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 #14 Issue #4 April 2007 ISSN# 1089 4284 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Electric Dreams: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams Cover: Cover by Laura Atkinson http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed14-4cov.jpg o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o C O N T E N T S ++ Editor's Notes Richard Wilkerson ++ Global Dreaming News Harry Bosma ++ Cover: by Laura Atkinson ++ Column: An Excerpt from the Lucid Dream Exchange Hallucinations Begone! Lucy Gillis ++ Article: Rhine Conference: Consciousness Today Harry Bosma ++ Column: The View – World Dreams Peace Bridge That's A Lot of Change. Jean Campbell ++ Dream: "Buffy and the Spitting Alien" Stan Kulikowski II ++ Column: “Changing” the Dream DreamRePlay with David Jenkins, PhD ++ Article: Signs of Simulation, Symbols beyond Value: Jean Baudrillard and Grassroots Dreamwork in Cyberspace Richard Wilkerson ++ DREAM SECTION: From Kat Peters-Midland XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX D E A D L I N E : Send articles and news by April 28th for the May issue XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Post Dreams and Comments on Dreams to: http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple Send news, events, workshops, conferences& reviews to Harry Bosma Send Articles, news and other items to: Richard Wilkerson: o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Editor's Notes o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Welcome to the April 2007 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and dreamwork online. If you are new to dreams and dreamwork, there are a few e-lists where Electric Dreams people seem to congregate that might interest you. One is dreamchatters@yahoogroups.com Subscribe by going here and registering http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dreamchatters/ .. and another is the IASD bulletin board. Please, no dreams interpreted here, just discussion of dreaming and dreamwork topics. http://www.asdreams.org/subidxdiscussionsbboard.htm In this issue: Global Dreaming News editor Harry Bosma, brings you dream news and events from around the world, online and offline. If you have dream news you want to get out, please send those to Harry for next month’s publication at ed-news@alquinte.com Are all the dreams the same level of simulation and imagination? Lucy Gillis explores this and other issues of unhallucinated reality in “Hallucinations Begone!”, this month’s selection from the Lucid Dream Exchange. Psi Dreamers – heads up! Harry Bosma reports from the Rhine Conference in March 2007. The “Consciousness Today” theme brought together scientists and psychics to push the edges of conscious thought, and ground psi in science. Read the review and see the new directions developing for dreamers and dreamworkers. The World Dreams Peace Bridge continues to dream up world wide events. Can we envision the changes as productive? Jean Campbell gathers together meaningful events from the global community and communication networks to forge night-dreams with dream-visions to give us all another look at change, spare change, global change and personal change. Be sure to read “That's A Lot of Change.” Speaking of change, one of the goals of personal dreamwork can be to have more pleasant and fewer stressful dreams. David Jenkins, PhD shows you how last night’s dream is a steppingstone to your next dream. You replay the dream on order to spell out what you really want to happen. You can have allies, say what needed to be said; and even end the dream in a different way. Read about this work in “’Changing’ the Dream.” Have your ever looked at your dream journal and felt you could probably write these dreams up in a better way? Take a look at Stan Kulikowski II’s dream text to get an idea of how this might happen. Read "Buffy and the Spitting Alien." Farwell, Jean Baudrillard! The famous French postmodern philosopher died in March, and leaves us with thoughts about his body of work that involve theories about drift of signs over time from pointing to the real to becoming simulations of the real to becoming pure simulations without anything but passing reference to reality, a reality Baudrillard felt we have lost in the consumption of signs. Those of you who are Matrix movie fans will recognize the name from the Neo’s hollowed out book, Simulation and Simulacra. What’s this have to do with dreams? Well, both Jung and Baudrillard saw the problem of signs, but they took different directions. Both felt that meaning and value lay in the symbolic. Jung explored how symbols help us to find our own meaning and value, while Baudrillard explored how signs undermine this same meaning and value. Both are valuable, and in memorial, I am reprinting an article on dreamwork and Baudrillard, “Signs of Simulation: Symbols beyond Value Jean Baudrillard and Grassroots Dreamwork in Cyberspace” Finding worms in hair, falling off a bridge, watching a plane crash… it could only be the dream section of the Electric Dreams! From Kat Peters-Midland. Get your own dream published on Electric Dreams by submitting at http://dreamgate.com/forms/dream_flow.htm Janet Garrett archives past issues so you can search out specific articles and authors in an easy-to-access format. These articles contain a wide range of information for dreamers and dreamworkers. You can see her