38 years. 4. "...a strong correlation is made between the significance of an event and the remembrance of it." I think Titanic nightmares are significant, in fact any continuous negative affects like angst are significant, because they are red warning lights signaling that something is very, very wrong, you're stuck in a rut and that you have to *do* something about it, pronto. However, my struggle to resolve the situation in-dream met with failure. In many cases, there was no opportunity for struggle. I didn't even get to experience flight-or-flight while I slept. I was trapped in the freeze mode. 5. "Prolonged stress has physiological consequences." My brothers and I always had to have our guards up at home. We never knew when my father's temper would erupt. That, plus emotional manipulation by both parents, resulted in tears every day, whether or not there was actual physical violence. Someone in tears is under so much stress, it overflows. 6. "...when a susceptible child experiences too much fear, the consequences can extend beyond general anxiety to include phobias and post traumatic stress disorder Đ conditions in which the amygdala hijacks the rest of the brain every time it encounters some cue. Like a rat in a conditioning experiment, the sufferer reacts as violently to a harmless stimulus as she would to a life- threatening emergency." I can't begin to tell you how vulnerable I was to the world, long after I left home. The littlest thing would set me crying or make me blush beet red. Some of my nightmares have most definitely been traced to these daytime incidents. 7. "...prolonged stress also shrinks the hippocampus, a brain structure that plays critical roles in processing and storing information." Hmm, is that why I had so many intrusive thoughts? I'm referring to negative thoughts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the current situation, but "drop in out of nowhere." I had lots of them, but they were especially troublesome when I was a teenager. I now consider them to be a waking state equivalent of repeating nightmares. Either it was some repressed memory that would rise like a cork to the top of consciousness when my guard was down...as it is in sleep and when I'm relaxed. (Another reason not to put my guard down...another reason for continued stress.) Or it was a mental hiccup caused by a glitch in the neural pathways due to the lack of appropriate chemicals. 8. "...the pituitary and adrenal glands flood the bloodstream with epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine and cortisol...Norepinephrine is toxic to tissues...in particular the heart...Continuous exposure to cortisol can dampen the immune system, leaving stressed people more vulnerable to infections and possibly even cancer." I'm not particularly at risk for heart disease, and few people in my family have had cancer. But the sort of environment my siblings and I endured does make us likely candidates for post-traumatic stress disorder. Although, for the life of me, I don't know how you can call it "post" traumatic if the trauma is still going on! There just doesn't seem to be an decent terminology to apply to the nightmares of children who are concurrently suffering in the waking world. Or to those of adults, either. 9. "Stress hormones can harm the brain, too, severing connections among neurons...Genes and temperament make some kids (more) vulnerable than others." Genes are definitely a factor. They have built me a weaker constitution than the average Joe. A sizable number of my blood relatives have been diagnosed with mental disorders, and more should be. I can be aware of and make allowances for this, but there's nothing I can do to change it. Unless we figure out a way to manipulate our genes while we're alive, the genetic contribution is going to continue to be a unyielding fact. For an individual with genetic vulnerability, a mental disorder can be activated by certain life stress events. This is the stress-diathesis model: triggering occurs because of the interaction between experience (stress) and inborn predisposition (diathesis). The system that manages the body's response to stress is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Activate the HPA axis too much, and you lay the groundwork for a particular mental disorder Đ depression. Biochemical depression stems from a deficiency of neurotransmitter molecules, called norepinephrine, in certain brain circuits. The molecules travel from one neuron, across a small gap, and are attached to receptor molecules on the surface of the second neuron. Anxiety causes neurons to discharge regularly and continually. The excessive transmission of norepinephrine demands excessive reception of norepinephrine when the molecules jump neurons. Over time, a cell's ability to continually accept molecules becomes exhausted. When repeatedly stressed, the HPA axis is pushed too far. The chronic sufferer, whose neurons are functioning inadequately, is really stuck. He has no way to cure transmitter depletion, no way to recover from the strain. Ever. The best coping measure, so far, is prescription medication. But it must be taken every day. There are some benefits to antidepressants. After patients are treated with them, hostility and anxiety decrease in dreams. Unfortunately, so does dream recall. Depressed dreamers tend to remember fewer dreams than the average. Depressed dreamers on antidepressants recall even less. But suppose you have the opportunity to waylay nightmares induced by chronic stress before it damages your brain. How would you do that? Well, it's taken me twenty years to come to my conclusions, and I did it through trial and error. The school of hard knocks is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. In addition to trying to handle the depression, I had to concurrently battle its lesser brother: anxiety. I've concluded that to de-stabilize knee-jerk reactions to fear, to update my unconscious with more mature automatic responses to the fight-or-flight instinct, requires action. The techniques that work are exactly what the Newsweek article mentioned: behavior therapy, cognitive therapy and preventative medicine. 11. "...advances in science are showing (these techniques) can reduce the hormones associated with anxiety and even affect brain activity." Behavior Therapy Some researchers contend that dreaming is, by nature, a psychological means of coping with significant events. However, Titanic nightmares fail in that capacity. In extreme depression, there is little "emotional work" in-dream and the ability to adapt to unsettling life events is thereby compromised. Even normative dreams of the depressed individual may only restate an issue or have the dream ego wandering aimlessly thither and yon. Increased intentionality will tend to produce active involvement of the dream ego in controlling dream content. It converts the dream ego from a helpless, hopeless victim to an active, questing locus of control. Only a directed dream ego can adapt effectively and resolve troublesome issues in-dream. When he is lucid and flying in his dreams, researcher J. Allan Hobson tells himself to flap his arms. By engaging in volition, he starts a motor program. His theory is that he is engaging his brain to call for chemical help and his brain stem responds by sending up some norepinephrine. It's just enough to place him on the edge between sleeping and waking. Lucidity is great Đ if you have the strength to go lucid. But if there's one thing that characterizes depression, it's *fatigue.* Most nights I don't have the energy to recall dreams, let alone lucid ones. Instead, the answer is Đ teach the nonlucid dream ego to move! When my energy is up, I visualize new endings to old dreams, practice facing fear in my imagination and incubate flying dreams. The more familiar we are with a task while awake, the better its execution during sleep. By practicing them in physical reality, healthy attitudes and activities are made habitual. It's like learning the maneuvers to drive a car. First, you must be vigilant, and move all controls while you have the focused attention of your conscious mind. Eventually, you can relax and let your automatic nervous system take over. The added bonus to behavior therapy is that dreams of succesful achievements stimulate feelings of success in waking life, which stimulate feelings of success in dreams, as part of a self- affirming cycle. Cognitive Therapy Counterproductive beliefs that have been programmed by culture Đ parental, educational and religious Đ require re-believing what you have been taught to be true about yourself and the universe. Silence the inner critics and thundering voices of false conscience. Disable those notions that say you must surrender and sacrifice, that claim you're a horrible sinner or humongous egotist and that command you to save the world. You have the right to stand up and say no to the authorities that have been embedded in your mind. Have they ever walked in *your* shoes? I think not. Tell them to take a hike. If the consequences weren't so tragic, I'd have to laugh regarding the psychoanalytic theory that all you have to do is acknowledge a problem, talk about it and it'll go away. The dreamwork techniques that "make space" for distress, emotions, thoughts or internal experiences to express themselves are not for you. Leave talk therapy to those who are experiencing minimal stress infrequently. You've already got enough chronic distress to deal with, thank you very