work progress and view hundreds of article on dreams at: http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm Cover & dream by Laura Atkinson http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed14-4cov.jpg -------------------- For those of you who are new to dreamwork, be sure to stop by one of the many resources: http://dreamgate.com/electric-dreams http://dreamgate.com/dream/library http://dreamunit.net/news-en/ Electric Dreams in PDF: Back online at a new archive Archive Courtesy of Nick Cumbo and the Dream of Peace Network http://www.dreamofpeace.net.au/electric-dreams/ -------------------- -Richard Wilkerson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S April 2007 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Email all dream news to Harry Bosma at his special ed-news@alquinte.com address. Online: - Dream Video Picks of the Month - Dream Journals on the Net Physical world: - IASD News: Annual Conference and Radio Show - New Mexico: Victoria Rabinowe Books, movies, research: - Deadline August 2007 for Dream Research Funding - Call for dreams: "Dancing the Labyrinth" - Grant: Can Our Dreams Make Us Well? Reminders: - Various calenders - Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog - Ritual DaFuMu for Peace * * * ONLINE * * * --- - Dream Video Picks of the Month --- Creating and sharing videos is now easier than ever before. What are dreamers putting online? This month we have a theme of dream machines. Death of a Dream Machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTqjPKmBrZ4 Dexter's Lab - Dream Machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr_f1D37edc Kidd Video - The Dream Machine - 1 of 3 (Ep. 14) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v4_EazSgKE Have you found other dream videos, or created your own, let us know. Richard Wilkerson --- - Dream Journals on the Net --- After the rise of logging dream descriptions online, some dreamers recently started to also put drawings and other pictures online. You may find these inspiring. Late 2006 Robin Whitmore started his online dream diary. He makes his drawings on paper with his eyes closed. After scanning the colors are inverted. The DreamDiary is currently also on display as a year long installation at the Dock, Carrick on Shannon, Ireland. Check out: http://robinwhitmoredreamdiary.blogspot.com/ * * * PHYSICAL WORLD * * * --- - IASD News: Annual Conference and Radio Show --- The 24th Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams will be held 29 June to 3 July 2007 at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California New this year are the pre-conference sessions : "If you would like intensive training in skills or knowledge related to dreams, we are offering morning and afternoon pre- conference workshops on Friday June 29, before the conference begins. If you have already registered for the main conference you may return to the registration site to add pre-conference sign-ups and fees." www.asdreams.org/2007/ IASD's "Dream Time" an Internet radio program is broadcasting each Wednesday at 9am Pacific (Noon Eastern), the show airs with a rebroadcast 12 hours later. Tune in to the following shows in April. April 4: Spiritual and Cosmic Dream Connections - Bob Van de Castle PhD & Rita Dwyer April 11: Extraordinary and Psychic Dreams - Stanley Krippner PhD April 18: Dreams and Healing - Wendy Pannier & Rita Dwyer April: 25 Working with Your Own Dreams – your host Bob Hoss, MS May 2: Working in Dream Groups - Jeremy Taylor, Bob Haden www.health.voiceamerica.com www.dreamscience.org The IASD website: www.asdreams.org --- - New Mexico: Victoria Rabinowe --- * April 3, 2007: Trickster * In honor of April Fools Day. Meddle with the notion of your dream. Allow your dream images to shift their shape and to play their tricks * April 10, 2007: Resurrection * In Honor of Easter. A dream that left the world forever changed. * April 17, 2007: The Rules of the Game * Dreams, like the world of games, navigate through the territory of dark and light in a checkered journey where conscious versus unconscious in fundamental archetypal conflicts. * April 24, 2007: The Wounded Healer * "Maybe the purpose of the wound is to make us aware of the healing power within us" - Adler Visit the website: http://victoriadreams.com Victoria Rabinowe Dreaming Arts Studio 1432 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe 505 988-1086 victoria@victoriadreams.com * * * BOOKS, MOVIES, RESEARCH * * * --- - Deadline August 2007 for Dream Research Funding --- 2007 Call for Research Letters of Intent from DreamScience/IASD The DreamScience Foundation in cooperation with IASD is again offering money for qualified dream research. Submission Areas: High quality research proposal Letters of Intent are invited in areas related to dreams and dreaming, including but not limited to: the neuroscience of dreaming, psychological studies of dreaming and quantitative dream research in such fields as anthropology and cultural studies. The submission deadline is 15 August 2007. See the IASD / DreamScience website for more information and email submission forms: www.dreamscience.org/iasd --- - Grant: Can Our Dreams Make Us Well? --- Dream Power: Can Our Dreams Make Us Well? by Mary Jo Davis-Grant She dreamed her way from sick to healthy Did you ever have a dream that left you feeling healthy and refreshed in the morning? Well, Mary Jo Davis-Grant did: 500 of them, in fact, over a seven-year illness. In this uplifting true story, Mary Jo analyzes 41 of those dreams to answer the question: Can the images of our dreams affect our health and even help cure illness? You'll be amazed at the possibilities for safe, drug-free pain and stress relief described in this true story from a daring educator and psychologist. www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585010952/ --- - Call for dreams: "Dancing the Labyrinth" --- I am weaving together a solo performance for the IASD conference in Sonoma titled 'Dancing the Labyrinth.' I am collecting dreams about 'dance' and 'labyrinths' to use as inspiration in choreography and for poetic synthesis. If you have had dreams around this theme-please send them over to lana.nasser@gmail.com * * * REMINDERS * * * --- - Various calenders --- Nicole Gratton (Canada): http://www.nicole-gratton.com/calendrier_01.htm Robert Moss (USA): http://mossdreams.com/xcalendar.htm Jeremy Taylor (California): www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/schedule.html --- - Strephon Says: Podcasts and blog --- Strephon Kaplan-Williams is an international expert on dreams and dreamwork. Now in retirement age Strephon gives his podcasts. http://strephonsays.com --- - Ritual DaFuMu for Peace --- The World Dreams Peace Bridge, on the 15th of each month, is holding a monthly DaFuMu - a collective dream of good fortune - to support peace. For more information go to: http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org/dafumumonthly.htm To join the World Dreams Peace Bridge discussion group, just send an e-mail to worlddreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com . END NEWS ================================================ o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Cover : Laura Atkinson http://dreamgate.hypermart.net/ed-covers/ed14-4cov.jpg o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o April 1, 2007 (A very exciting dream) I dream that I am flying through the sky…I fly through the thunderclouds and can actually feel and touch the water elements in the clouds. I see how they change and electrify before a lightning strike. I fly above the cloud into the blue sky above, and watch the clouds from above as the lightning gathers. The clouds are a luminous grey (hard to imagine I know) and little water crystals of yellow, pink, hot green morph in spirals as the cloud begins to charge with electricity. I dive back into the cloud and can feel the electricity start to raise the hairs on my body, it tingles but does not harm me. EOD. Laura http://dreamartist.wordpress.com/ o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o An Excerpt From The Lucid Dream Exchange Hallucinations Begone! (c) Lucy Gillis 2007 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o "First you must realize that you are dreaming. . . This knowledge automatically changes the dream state into another in which the critical faculties are aroused and operating. . . You may "awaken" in your house for example. If so, check your rooms against their normal arrangement. Anything that does not normally belong there may be an hallucination, part of the usual dreaming process. If you will such images to disappear, they will, leaving you with the basic unhallucinated environment." 1. Jane Roberts It had been a while since I used the technique to "will away hallucinations" as suggested by Seth, channeled by author Jane Roberts. I can still remember the first time, many years ago, when I had come across the suggestion in Robert's book Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness. I was intrigued by the idea of the "unhallucinated environment." What was that exactly? If you are in a dream state, and not projecting out-of-body into a physical location, then what are you left with if you will away hallucinations? Is it that empty "grey space" that so many dreamers have experienced, or is it something more? Is it populated with symbols and objects of other people's dreams? Or populated with other "real" entities? Is that possible? According to Seth, it is: "You may, then, encounter images that are subconsciously formed, quite valid images, that belong in another dimension; or constructions created by others in other systems. For any control at all, you must learn to distinguish one from the other. Again, . . . you must first will it to disappear. If it is a subconscious construction of your own, it will vanish."2 "The basic unhallucinated environment" became one more tantalizing idea that made lucid dreaming all that more appealing - what was "out there" ("in there"?) in the dream state to be discovered? Over the years I played with the technique, always thrilled to notice when objects or the entire dream scene vanished, but for some odd reason, I didn't seem to remember to apply the technique very often. Recently, however, during an ordinary lucid dream, I suddenly remembered to will away my hallucinations to see what would happen: I am at the cottage in Alberta. It's dark; the place is dimly lit. It is very cluttered with furniture and other objects, like boxes and packages. It is not messy though, everything is tidy, but crowded. I get up from where I have been sitting and open a door to go into another room, presumably the washroom. I look around and notice that this room too is very cluttered. I then see a door that I had never noticed before. I wonder if it was meant to be hidden, or if I had just never