much. I wish every psychologist had to take course in human anatomy and biochemistry. And keep up to date with medical breakthroughs, too. It would save their clients so much time, money, pain and suffering to be able to say, this is not psychological. Or, I can't help you (I've actually had one psychologist say that to me. But only one.) However, it takes vivid awareness and the guts to admit one's profession might be using concepts and techniques that are incomplete, out of date or just plain ineffective. Why are we still listening to Jung and Freud? These old men created dream theories and practices based on what we knew about human nature last century! It's past time to update our knowledge. Not just for ourselves. The next generation depends on it. Intense dream problems require intense solutions. Titanic dream wrestling is not for wimps or those people who refuse to move out of their comfort zones. Chronic sufferers need something with real muscles. Mental affirmations alone won't do. In my own case, I confronted fear in lucid dreams (standing up to dream characters) and in the waking state (taking flying lessons in a Piper Tomahawk). I divorced my parents (if it were possible, I'd have done it legally; instead, I had to do it symbolically). I left the religion of my youth. Because my ideas about the universe changed, my behavior changed. Because I practiced the changed behavior to make it habitual, instances of paranoia and false guilt went down dramatically. I woke up one morning and the "yuckiness" that had been with me all my life was suddenly gone. I didn't even know I had it, until it went away. When I started to take medication, yet another layer of fog lifted. For me, it's not a case of paying attention to either physiology or psychology. It's both. 11. "The best remedy may be to turn off the TV set, venture into the world and come home alive to remember it." Emotions are body and brain based! You need to energize your body to shift away from the disaster channel that's running in your head. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, I went on the bridge walk with hundreds of other people. While traffic was at a standstill, I walked to the location where the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge had separated in two and looked directly down into the water between the collapsed chunks of highway. Fears have to be faced. There's no other way. But this is just a first step in a long journey towards health. There's also Đ accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, preventative measures against recurrence, discovery of what went missing while you had to spend time battling the problem and enhancement beyond the survival level of dreaming. Start today. Get out of bed and go live life. References Armitage, Roseanne, Aaron Rochlen, Thomas Fitch, Madhukar Trivedi & A. John Rush. "Dream Recall and Major Depression: A Preliminary Report," Dreaming 5/3 (Sept. 1995), 189-198. Barrett, Deirdre & Michael Loeffler. "The Effects of Depression on Dream Content," ASD Newsletter, 7/1 (Jan/Feb 1990), 4, 16. Bears, Michael, Rosalind Cartwright & Patricia Mercer. "Masochistic Dreams: A Gender-Related Diathesis for Depression Revisited," Dream, 10/4 (December 200), 211-219. Becker, M. & K. Moffeit. "Healthy Coping Skills for Depression." Self published, 1996. Carey, Joseph (Ed.). Brain Facts: A Primer on the Brain and Nervous System. (Washington, DC: Society for Neuroscience, 1993). Cowley, Geoffrey. "Our Bodies, Our Fears," Newsweek, Feb. 24, 2003, 42-49. Gachenbach, Jayne & Jane Bosveld. Control Your Dreams. (NY: Harper and Row, 1989. Greenberg, Ramon & Chester Pearlman. "An Integrated Approach to Dream Theory," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). Hartmann, Ernest, Michael Zborowski, Rachel Rosen & Nancy Grace. "Contextualizing Images in Dreams: More Intense After Abuse and Trauma," Dreaming 11/3 (Sept. 2001), 115-126. Hartmann, Ernest & Robert Basile. "Dream Imagery Becomes More Intense After 9/11/01," Dreaming, 13/2 (June 2003), 61-66. Hartmann, Ernest, Rachel Elkin & Mithlesh Garg. "Personality and Dreaming: The Dreams of People with Very Thick or Very Thin Boundaries," Dreaming 1/4 (Dec. 1991), 311-324. Hobson, J. Allan. Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind. (Cambridge, MA: Brown, Little, 1994). Hunt, Harry. The Multiplicity of Dreams. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). Kalb, Claudia. "Coping with Anxiety," Newsweek, Feb. 24, 2003, 51- 2. Koukkou, Martha & Dietrich Lehmann. "A Model of Dreaming and Its Functional Significance: The State-Shift Hypothesis," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 51-118. Krakow, Barry & Joseph Neidhardt. Conquering Bad Dreams and Nightmares. (NY: Berkeley Books, 1992). Kramer, Milton. "The Nightmare: A Failure in Dream Function," Dreaming, 1/4 (Dec. 1991), 277-285. Kramer, Milton. "Selective Mood Regulating Function," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). Kron, Tamar & Adi Brosh. "Can Dreams During Pregnancy Predict Postpartum Depression?" Dreaming, 13/2 (June 2003), 67-81. Kuiken, Don & Shelley Sikora. "The Impact of Dreams on Waking Thoughts and Feelings," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). McManus, John, Charles D. Laughlin & Jon Shearer. "Dreaming in the Cycles of Cognition," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). Nemeroff, Charles B. "The Neurobiology of Depression," The Scientific American Book of the Brain. (NY: The Lyons Press, 1999), 263-75. Ratey, John J. A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. (NY: Random House, 2001). Reed, Henry. "Lucid Dreaming Defeats Nightmares," Venture Inward, September/October 1998, 10. Rochlen, Aaron, Robert Hoffmann & Roseanne Armitage. "EEG Correlates of Dream Recall in Depressed Outpatients and Healthy Controls," Dreaming, 8/2 (June 1998), 109,-123. Rotenberg, V. S. "REM Sleep and Dreams," The Functions of Dreaming (Alan Moffitt, Milton Kramer, Robert Hoffmann, Eds.). (NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). Schredl, Michael. "Book Review: Dream and Nightmare: The New Theory on the Origin and Meaning of Dreams. By Ernest Hartmann, M. D.," Dreaming, 10/4 (Dec. 2000), 247-250. Springer, Karen. "Taking the Worry Cure," Newsweek, Feb. 24, 2003, 42-49. http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights) http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html (Dream Flights) o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Jean Campbell 1. The View, with Kathy Turner 2. Welcome Home, Dave : Picture Essays on Iraq with Jodine Grundy o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o View from the Bridge Jean (the Moderator) has been electronically incapacitated by both Hurricane Isabel (in the US) and by her electricity company who dug up her power lines while trying to fix Isabel's damage, so she can't do this review. So I offered to do it, thinking it'd be easy: not much has happened on the Bridge this month, I thought. WRONG. The World Dreams Peace Bridge has been spinning at a great pace. We started the month with a DaFuMu (Dream of Great Fortune). Our aim was to hold hands around the world for peace. Here is Ralf's dream: I'm outside at a lake. I walk on a bridge, leading into the water (gangplank?). It is a beautiful day with blue skies, some white clouds. I somehow know, that my task is to stop the clouds, at least to see it that way. I look up and focus my intention. I get into a calm state. The clouds do stop! In that moment I loose the feeling of having a body and feel lifted. It feels like being everything, like dissolving into space. I'm filled with tranquility, peace, strength. A delicious state, lasting the twinkling of an eye. Like so often, I think, I fear losing myself. And I know, that there are higher clouds, I am to bring to halt. Alarm goes off. I awake in WPR. Still filled with the sweet memory of a peaceful state. Nick started a collection of sayings from "The Voice": that voice that speaks with such authority in dreams. So far The Voice has said in its tender ironic manner: VALLEY Not all butterflies make it to Mexico VALLEY There is a new star on the horizon that has never been seen before NICK Elvis Dreams of Peace JEAN Teachers are not piranhas; they are dreamers. JEAN May the life of the sweeper change the width of the broom. Victoria alerted us to the International Day of Peace on 21st September and many of us lit candles as a reminder of peace. As Chayim so beautifully put it: I just had a vision of at least 1 person in every country in the world and at the same time lighting a candle in the name of peace. Jeremy, while in the US delivered a letter by hand, asking the US to move with care and with peace in relation to Korea. Look at what one man on a mission can achieve: Upon arriving at Dulles Airport I called Colman McCarthy an elderly journalist who runs the Institute for Teaching Peace in D.C. and made his acquaintance. He told me how to reach the US Senate, and so I went directly there, passing the Capitol Building, with a stop for color Xerox copies of posters, and with backpack and all went through security at the Russell office building and up to room 450 to the office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman Senator Richard Lugar was out for a while, but his lovely secretary stood up and greeted me warmly and graciously received several posters of the Korean Children's Peace Train, including one of a child screaming in front of a nuclear holocaust, and