noticed it behind stacked boxes. As I am about to go back out to the main living room area, I'm noticing more and more that the place just doesn't look right. I must be dreaming! I look for something to read, in order to reality-check, and I see a red LCD display, like on a digital clock, on a shelf. I don't even have to look away and then re-look to see the numbers change; they change quickly with every blink of my eyes, proof that I am dreaming. I'm so happy to be lucid! Then, reaching for the latch handle on the wooden door, I think that I should try to meet S (as we had planned to do when we would each next get lucid) but instead (probably due to all the clutter around me) I decide to try Seth's advice and "will all hallucinations away". I want to see just how much of the clutter is my own hallucinated imagery and I'm curious to see what will be left, if anything. I'm very pleased that I've remembered to do this; I usually don't remember this technique when lucid, even though I think it is an excellent one. I open the door and step out into a room that is quite large, almost like a gymnasium in size. There are a lot of people around, but none are paying me any attention. I speak loudly, addressing the dream. "Dream, I command all hallucinations to disappear!" I say this again, phrasing it in a different way, perhaps twice more, thinking that I should be more clear, or more commanding. On the third "pronouncement" I think that it would also be helpful if I spin, thinking that if I take my attention off the room and the characters there, it will help me to get rid of my own subconscious dream constructions. I spin counterclockwise, but it feels awkward. I am acutely aware of the feeling of my toe pushing off the hardwood floor as I spin around. I know that I am still too "attached" to the dream. I can still feel my consciousness tied up, entangled, in this dream scene; it's hard to explain but it is a tangible feeling. I know that my level of lucidity is not high or clear enough to produce instant good results, yet I want to keep trying anyway. I stop spinning, and make my statement again, firmly, then I spin in the other direction. When I stop spinning, I am thrilled to see that the room has changed dramatically. It has become smaller, all white, featureless, and nearly empty, save for a few boxes and some living room furniture off to my right. However, I am surprised to see three men, sitting casually on the living room furniture, watching me. "You three again!" I spontaneously blurt out. "You were left the last time too!" My curiosity piqued, I approach the men and ask, "Who are you? Where do you come from?" Unfortunately, I don't know what their response, if any, was. Next thing I knew, I was awake. My first thought upon waking was one of triumph. I had remembered to will away hallucinations and it had been successful, despite it not occurring as soon as I had commanded. Though it took me a few tries, I was happy that I had been aware of the reason - that I had been too consciously attached to the dreaming process and I could actually "feel" what that was like, while it was happening, even if I couldn't later describe it in any adequate or even articulate way. My next thought though, was one of disappointment. I didn't get answers to my questions! Or if I had, I didn't consciously remember them. As I scribbled down the dream in my journal, I was struck by how surprised I had been in the dream to see those three men. I remembered how I immediately blurted out "You three again!" In that moment I had recognized them, and I knew, or my dreaming self knew, that the last time I had banished my hallucinations, those three individuals had been left behind. But that memory was one confined to the dream state. I had no waking memory of previously willing away hallucinations in a dream and being left with these three people. Or had I done it earlier in that dream, but did not recall it when awake? It made me wonder how memory "worked" in the dream state and why waking memory and dreaming memory were sometimes cut off from each other. The feeling of recognizing the men was difficult to describe too. It wasn't a recognition based on physical appearances; their faces were not familiar to me in any way at all. It was a recognition based on a different sensation, a feeling that in some way had a thickness or density to it, as though it was alive or in motion somehow. Very hard to describe, and I could only borrow Seth's term "feeling-tone" to come close to labeling it. But those three men. My waking memory did recall other dreams where three strangers appeared together. Usually all male, but I knew that, on at least one occasion, one was female. I didn't think that the female was a different...character...(if I can use the term), but was a different guise used by one of the three individuals. Curiosity getting the better of me, I dug out old dream journals, and in going through a few of them, discovered that I had had many dreams of "three strangers" or "three men" over the last couple of years. Some dreams were non-lucid, but mostly the triad showed up when I was aware I was dreaming. They rarely spoke, when I was lucid. Usually they just observed me, or listened to what I had to say. Oddly, they were more animate when I was non-lucid, participating in my dream scenarios like actors playing their roles. But when I became lucid, aware of my dreaming condition, they became my silent audience, their attention then turned to me. Now I had to wonder. Were these three recurring "characters" simply symbolic of something? Aspects of my own dreaming psyche? Personified dream symbols? Or were they something more? They did remain after I willed away my hallucinations - were they somehow part of the "unhallucinated dream environment"? And if so, what did that make them? Dream constructions belonging to someone else? "Real" individuals able to travel through dream worlds? Denizens of the afterlife? (Some may argue that by spinning I simply created another dream scene, conjuring up more dream hallucinations or subconscious imagery, but as I spun, I maintained the intent that hallucinations vanish, with no specific anticipated outcome.) Because they had remained after I banished hallucinations, because they had a distinctive and somehow familiar "feeling-tone", and because of their behaviour in previous dreams I began to wonder if the three men really could be more than just inanimate dream symbols. I remembered what Jane Roberts had said about the dream state changing when one became lucid. I remembered also that Seth had talked about the transitions from one state of consciousness to another: "There are indeed others who can help you in such experiences, and who often do while you are in the dream state, whether or not you know it. They can be of great assistance as guides."3 Could my three men be dream guides? Do they show up in my dreams to assist me with my "inner education"? Or are they old pals from another lifetime, checking in on me to see how I'm doing? Will I ever know? How I love all the questions that lucid dreaming evokes! Each one like a stepping stone leading me deeper, onwards and inwards, into the dreaming mind - my own dreaming mind. It is as though each question is a challenge, or a reason, to get lucid again and again, to experience inner senses that differ from waking perception, to meet and greet dream "characters" (who- or what- ever they may be), to explore inner environments, - whether hallucinated or not! And so very much more. "Hallucinations begone!" Give it a try the next time you become lucid. You may be quite surprised at what vanishes....and at what - or who - remains! References 1., 2. Roberts, Jane, Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness 3. Roberts, Jane, The Early Sessions Book 6, Session 261 ************************************** 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 Rhine Conference: Consciousness Today Harry Bosma o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Here's a selective report for psi dreamers. March 2007 the Rhine Research Center organized a conference with the title “Consciousness Today: Where Scientists and Psychics Meet at Myrtle Beach”. The meeting of scientists and psychics gave the conference an exciting edge, forcing researchers to keep an open mind, and psychics to keep their feet on the ground. The conference opened with a keynote by star psychic Joe McMoneagle. He spoke about his experiences as a remote viewer with the Stargate project. Joe shared a wide variety of insights into the workings of psi, and funny anecdotes about working as a psychic in the context of intelligence agencies. Joe once worked together with Stephan LaBerge to try remote viewing from lucid dreams, but never really got to like remote viewing from dreams. Dale Graff presented the results of his personal dreaming project. Dale incubated precognitive dreams for striking pictures on the front page of the newspaper. He showed his sketches along with the found matching photos as published by newspapers. Dale also speculated on how dream images work towards displaying a photo from the future. Stefan Kasian presented nine examples of dreamers who bought new homes with the help of dreams. Stefan also shared some preliminary results on how such dreamers score on scales for absorption and creativity. Obviously, the purchase of real estate should make for a fruitful area to research psi, as it involves so many very strong emotions. Stefan looks forward to hearing more experiences from dreamers. For more information, see Stefan's member page at the IASD website. Other presentations among others told about the similarities between sensitivity for subliminal messages and psi information (James Carpenter), and similarities between “flow” experiences and psi abilities (Jean Hamilton). The conference concluded with a keynote by Joseph Chilton Pearce about the connection between the heart and the mind. One of the findings he mentioned was that the heart knows about events before the brain or the mind does. The main theme of his talk could perhaps be summarized with saying that we should change our society to live more from the heart. Harry Bosma hbosma@xs4all.nl o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE April 2007 That's A Lot of Change Jean Campbell o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o A few days ago I had a dream. It was a fairly common dream, but with a little twist. Here's the dream. I am standing outdoors near a house. The house has concrete steps leading up to a wood porch with a porch railing, all somewhat old and run down, but comfortable. It is nearly dark, but there's enough light for me to see something shining on the porch step. I bend to look and notice that it is a gold coin, one of the new gold dollars that have been minted recently. Then I look and see a