two sets of letters, one about the Peace Train world activities and one about the Korean children's dire situation. All the staff came out to see these, and also because I graduated from Indiana University law school and Chairman Lugar represents Indiana I'm fairly sure the information and extra copies for other committee members will get to him. The next day I called Colman and he invited me to a peace education lecture he was giving at Wilson High School in D.C. near my hotel. He showed a film on the military industrial complex and how our tax dollars go to finance wars around the world, to the detriment of the average citizen especially the poor, not only in the US but all over the world where people must pay their tax dollars to buy US weapons. He gave me some informative materials, and then sent me down to the US Institute of Peace, an independent but government financed think-lab, and influential. I met the Public Affairs Officer and immediately made friends with her. I gave her copies of about 14 posters and she said she would display them during a presentation they will be giving young people about child soldiers next week at that Institute which is in downtown DC. Here is the beginning of Jeremy's letter: Dear President Bush, A great many children, including Americans would surely die if North Korea ignited its "Sea of Fire," biological, chemical and conventional weapons, currently aimed at Seoul. I don't agree with the kind of regime the Northerners have, but I do know that we can draw out the worst in people, or we can draw out the best, depending on our words and actions, our behavior towards them. We can encourage an affirmative moment by moment change in others, or else we can alienate them, wandering down the road to conflict. We had another DaFuMu later in the month, trying to encourage Hurricane Isabel to go gently on the lives of all in her path. Here is Liz's dream: I was in our house near the ocean, my two boys and I there. We were preparing for the storm, we knew it was on its way. Sun out. Large windows looking over the shore, waves large. I see people on horses out in the waves. I wonder what they are doing out there. Some people had children on the horses. The were jumping the waves. One little boy I see clearly with his mother. He was not straddled on the horse but hanging on to the horse's neck with one arm, looking frightened and telling his mother to take him to shore. He was wearing cowboy boots (so I felt I was in Texas near the shore somewhere). I can see the people on horses way out into the ocean 'playing' in the waves too. I see the horses almost being pushed over and the riders trying to steady them. I wondered how I can see them standing on ground but the waves not over their heads (as one would think large waves like in Hawaii). But still enough to push them around a bit. And in the midst of all this we have been battling hurricanes, preparing for Peace Conferences in Turkey (Ilkin and Jeremy); traveling in Australia (Victoria); attending the Psiber Dreaming Conference and very importantly welcoming home a son from Iraq. That's September. ---- KT Part 2 : Welcome Home, Dave : Picture Essays on Iraq --------------------- The World Dream Peace Bridge continues to dream the dream onward in community based action and alliance. This month, a member's son, returning from Iraq is bringing back a picture show that you won't see on TV. -------------------- Dear Dream Friends, I want to share this news with all of you and invite you to join us in spirit at our welcome home party for my son David. It is a long and difficult journey home psychologically and spiritually. War is hell and it is corrosive to all human beings who are involved in it, even those who are there to heal. David feels some "survivor guilt" since he was able to come home but so many other fellow soldiers and medical personnel are still there with renewed orders stretching into March 2004. Though I know most of you will not be surprised to hear this testimony David has been speaking almost none stop since returning home of how wrong this war is, how the American people have been robbed by this administration, and that our worst fears about the venal nature of the enterprise, namely, that it is all about making certain interests very wealthy, is true. He feels a great deal of rage about that and is trying to channel it into effective political action. You may all be interested to know that while he was serving as an Emergency Room doctor in Kuwait many injured soldiers who came for treatment at the hospital brought pictures from "up country" in Iraq. He was entrusted with many, many photos which he has brought home. They are horrific, tender, beautiful, desolate, playful, stark, heartrending. They are what the soldiers who took them saw and experienced. These photos were pooled and brought by various carriers to the hospital and Dave and others put them on their computers. Since he came home with these photos he has shown them to our family and a few others. It takes several hours to see them as there are about 1400 photos so far. They are what CNN does not show. I would like you all to know that David has decided that he is responsible to bring these photos forward and show them to the public. He and his brother have an artist's studio in a very large building that houses many artist studios. On October 3 and 4 there will be an open gallery tour. He is setting this as a target date to mount a very special exhibit of a select number of these photos of the war. It is really true: a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't know whether there will be a way to share this experience more broadly, but we'll let you know whether the show may travel or have an online venue. He feels strongly that the American public needs to really see and feel what is happening and work to end this war. This is his action to help. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Welcome Home Dr. Dave Dear Family and Friends, The welcome home banner speaks for itself: http://www.improverse.com/welcome_home.htm we welcome Dave home from the war in Iraq! He arrived home in Cincinnati yesterday. We are grateful. Join us in giving thanks for his safe return home and keep all those still caught in the war, both our American soldiers and the Iraqi people in prayers. Please join us in spirit at the welcome home party . If you would like to send an email David_Grundy@yahoo.com we will share them at the party. Love from Jody & Terry Lea & Chris & Aidan & Simon Paul & Heidi Dave & Joanne ------------------- o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Nightmares Resources Online Richard Wilkerson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o The Free - National Nightmare Hotline 1-866-DRMS-911 The Nightmare number allows you to call up and get a free, qualified listener who will contact you about your nightmares. Highest praise for http://www.cyberdreamwork.com/hotlinev.html This hotline, is NOT a counseling line. However, if desired, a dreamer can be referred to a counselor after discussing their nightmare(s). You can help in several ways: NIGHTMARE HOTLINE BUTTONS Put a button on your website. You can download the button and link it to www.cyberdreamwork.com/nat.nightmarehotline.html Recommended Reading on Nightmares ASD Nightmare FAQ - Common Questions http://www.asdreams.org/subidxedunightmares.htm [Scheduled for updating by the Education Committee] Guidelines for coping with Nightmares after Trauma. Patricia Garfield, Ph.D. http://www.patriciagarfield.com/idx_library_nightmare_guidelines.h tm And see the types of Nightmares in Patricia Garfield's Universal Dream Key types. http://www.patriciagarfield.com Article: Nightmare Remedies: Helping Your Children Tame The Demons of the Night. Alan Siegel, Ph.D. and Kelly Bulkeley, Ph. D. http://www.asdreams.org/magazine/articles/seigel98dreamcatching.ht m Article: Nightmares and What to Do About Them. Patricia Garfield, Ph.D. http://www.patriciagarfield.com/idx_library_childs.htm Article: Nightmares? Bad Dreams? Lucky You! D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation http://www.crhsc.umontreal.ca/dreamsfoundation/nightmr1.htm Article: American Dreans: Nightmares and what to do about them. AARP Modern Maturity. http://www.modernmaturity.org/departments/2002/issues/0510_issues_ a.html ====0==== Advanced & Extended Studies on Nightmares ====0==== A Mini-Course for Clinicians and Trauma Workers on Posttraumatic Nightmares. Alan Siegel, Ph.D. http://www.asdreams.org/magazine/articles/seigel_nightmares.htm And see Alan Siegel's site http://www.dreamwisdom.info Article: The Relationship of Dream Content and Changes in Daytime Mood in Traumatized Vs. Non-Traumatized Children Raija-Leena Punamäki http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/pukamamaki9-4.htm Article: Freud and Jung on Nightmares. Tore Nielsen, Ph.D.Article: http://www.crhsc.umontreal.ca/dreams/znm.htm Overcoming Nightmares. Stephen LaBerge and Howard. Rheingold http://www.lucidity.com/EWLD10.txt Article: Dreams of Terror, Dreams of Healing. Robert Moss Article: Dream Work & Collective Trauma - Unconscious Elements In Public Debate. Jeremy Taylor http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed- articles/jeremy_taylor_2001_decl_collective_trauma.htm Article: Working with Your Nightmares. Strephon Kaplan-Williams http://dreamgate.com/skw/nightmares.htm Nightmares - An Introduction. Richard Catlett Wilkerson 1998 http://tinyurl.com/opfa 1999 http://tinyurl.com/opfj Becoming Nightmare, the Rhizomatics of Dreaming. Electric Dreams 7(10). Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 Oct). http://tinyurl.com/opfm |+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o The Waves: 06. Journey to the Lucid Crossroads Magnetic Moon (July 26 to August 22, 2003) © 2003 Nick Cumbo o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o The Waves is a newsletter reporting on the explorations of the Sea Life community. Sea Life, the main web forum at Dreampeace, aims to bring together a circle of dreamers from around the globe, collaborating in mutual dreaming adventures, and 'dreaming with and for the earth itself' Link: http://www.dreamofpeace.net/sealife This moon, the people at Sea Life, took a journey to a mutual dreamspace known as the Lucid Crossroads. The Lucid Crossroads, was originally created, by Russell (Pantalimon), a dreamer from the UK, using 3-dimensional graphics, to form the basis of a meeting place for dreamers from around the world. Link: http://crossroads.dreamofpeace.net/ Complete with some groovy looking couches, two receptionists by the names of Clem and Glad, an 'Am I Dreaming?' sign, and even a guest book, the Lucid Crossroads is also a place for the 'dream traveller to reflect before choosing a new dream via the dream doors'. Set in a calm, tranquil, desert landscape, it's a great hub for dreamers to meet at, and accessible by a large variety of vehicles. Dreamers can even visit by hot-air balloon! When Pantalimon, decided that "Sea Life, with its emphasis on mutual dreaming and the 13 Moon Calendar" would become the homebase for the Lucid Crossroads, I suggested that the Lucid Crossroads project would also become an annual event for the dreamers at Sea Life. The mutual benefits of collaboration, were immediate, with greatly increased visitors to both communities. During the project, many of the dreamers at Sea Life reported spontaneous dreams of travelling to the Crossroads in their sleep, though there were a large number of conscious attempts to visit too. A particularly interesting part of the project revolved around determining whether a visit to the crossroads were merely a creation of one's subconscious mind, or whether the Lucid Crossroads existed on the astral planes. Timeless Soul's dream gave us some interesting insight, into the phenomenon. A few years ago, Timeless_Soul had created a ring called DreamWeaver, to give him good dream recall, and greater stability in lucid dreams. "My brother and I made it by thinking 'if the dream is done by belief, than if we create items that make us do certain things, it will be easier to do things in a lucid dream. Ie. fly, transform, shared dreaming etc.' We made a few items in our mind and I went looking for dreamweaver, but never found it. For two years I never thought of it again" ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- QUESTIONS ANSWERED I am standing in what feels like an alcove in a wall or in front of a big throne. The walls are stone. In front of me I can see a rather large room, with columns that raise to the roof. They rise into darkness. There are people standing in a semi circle maybe 10 meters away. Standing forward from the group is a man wearing rich blue clothes. He steps forward & has a very big smile on his face. "Hello Richard". Somewhat confused and rather amazed I say "Hello…." He walks up to me. " I have something for you Richard". He opens his hand and produces a ring. "Remember this". My eyes burn with joy "DreamWeaver!". He laughs. He takes my right hand and puts it on my finger. I don't bother trying to control my emotions. My view changes to further away and I can see myself standing in the alcove. I yell "YES!" the world shakes and a blue energy wave shoots out from me. The man in blue steps back but is not really affected. The others, the spectators, fall over when the beam hits them. My view returns. The man in blue laughs "your strength and power increases greatly with DreamWeaver, be careful". I nod. He looks at me and says "don't go yet Richard, you have questions don't you" I nod again and feel as if I am In the little alcove for a reason and it would be out of place for me to step out. I speak "Is shared dreaming/mutual dreaming possible?" The man laughs "of course, you have had one too" I nod "OK. Places like the crossroads, how are they created; in the astral world, or are they just in our minds?" He doesn't even hesitate with the answer "If they are created for the purpose of mutual dreaming, than, even subconsciously, they are created in the astral world and people can go there. Your world, Richard, even though you have thought it doesn't, exists, and a few people have already gone." I smile & think, then say "thank you". He nods. "But who are you?", to which he replies, "You need not worry, we will meet again". I smile and wake. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- What made the experience even more interesting, is that the same night, he also had an experience of meeting another dreamer at the forum, waterstarrainbow (Alana). Waterstarrainbow is a close personal friend, and when Timeless_Soul described the conversation he'd had with her, I couldn't help but laugh. It sure sounded, a lot like her, especially his mention of her earrings; which are certainly a recognisable element of her appearance at times. Other dreamers seemed to pick up on the nature of the Lucid Crossroads being 'under development'. MeKenzie (DM7) reported her experience of meeting the receptionist Glad, who told her that the crossroads weren't yet completed. Soon after, MeKenzie, passed through one of the 'dream doors', and found herself in 'wizard school'. Similarly, EynKiora's dream indicated slight alterations to the design, including the appearance of three 'large, black ladies' as the receptionists. When EynKiora asked what had happened to Clem and Glad, one of them replied that "they've been released". As it turned out, at the time, Pantalimon was in the process of restyling the receptionists, building Clem's features from photos of an afro carribean male. One of the other fascinating stories, came from CCHawk, a member of the 'Universal Wheel' dream team: ------------------------------------------------------------------ THE CROSSROADS Upon realizing I'm dreaming I rub my hands and everything gets moderately clearer... I'm about mid to mid/high in lucidity at this point. I think about what I want to do and easily think of the crossroads. I take another look in the mirror, and it now looks like an aquarium... and many fish are swimming about inside. I think of Sea Life, and even out loud say, "Sea Life...". The fish get startled and start scurrying around, I notice they assemble themselves to spell something. It reads, "Is There More". I am puzzled as to what it means. I get back on track and remember the crossroads, and start wondering how I'm gonna get there. I look at my bathroom door and imagine the crossroads being behind it. I open it to see a long hallway in front of me... and all the walls, floor and ceiling are black and white checkered, like a chess board. I am not satisfied, because this is not the crossroads... and close the door. I try imagining once again and open the door. This time there is another door directly behind it, and I open it too. As soon as it's opened, my vision seems to fade and I feel like I'm going to wake up... but soon enough, things start fading back in. When the dream comes back into focus, I happily find myself to now be right in the middle of the crossroads. I'm standing right in front of the couches, and like the website, notice blue cushions on them and the floating table... but the table seems to be made of steirofoam or something. I look around and notice that there's no doors around the crossroads, but the well is there. The receptionists are missing as well. I feel the heat of the sun on my neck, and look up to see a bright sun above, but no balloons floating. I look back at the crossroads themselves, and feel totally aware at this point... I am at high lucidity. I notice the piece of paper on the floating table and that there is something written on it in green writing. I run up and read what it says; here's what I see: I hope and want you to come see this, friend. (Some weird words here...) (A sentence I can't make out.) Soon enough, we will be here at one time. From, Valter I smile knowing that this message was from Valter (Strawin). I hear something behind me up in the sky; it sounds like a chinese gong or something. When I turn around and look up, all I see is the sun like before. The brightness of the sun is blinding, and it easily causes me to wake up. ------------------------------------------------------------------ CCHawk was overjoyed with the dream, and expressed some further amazement at the message given by the fish in the aquarium. Meanwhile, some powerful tingles rushed through my head, as I read this latest account from CCHawk. I was pretty stunned. Only hours before, I'd come online to discover the message, I'd had a dream involving the very same two members, CCHawk and Valter (Strawin)! Both happen to be part of the 'Universal Wheel' dream team. In my dream, CCHawk had written a letter to Valter (Strawin); part of it speaking about how he happy he was to be part of a team. It seemed, in my dream, I'd picked up on his letter of reply. The 'Lucid Crossroads' project will continue to be a big part of the Sea Life forum, especially with new plans