couple more of these coins lying on the porch near the steps. I begin picking them up. I had six of them in my hand when I woke up, because I remember saying to the man I was with, "I've got six of them," and thinking to myself, "I used to pick up pennies. This must be inflation!" When I woke up though, the first thing I thought of was the last of a long series of dreams I had several years ago about picking up coins...which stopped when I realized I was saying to myself, "That's a lot of change." That was when I learned that dreams of picking up coins are fairly common. At the time I was corresponding with Tam Mossman, probably best known as the editor of the Jane Roberts/Seth books for Prentice Hall. He said he'd had a series of these dreams of picking up coins just before he decided to leave Prentice Hall and begin publishing a magazine about intuition. He said he had been collecting coin dreams from others as well. But here's the twist. The marvel of being in an ongoing dream group, and one that spans the world, is that as soon as I posted the above dream to The World Dreams Peace Bridge, I began receiving information about the number six and its meaning as a symbol, from other members of the Peace Bridge. This was information I never would have taken the time to look up on my own, so (as with all dream groups) the input from others was valuable and appreciated. From Joy in California came this message, "Oh yes! Not only is 6 gold coins a lot of change, it's BIG change, and GOOD change!" The 6 of Pentacles or Disks in the tarot comes to mind, traditionally showing six coins surrounding a prosperous person with a scale, giving alms: As one book says (The Sacred Tarot Unveiled by Allyson Walsh): "...recognizes that giving is as important as receiving - this is the practice of prosperity consciousness, letting energy flow back and forth." Alexandra Genetti in her very globally-oriented Wheel of Change Tarot shows six coins, six cowrie shells and six paper bills, symolizing the symbolic nature of money and how it can become distanced from our actual material needs. In the accompanying book she points out how trade and specialization have brought wonderful diversity yet disconnected us from the direct relationship to our sustenance we knew in ancient times: "This is a very large change," she says. She emphasizes being aware of the wide-reaching environmental and economic effects of how we use our money; her Six of Disks "may herald a time of simple increase and good material fortune. Along with this fortune comes the challenge to divide the needs from the wants in your life.... The balance you achieve will help you bring a larger balance in the totality of the world." Knowing this IS your focus, Jean, I'd take your 6 gold coins as a very good sign! From Kathy Turner in Australia came this message related to the wish for FU or good fortune that Peace Bridge members have given to each other ever since it was introduced by May Tung to the group many years ago: Dear all - I wish you much much happiness and much FUUUUUUUUUUUUU (6 gold coins of FUUUUUU) at this time. A late happy wish for Mawlid al-Nabiy (March 31st); A late happy wish for Saka New Year (April 2) A partly late happy wish for Passover (April 3 - 10); An ontime happy wish for Easter (April 8). Kathy And from Janet in the UK: After reading Joy's tarot connection to Jean's dream I decided to head for my tarot book. (The Way of the Tarot, by Karen Hamaker-Zondag - a Jungian approach using the Rider- Waite deck.) Here's some of what it says about the number six: "Six is the pivot of it's divisors (1 + 2 + 3 = 6 = 1 x 2 x 3), and also the pivot or center of the first five even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. If we link this with the fact that we encounter three two times in six, and three is connected with the ingress of psychic energy into the realm of time and space, then it seems that six with its pivotal action has a cyclic function. Cycles bring us back to points where we have been before, but where we can make a fresh start with new trends and new cycles. In the meantime, something old, the previous round, is completed. Thus in six something has been completed, but at the same time there is movement due to a duality or stress-field (2 x 3). Here is a remarkable association of rest and tension, in which the completion of a cycle preponderates, but the impulse to enter a new stage is also present." As Janet pointed out, what Hamaker-Zondag says about the number six seems to echo the change that is going on in the lives of many people on the Bridge, "And," Janet adds," it certainly resonates with my own life, where I am definitely feeling as if I have come to an end of a cycle and need to enter a new stage - I'm just not sure what that stage is yet." After writing this, Janet noted, "I haven't looked at the tarot for a long while, and only dabbled with it for a brief time, but decided this afternoon to pick just one card to see what turned up. So I shuffled the pack thoroughly, cut it, and turned over . . . the six of cups! From what I have heard, the energy of the six is running rampant this spring. There seem to be major changes coming to a lot of people, not just the people of the Peace Bridge. But there was another interesting result from the appearance of the six coins in my dream and the discussion that followed. Several people, for whom the work with numbers in dreams was a new idea, have now begun to look at their dream numbers. Two is a favorite, but who knows what might develop? Lots of change, indeed! o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Dream: Buffy and the Spitting Alien Stan Kulikowski II o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o DATE: 16 mar 2007 08:22 DREAM: buffy and the spitting alien =( yesterday was a thursday. i took my mother to her eye doctor to check how her glaucoma medicine is doing. he changed her prescription to a different pair of drops. in the evening my friend ron from massachusetts called. we have not spoken in about six months i suspect. lana married lex on _smallville_ even though she discovered clark's secret. i got to bed around midnight, fell to sleep, but woke about 04:00 and could not get back to sleep until around 07:00. lately my sleep has been better than this. )= the high school is deserted now, the students have fled so the screaming and running part is done. buffy the vampire slayer comes carefully into the large empty garage in back of the building for maintenance of the school buses. she is careful now because she does not know in what direction attack is likely to come. on the back wall of the garage buffy sees a student partially encased in a dried mucous that is charcoal gray. with some effort she manages to pull the girl off the wall. she comes free with a noticeable pop, the mucous coming away like a coin around her. the dried stuff is stiff but brittle, so buffy is able to break away the part covering the girl's mouth and nose so she can breathe easier. slowly, carefully, buffy starts clearing away the other chunks that are binding her. the girl is trembling but too out of breath to run away until she catches up. when buffy has the last dried chunks removed from her hair and has brushed away the crumbly pieces from her blouse, they barely get a chance to turn around when the alien comes in the door from the outside. it is the typical kind of creature from outer space seen in comic books: green skin, bald head with pointy ears and large lidless eyes. it is wearing a tight satin costume with ornamental ribbing marking its shoulders and elbows. buffy and the student flee to the far door on the other side of the garage. just as they scurry through the doorway, the alien makes a sound in its throat and hacks up a sizable mass of phlegm which is spits across the garage at them. buffy pulls the student out of the line of fire so the mucous splats against the door as she yanks it closed. when wet, the mucous is blue green color that quickly turns the dark gray color as it hardens. the next room has work benches and stools which the two dash around. buffy lets the student run into the hallway but she stays back, picking up tall waste can to use as a shield. she intends to slow the oncoming monster so the girl can make her get away out of the school. the other door to the garage was somewhat sealed by the glob of mucous the alien had spit, so it takes a little while for the creature to gain entrance in here. buffy manages to catch next two projectiles which the alien spits at her across the room with the trash can, but has to throw it down when it becomes too thickly covered. she does not want her hands to get trapped holding the object when it hardens. by this time they have approached each other close enough that buffy can upturn one of the work benches for cover as she ducks under the next salvo of adhesive. she is finally close enough to swing her fist and only connects with the cheekbone of the alien from a glancing angle, but never the less the bones of its face crack beneath the skin. the creature is rather fragile, not meant for hand to hand combat in this earth gravity. the alien quickly turns a dial on its wrist and dissolves in a ripple of colored lights as it teleports away somewhere. the immediate threat seems over. my father comes into the hotel room and asks "are you awake yet?" i open my eyes to see that it is still dark outside and the clock on the bedside table says 04:30. "we only have a half hour to drive to get home, so we should leave soon." he always likes to drive very early in the morning so the rest of us in the family must get up before dawn even though none of us are morning people like he is. as he leaves the room, i sit up in the bed and think that i can write up this dream about buffy the vampire slayer before we have to go. beside the bed i have an old underwood typewriter. i could go out to the car to get my laptop computer, but it seems easier if i just type up the dream on paper. i can transfer it to computer files later. i would probably lose too much of the dream if i go outside in the cold to get the laptop. there are several folders of loose paper beside the bed. i have a little trouble getting heavy old typewriter balanced on my lap as i sit up. i put the first page of empty white paper in the roller and balance the edges before i clamp it down. i try to type the title 'buffy and the spitting alien' but only random mixed characters come out on the paper. moving my fingers in the pronounced up and down movements needed to push the levers onto the paper seems really awkward and difficult after years of the smaller motions of computer keyboards. more unreadable characters come out in more attempts to write the title line. oh yes, this is a vintage qwerty keyboard and i have long ago taught myself dvorak touch typing as the only sensible interface. i