from Pantalimon, to build a 'Sea Life' area into the design of the crossroads. What's great is that teams can also use the Lucid Crossroads throughout the year, as the basis of smaller projects run exclusively within a single team. In Pantalimon's words, "If someone is aways trying to get there that means that someone is constantly attempting to construct the place in their mind. As the months and years go by this "must" strengthen the stability and "realness" of the Crossroads, and the intense dreaming by the groups on this forum will accelerate that four fold" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay tuned next moon for the results of our 'Journey to Antarctica'. We welcome new dreamers to join us in our adventures. Email: explora@dreamofpeace.net Forum: http://www.dreamofpeace.net/sealife ================================================================= |+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Dream: Going Upstairs by Stan Kulikowski |+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o DATE : 26 sep 2003 05:06 DREAM : going upstairs =( i have been somewhat preoccupied by teaching the multimedia course this term. there was no curriculum material for the course, not even a textbook. i was only assigned it five days before semester started, so i have to create it as we meet, and it has the unfortunate time schedule of three 50 minute sessions each week. too short to really dig into any topic, rather like high school than university work. we are now finishing the audio portions of the course and i started last night with nothing prepared for tomorrow. fortunately, i seem familiar enough with computer multimedia that when i just played with my equipment i came up with a short demonstration project that involves sound bytes from radio programs of 1938 and 1948. i hope this will work out in class tomorrow as i intend. after preparing this material, i still had to debug a javascript windowing web page in mozilla for the programming course i also have tomorrow. i got to bed around 01:00 but could not get to sleep for an hour. )= in this very building where we now sit, there used to be a special club in the penthouse on the 49th floor. at that time this was the tallest skyscraper in town. the ground floor was a normal bar where a small band with a lounge singer would entertain every evening, but all the very best gentlemen would come here, dressed in their finest evening clothes in hope of being selected for going upstairs. the upstairs club featured exotic dancers. the finest young women would practice and perfect their seductive performances under the skylights open to the stars. the upstairs club was totally owned by the strippers themselves, and it was held in trust by their professional association for their own relaxation and entertainment. since their usual places of employment tended to degraded and forced merriment, dirty money and cheap liquor sold dear, their off duty establishment was designed as a respite of art and sympathy. several of the off-duty dancers volunteered as gatekeepers on the express elevator which only rose to that penthouse. these angels would patrol the ground floor, selecting which gentlemen (or sometimes ladies) they wanted to conduct upstairs where only the finest champagne was served, and that was freely given. once taken upstairs, you stayed until dawn, coming down in worn delirium hardly able to speak or even remember the intense delights lavished on you under the starlight. i know this because once, many years ago when this club still operated, i had wandered into this place on a christmas eve, more by accident than design. i had been down on my luck, a really low period in my life. for a long time i had been enduring life, rather than enjoying it. i was spending the holidays alone in a cold and strange city. just that once, most unexpectedly, i was selected for going upstairs. perhaps the gatekeepers recognized in me something that i did not see myself, but for whatever reason, they took me by the hand and led me into their kindness. washed me with desire in a way that changed me from that time until this. now days there is a library in the penthouse establishment, a dusty place of knowledge and quiet contemplation. few even remember that once this sanctum of books and learning was the center of the universe for those of us transformed by the mercies of tenderness that went on there. =( awake at 04:45. i am eager to start the day, but it is too early for me to get up. this dream of being taken upstairs seems familiar to me, like i have dreamt it before. i suppose that is because it takes the form of a memory of a prior time. i doubt i actually have another penthouse stripper club in my dream journals. the dream itself takes place solely in the lower bar, a run down place where i just sit contemplating the past experience. now, i am somewhat disappointed that i do not really recall what went on (or came off) upstairs, just the feeling of anticipation on being conducted to the elevator by the captivating angels patrolling the ground floor, and then the sense of exhausted satisfaction when being released the next morning. being caught up into the seventh heaven, it is said that it is unlawful to speak of mountain top experiences or even remember them it seems. i feel somewhat like marcel proust and his macaroon, relishing the experience rather than actually eating it. )= . i lift my glass to the awful truth === that you can't reveal to the ears of youth | | -- l cohen (1972) closing time --- stankuli@etherways.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Our dream editor is on vacation, so I have just added a few dreams here from the dream flow. If your dream didn't get in, please resend your dream into the flow at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple -Richard dream_title: The Back, Back, Back Yard dream_date: 4/18/2003 dreamer_name: dreambat dream_text: My mother had died and the garden in the back, back, back yard is gone as well. At first I am alone in that back yard which touches the alley. There is a lot of stuff here in the empty garden, including a bed. I think to myself what a nice thing it is to have a bed here, what a lovely view. But then I become concerned about how the bed will fare in bad weather. A man comes along I see in the dream as a vagrant, and I am concerned he will stop and spoil the bed as well. I notice the large bone-charcoal pieces, some a quarter the size of the garden itself. they are what is left of the dead garden. I am very sad that this is the only land left in my family. My wife, Sierra, and I discuss moving the house out here for the view. But the view isn't a nice as it was. We see from the now very large charcoal hill many paths and streets below and many people busily going about their business. I tell Sierra, "When I was young, one could work all day in the garden without a person coming by." Then I am with my grandmother Lenna and the charcoal hill we are on is the remains of my dead mother. We discuss how we are going to mourn her and what to do with the yard and remains. Upon waking I feel the scene quite gruesome, but there wasn't any of this in the dream itself. dream_comments: I worked as a child for my grandmother in her large garden. I always thought of it as labor and toil, though I recognized she loved ever minute of the work. The garden was separated and behind the back yard, and even behind an in-between back yard. ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:22:04 -0700 dream_title: Singing to the Whales dreamer_name: Michael M dream_text: I have gone down the stairs into the basement. It is fairly dark. There are only one or two lights on. I notice that there are many other lights, but that they need new bulbs. Back by the stairs, I see a shelf that has boxes of bulbs. These are very special bulbs- -shaped cylindrically at top and bottom with a larger radius bulge in the middle. I get some and begin to change out bulbs. I can reach them by standing on tip toe. The room gets lighter and I can see more of it. There is a large furnace at one end toward the back-center and I go around it and change a bulb in the corner so that light even gets there. I go back across to a workbench area and see a two by four that goes above the top of the bench on the wall. I think that would be a good place to install more lights. Directly above me I see a bulb that's out and screw it out of the socket. Someone had screwed it into a broken light bulb which was still in the socket. I take the glass in my hands and unscrew this one. It comes out, but the two wires are hanging there loose. I worry that they'll come in contact. I somehow get them out. I take them over to a table and set them down. They still accidentally come close to contact. I set them on a wet cloth which worries me a little. I think Matt (my oldest son in waking life) is good with electrical stuff and he can fix it now. I am pretty happy with the basement now. At this point I realize the basement is my unconscious and that I have brought some of it into consciousness. I then become aware that there are other rooms that lead off of here. One leads on outside I think. It is by the workbench. I can just see outside in spaces between boards. Another is in the rear of the room. I think these must be where my unconscious is. I open the door in the back of the room. It is dark and looks just like the coal room in my house in Bloomington. (I lived there as a youth in Illinois in waking life). I can see a mound of dirt to my right (actually was there in waking life). It goes upward all the way to the wall. It is very dark over there. At the top is a rectangular window. To the left of the window I can see a dark green water heater. A man is leaning in the window and is going to light it. I'm afraid it might blow up. I wonder what someone is doing in my house. He says he belongs there, that he is not from outside. I hide behind the door for a moment, but it doesn't blow up. When I look again the man is gone and the window (which was empty before) now has an opaque, wavy pane in it. I think its religion the way I knew it before. A loud NO! comes into my head. I throw a roll of toilet paper at the window, but it just bounces off. As I watch, the window shatters and a white dog/wolf breaks through and runs down to me. He has short curly white hair that is very soft. I am on my knees. I hug and kiss the dog/wolf. Then I see a grey cat come through the window. It comes down beside me also and walks in front of me. I see a nipple on a long strand on its right side and think I should suck on it. I am not sure that would be right and worry about thinking this. The cat lies down and I am impressed that it gets along with the dog. I look up at the window again and can now see stars. As I look, and am still holding the dog, I feel that I need to sing to the whales. My singing is very important for whale marriage and I am somehow connected to them by the stars. The stars are very unusual. They are large and moving. I sing and feel very close to the whales. I also feel that the whales are waiting for us to sing to them. I feel that this is essential to allowing a spiritual marriage between our species to take place. dream_comments: Whale dreams are one of my dream motifs. I have more than 30 of them. I have a number of categories of motif dreams, but if there were such a thing as "number" motif dreams, those would be far and away the largest category of all for me. The "Singing to the Whales" dream is one of 3 "big dreams" in my life and led to a whole series of quite amazing synchronicities. For example, I have found that the connection between whales and stars is archetypal and is known to native peoples! ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:22:51 -0700 "Lucid Near Heaven" - April 28, 2003 I am aware that I am dreaming (Lucid). There is a group of people next to me and I ask them if they want to go with me to heaven. I have everyone hold hands, some on my left and some on my right. There is a young boy on my right and I hold his hand. It is Robert (my recently deceased brother). I inform everyone that the journey will not be easy. It will get very cold at times but I will ask to make it warm. We leave and we are flying high over cities. Some people drop off on the way because they don't want to take the journey. I stop and there are only 3 of us left, a woman on my left and the little boy on my right. I look back and the boy is resting and crying, he says he can't make it, it is very cold yet he really wants to go to heaven yet he seems scared. I told him that he can make it, I am very calm but I have to keep telling myself that I am dreaming so that I don't loose flight. Then I take the little boy's hand (the woman is now gone on my left) and we take off again, I am concentrating to make it warm. Ahead I see a beautiful white city with a glow of the sun. I look to my left and a fish which is 10 times our size is slowly coming upon us and is looking at us as if to say, I am watching over you and I guard heaven. The fish is outlined in black with black eyes and scales, the rest of the body is white. I think to myself, WOW wait until I tell people about this awesome dream. Elizlyn@aol.com ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:18:04 -0700 dream_title: Hands dream_date: 07/23/03 dreamer_name: Phoenix dream_text: About 3:00 am I woke up but before I opened my eyes I saw many color astrological signs coming towards me. A little window opened up in the middle and it had pictures of many fingered dark hands. dream_comments: This dream was very, very vivid ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 09:08:16 -0700 dream_title: DNA dream_date: Monday, November 19, 2001 dreamer_name: rannva dream_text: I am in a room or situation and all of a sudden I am flying or falling in a reality where I can see a DNA double helix. The helix is flattened out and it has the shape of a Moebus strip. It is immense and I am very small compared to this structure or phenomenon. I am floating in this space around the information of DNA. I can see the codes for A, T, G, and C imprinted on the strips. This is an extremely profound moment for me. I am surrounded by this wealth of information and am not sure what it means to me and what I should do with it. As I approach the edge of the strip and grab hold of it. I see numbers on the white background. I hold on to the part where the number is something between 15-19. I see it very clearly. The strip stretches out a little as I tug on it as if to anchor myself in this nothingness. I look down below me and this information strip continues and moves around far beneath me and there is nothing else in this space. Only this information. I feel as if I have entered a secret space in reality, a hidden place, and I wonder what I should do with it. It is both frightening and fascinating and I am nearly aware that I am dreaming. I wake up, check that I am awake, but I have trouble staying awake. I drift back into this reality for a while until I force myself to wake up. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:23:29 -0700 dream_title: me and my boyfreind dream_date: 7-20-03 dreamer_name: bob dream_text: i had this dream that my boyfreind and i broke up. in real life everything between us is going fine. but in my dream he broke up with me and kissed me goodbye. i dont get what this means!!!??? dream_comments: please help me! can you tell me what this dream means? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ "Lucid Near Heaven" - April 28, 2003 I am aware that I am dreaming (Lucid). There is a group of people next to me and I ask them if they want to go with me to heaven. I have everyone hold hands, some on my left and some on my right. There is a young boy on my right and I hold his hand. It is Robert (my recently deceased brother). I inform everyone that the journey will not be easy. It will get very cold at times but I will ask to make it warm. We leave and we are flying high over cities. Some people drop off on the way because they don't want to take the journey. I stop and there are only 3 of us left, a woman on my left and the little boy on my right. I look back and the boy is resting and crying, he says he can't make it, it is very cold yet he really wants to go to heaven yet he seems scared. I told him that he can make it, I am very calm but I have to keep telling myself that I am dreaming so that I don't loose flight. Then I take the little boy's hand (the woman is now gone on my left) and we take off again, I am concentrating to make it warm. Ahead I see a beautiful white city with a glow of the sun. I look to my left and a fish which is 10 times our size is slowly coming upon us and is looking at us as if to say, I am watching over you and I guard heaven. The fish is outlined in black with black eyes and scales, the rest of the body is white. I think to myself, WOW wait until I tell people about this awesome dream. Elizlyn ____________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2003 16:13:21 -0700 dream_title: remember everything.. remember my brother dream_date: 08/31/03 dreamer_name: Lisa dream_text: i had a dream about holding a dead baby.. i remember there was a song playing in the background, yet, there was nothing in the room i was in when i awoke. i could feel the baby's weight and her limp body. it felt so real. i started to cry in my dream and i awoke crying.. i kept telling myself in my dream the baby was my brother.. but i'm not sure now dream_comments: i dont know what the 'dead-baby' dream meant.. but i know why it made me cry.. a couple of years ago i had a stillbirth and my baby was nine months old.. when i held the baby in my dreams .. it felt like my baby who died.. a couple of years later after my baby died.. my brother died.. i dont know if theres a connection. thank you lisa3106 ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 10:21:59 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 1 - The Mustard Alligators I am going somewhere on foot on a (20 feet) wide charcoal road. On my left is undeveloped barren land . Some wild grass is sprouting sporadically on the road side. On my right are 3 cemented steps shrouded in foliage and leading perhaps to a closed shop. I see a shallow drain trench running diagonally across the road . And lying along length of trench are 4 (2 pairs ) of gigantic 15 ft mustard alligators . Each female is tilted sideways half in, half out of trench, mounted by a male But they appeared totally static and benign like large furry rocks that havenˇ¦t moved in ages. I looked into the eyes of of the males closest to me and I saw understanding and affection. So I dared cross the alligators, only to find another diagonal trench occupied by 3 more pairs. I felt imprisoned in the triangel they formed around me. It dawned on me that I was in middle of nowhere . I looked towards the road side to circumvent the beasts . But I was not sure that strategy would work. Note: The estimates regarding the width of the road and the length of the alligators was made by me after I woke up. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 11:10:31 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 4 - The Baroque Palace We live in a very large, highly ornate double-storied palace. There are guests in the house and all the rooms are full. The guide shows a short modestly dressed gentleman into the guest chamber on the first floor which is also the largest room in the house. But another modestly dressed gentleman is already occupying the room. He is even shorter. The visitor erroneously assumes that the man already in the room is a servant. He starts thanking the guide profusely for showing him to the palatial suite. When the guide's body language finally elicits the reality on the new arrival, he exclaims theatrically in a vain effort to imbibe the new information in stride. ( What follows is a lucid Dream ) I think about the size of the room and wonder whether it would have been better to bisect it with a large partition and to have run a corridor to the back room along the side wall of the front room. I also wonder how large one could make a room because finally the weight of beams would exceed their load carrying capacity! ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 11:39:11 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 6 - The Hospital Visit A short, middle-aged, country woman with curly black hair takes me to a local hospital. I am introduced there to a male doctor in a white coat in his small office. He stands up to shake my hand. The doctor settles in his seat behind the small Rexene covered table. My escort and I sit facing him on a wooden bench. His short middle-aged nurse also having curly black hair is standing before me to the right. She extracts a labeled medicine bottle out of a cabinet to her right and gestures to him to read out the patient's name to her. The doctor reads the the name aloud. She departs through door-less doorway into the larger unlit adjacent room. And walks straight out of the next door-less doorway into a yellow-walled sun-lit hallway. She turns left to expose a small window with the afternoon sun pouring in. I ask the doctor whether he thought her could harm patients. The doctor dismisses my apprehensions by saying that it was a difficult name that she had requested read out. Meanwhile my escort is staring at me with intense hatred. I ask her whether she does not like what I said. She relaxes and replies that it was just that her divource was going to be finalized in the near term. I apologized and thanked the doctor for his courtesy. He appeared pleased that I had apologized. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 22:00:35 -0700 Subject: tornados dreamer_name: anonymous dream_text: Driving with my dad to get gas upon a storm with tornados every where, stopping at a store to fill up but only putting the wrong gas and in the site of a tornado and a little young man appears asking me question and feeling a little fearful of what he might do, the sun shines down only on me and no where else later the young man disappears then my dad returns and we leave on our way. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 22:01:43 -0700 Subject: Betsy's Store dream_title: Betsy's Store dream_date: August 20, 2003 dreamer_name: MoBe dream_text: My colleague at work co-owns a health food store called Choices, with her husband and sister and brother in law. I was visiting one of their first stores, and rather than selling health foods they were selling luggage. I asked what went wrong and the staff at the front said "not enough business". dream_comments: This would seem like a dream with a literal translation except that the last time I talked with Betsy who is now retired, their stores were doing fabulously well!!! ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 22:02:56 -0700 dream_title: the devil works mysteriously dream_date: 8/26/03 dreamer_name: Tibel Curses dream_text: I was with my boyfriend and we were at some kind of zoo, we were walking past a bunch of doves a voice told us to get out the voice was the devil as we are walking by the doves start to turn black like ink was being spilled on them we started to run and ended up where the lions were the lion's spoke to us i can't remember what they said but i pushed on in the river the other one said you shouldn't have done that and told my boyfriend to go get him so he jumped in and got him out. when he came back we were sitting on the dirt trying to see if the lion was alive, then the lion started to sink in the sand and we tryed to dig him up when i did it was my boyfriend and he was dead i grabed his head and i could feel that it was caved in, in the back i knew he was dieing i tryed to tell him i loved him but instead i told him i didn't love him i woke up saying i don't love you. dream_comments: my boyfriend and me have been together for a year this isn't the first dream i have had about him dieing. my family says i talk in my sleep does this mean anything? I have trouble sleeping at night because of dreams what can i do to help? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 02:02:38 -0700 (PDT) From: ibraiz naeem From the compressor room I can overview the entire factory at work. I decide to peep on my boss to see whether he has left. But he is still there, looking sideways, contemplating how I needed to be addressed. I turn back to find the entire shop floor staring at me with knowing eyes. The supervisor is having tea at his desk and is looking at me with pity in his eyes. Angrily I think that if they donˇ¦t want to greet me why should I greet them? I turn around to find that my boss has left without greeting me. His arrogance further aggravates my indignation and as I furiously exit the gate I detect out of the corner of my eye a small jam-packed car parked parallel to the gate. Its occupants watch me leave. As I walk home I think to myself what an utterly humiliating experience that had been. But I had gone back on my grand- father's instruction and not on my own. Presently I hear my grand- father's voice, ˇ§Terminatingly humiliating, ibraiz, but donˇ¦t worry youˇ¦ll be OK!ˇ¨ Please note: 1) My grandfather passed away in 1995. I was very attached to him. 2) I left my last job because they did not give me the raise I was promised. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 13:18:02 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 10 - Aunt Jemima's Jalopy. I stand in dimly lit lobby. On my left in a well-lit room there is a family On my right in another well-lit room are Aunt Jemima* and her family. Her sister is fair & pretty (she resembles our previous landlord's daughter, R). I notice that she has a rather long nose and I tell myself not to stare. Having nowhere else to look, I start reading the high-set name plate on the door in front of me. But as I try to read the text fades, and I fall back on the sofa behind me. Aunt Jemima asks me to come along with her in her Jalopy. As we settle in I get a glimpse of her younger sister reclining on the back seat, and notice her delicate wrist & exquisite hand. The large black jalopy is loaded with numerous chattel. Almost as if she were relocating. One is a full lamp. As Aunt Jemima parks along a pavement to pick others passengers her sister also gets out and complains to her discreetly that my presence was cramping her space in the Jalopy, making her uncomfortable. Please Note: 1) Aunt Jemima is a distant relative. 2) Jemima is a pseudonym ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 11:23:18 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 5 - My Brother I am hanging by the grills outside the large baroque palace that is our home to get exercise. A girl joins me, then another. Then I decide I have to get down, so I slide down the dark brown drain-pipe. As I descend I think there must be a better way of descending and look up hoping the girls hadnˇ¦t seen me slide by the pipe. I walk through a narrow passage to the front of the house. On my way I lookup to see two plump brightly dressed (blue pants & red jackets) guests descending a helical stair-way I look down & see my younger brother approaching me at very close range. He is wearing a sweater. He helps me move aside so that he can pass. As I reach the solid wood front door, which has another black helical stairway to its right, I feel awe at how how active and successful my brother had become. I remember the days when he used to sleep out the days. I conclude that his past behavior had just reflected his frustration at the lack of opportunity during that phase of his life. Please note: My brother had in reality been an escapist and is now running his business with much more active involvement. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 07:39:17 -0000 From: "hen_na_yume" Subject: dream 09/03/03 dream name: dream class I had a class that is outdoors in a giant backyard. there are tall dark trees enclosing the place so it is fairly lighted. the grass is green but not flat, it is kind of wavy. The teacher is a woman who seems to be 30's or early 40's but very spiritual. she has these thin sunglasses on and long black hair. i think the point of this class is to learn about yourself. I remember she was handing me something i think, or talking and using her hands as body language, i looked at her thumb and it was like being on acid, the lines on the palm side of her thumb left black tracers. Made me feel kind of funny. Then i noticed a giant wall, made of solid wood with a bunch of wavy lines on it like a log. I stare at it and the lines started to look like a skeleton. I stare more and more and it's a giant skull. I ask why is it a skeleton? The teacher or someone says because it's a closet. I say, ahh, so i have skeletons in my closet? comments: I felt this is the first day I had of this class and there will be more. I felt I can learn in this class and in the setting. I felt funny the whole time, like a feeling in my stomach and the back of my neck. ____________________________________________________________ Message: 14 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 11:53:17 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 7 - The Parking Contract. I am in Islamabad (Pakistan's Capital City) on some business. As I am about to depart I am told that I have to leave parking notices on all cars parked at a certain public place. I have on me our white visiting cards with black printing introducing us as government parking contractors with a Rawalpindi (Islamabad's twin city) address and phone number. At one point I see three old medium sized cars parked side by side. As I insert my visiting cards under their vipers, I notice that one of them is of metallic blue color. A balding gentleman in his 60s with sparse black hair sitting in the driving seat of his car informs me through the open hatch of his car that the government had called off parking tickets. He was also forwarding 3 documents as evidence. When I ask who had made the announcement his answer was not quite clear. As I finish my Islamabad assignment I am *told* I must cover Rawalpindi as well the next day before I return. I am distressed that although my card gives a Rawalpindi contact number, we actually don't have an office there & defaulters would not be able to reach us to pay their dues. And neither could we apprehend them since I had no record of whom I had issued my visiting cards to. ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 13:21:24 -0000 From: "ibraiz_n" Subject: Dream no. 10 - Aunt Jemima's Jalopy. I stand in dimly lit lobby. On my left in a well-lit room there is a family On my right in another well-lit room are Aunt Jemima and her family. Her sister is fair & pretty (she resembles our previous landlord's daughter, R). I notice that she has a rather long nose and I tell myself not to stare. Having nowhere else to look, I start reading the high-set name plate on the door in front of me. But as I try to read the text fades, and I fall back on the sofa behind me. Aunt Jemima asks me to come along with her in her Jalopy. As we settle in I get a glimpse of her younger sister reclining on the back seat, and notice her delicate wrist & exquisite hand. The large black jalopy is loaded with numerous chattel. Almost as if she were relocating. One is a full lamp. As Aunt Jemima parks along a pavement to pick others passengers her sister also gets out and complains to her discreetly that my presence was cramping her space in the Jalopy, making her uncomfortable. Please Note: 1) Aunt Jemima is a distant relative having liberal but unsharing outlook. 2) Jemima is a pseudonym ____________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 02:06:08 -0000 From: "hen_na_yume" Subject: dream: someone else me there is a person named adam (my name) he is new to my group of friends. infact he does the same things that i do. i do not trust him in the slightest. he goes rock climbing in this place that is ultra secret. through a forest on certain paths and therecomes a giant smooth rock that stretches for miles, and there are many areas that are climbable. there is one that i go to that goes way down underneath into an enclosure. i look from there way far and up, where adam is climbing with one other guy. i didnt want them to know i followed. i didnt want to be discovered. i find out later that there is a person who says she fears adam and does not want to come near him. I meet him once, at his place. He has a semi-agressive personality, and seems very dangerous to be close to. I just got that feeling from being around him. Though, not dangerous in that he is psychotic or anything. Its more like i am afraid to get to know him, infact i can't quite pinpoint it. dream comments: adam is also my name. perhaps i was seeing myself in the dream through a different set of eyes(!). it didnt seem like me entirely. in some ways it did, like rock climbing and taking people to the secret place no one knows about. For some reason i look at myself slightly differently then i did before i had the dream last night ____________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 19:02:50 -0000 From: "adamthesass" Subject: gorilla dream Hello, I'm new to the group and have enjoyed reading through the fascinating dreams that have been posted here. I also wanted to share a dream that I recently had about gorillas and see what you thought of it...it was one of the few dreams I've remembered with such clarity: Gorilla/Labyrinth I had a dream in which I was guided by two gorillas on a tour of a labyrinthine compound. The purpose of the tour was never explained, and I'm still not sure one of the animals was even a gorilla, because his features remained hazy throughout the dream. I assume was one, though, because it was clearly a gorilla compound, and he clearly belonged there. The other gorilla was the dominant fellow of the two, which may be why I remember him more distinctly. He had a military air about him and I was under the impression that he held the rank of general. To be honest, he was plagiarized almost entirely from the 1968 production of "Planet of the Apes," specifically the scary gorilla who leads the hunt for feral humans early in the movie. Both gorillas walked upright, as did the ones in the movie, and beyond that, an uncanny Planet of the Apes-like atmosphere permeated the entire dream. The general led the way around the compound, followed by the other one, who seemed nervous the whole time. I brought up the rear. Along the way my guides pointed out noteworthy artifacts and architectural features of the structure. While all this was going on, a helpful animated map of the compound was being displayed in one corner of the "screen," which let me see where I was and what was coming up around the corner. This feature was undoubtedly inspired by certain video games in which an onscreen map is provided alongside the action. And as in the video games, the map helped place the experience within a larger context, and gave me a certain clairvoyance as to what would happen next. The gorilla compound, though vast, was strangely empty. Its long stone hallways led past courtyards overgrown with jungle plants, which were depicted in the dream-map as patches of cartoonish foliage. There were other courtyards that had clearly been better tended, with packed earth floors and scattered tufts of grass. It was in one of these that I was shown the most important things on my tour: gorillas the size of elephants, each of which was confined in a giant metal cage. The general took great pains to emphasize that these were an ancestral species from which his more advanced kind had descended. He spoke of them with a certain awe, and seemed proud that they'd been captured and caged there. For their part, the giants didn't do much beyond resting heavily on their haunches, perhaps because their enclosures permitted them little room to move. The curious thing about the encounter with these captive apes was that I had known about them before actually seeing them face-to- face, since I had seen them on my dream-map quite a while beforehand - had already spotted them from the air, as it were. So while the general clearly expected astonishment, I was actually not the least bit surprised when he led me into their brooding presence. He seemed quite disappointed at this, but would doubtless have been more understanding had he known I was following all the action on my own internal map. After the visit to these ancestral giants, I found myself in need of a bathroom. The hazy nervous ape, who never seemed entirely there, obligingly pointed one out to me just a short distance down the corridor (my map was notably unhelpful on the subject of restrooms). Entering it, I was amazed at its familiarity, for it was laid out identically to the countless public bathrooms I'd patronized in various human institutions. Pulling up to a welcoming urinal, I thought, "Wow, theirs are just like ours." With that startling insight, I suddenly found myself awake, and surprised that I remembered it all. ____________________________________________________________ -------------------- END ISSUE ----------------- -===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===- =---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---= ELECTRIC DREAMS ACCESS INFORMATION =---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---= -===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===-===- Subscriptions: The Electric Dreams E-zine (issn 1089 4284) is *free* and distributed via email about once a month. You can have Electric Dreams delivered right to your email box by sending an e-mail Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ================= SUBMITTING DREAMS and Comments about Dreams: EASY! Electric Dreams will publish your dreams and comments about dreams you have seen in previous issues. 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