need to switch back to my old hunt and peck skills with antique technology like this. i pull out the illegible page i have made and seek another new page to type upon, but every paper i pull out of the folders has stuff printed on it already. apparently i have ruined the last blank sheet. i start looking for pages that have larger open areas so i can fit my dream story into whatever space is available. i find a page that has a color image of a vegas stripper down one side. that one would probably do as stationary in a pinch, but i keep thumbing through the other sheets looking for a wider area. i doubt much of the dream would fit into the column of white beside her. the door to the hotel room opens again. this time a young woman with very black hair comes in and sits on the bed behind me. "can't get your dreams down?" she asks me. i am clearly having trouble fumbling with all the many papers in the folders. she leans her chin upon my shoulder. "perhaps you are not meant for that dream." i know that she has a boyfriend but they are having difficulties. i doubt that they are well matched, but i do not want to cause any further problems between them. i stop fiddling with the papers and she leans further around me so her face comes around just in front of me. she is clearly pressing her breasts into my arm and she smiles at me with obvious invitation. "there might be more to life than just dreaming." she murmurs in my ear stretching up so her cheek brushes lightly against mine. in spite of myself, i feel an erection creep up under the sheets across my lap. she notices this too and chuckles a little deep in her throat as she kisses me squarely on the lips with just the tip of her tongue teasing me to enter her. i guess it is time for her boyfriend to be forgotten. the heavy underwood typewriter falls off the bed with a heavy clunk as i give in to her charms, letting myself dissolve away in the heady rush of pleasure. we do not get any further before a local politician comes in the door. "i got the grant." he exclaims with heartfelt relief. outside the door i can see a stretch limousine in the parking lot. "it helps if you have your family to think about during the negotiations." i am pleased that he has scored this lucrative contract for his career, but i can not help but wish his timing were about an hour or two later. the young woman with the dark hair and deep inviting eyes laughs a little and looks demurely away as we separate. =( awake at 08:05. buffy in this dream was sarah michelle gellar just like the television series. the spitting alien was rather like mister mystxplck without the leprechaun hat from the superman comics of the 1950s. i did learn to type on an ancient underwood typewriter when i was in high school before i got an olympia portable for college. i have taught myself dvorak typing about a dozen years ago but usually have no trouble when i must use qwerty keyboards. my father died more than a decade ago. he did always get us up hours before the break of dawn when we traveled by car anywhere because he was best in the morning. i have no associations with the delightful dark haired girl nor the annoying politician at the end of this, other than i find beautiful women delightful and have little patience with politicians of any stripe. this seems like a dream without much depth, starting with a television adventure, then morphing to unreliable technology with a memory from teenage years, then into a flirtation with sexual energy foiled by commonplace politics. the timeline is contorted with buffy being the most recent feature followed by the antique typewriter from distant adolescence before the sexual drive expresses itself. my current typing skills did interface unsuccessfully with the older device, just as buffy struggled with the alien, and the politician interrupted the pleasures of the dark haired girl. seems conflict everywhere and i suppose that writing about dreaming about writing about dreaming has some twisted second order logic to it also. )= -- stankuli@etherways.com . i swear it happened just like this: === a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss, | | and the gates of love they budged an inch --- but nothing much has happened since. -- l cohen (1992) _closing time_ o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o “Changing” the Dream DreamRePlay (Copyright 2007) David Jenkins, PhD o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o One of the goals of my work is to help you have more pleasant and fewer stressful dreams. Although last night’s dream cannot be changed, it is a steppingstone to your next dream. You can imagine variations on the current dream and this re-working influences future dreams. You replay the dream on order to spell out what you really want to happen. You can have allies, say what needed to be said; and even end the dream in a different way. Action changes the dream The key to DreamReplay is action. Action is very different from understanding. For instance, saying “The horse is a symbol of your instinctual energy,” may help you understand the dream but it doesn't alter its outcome Instead, I would rather ask "Where do you want to go, what do you want to do, now that you are riding the horse?” Action­an action of the imagination­ changes the dream. And influences the next dream. If you cannot or do not imagine something different, you and your dreams are guaranteed to stay the same. Most often, you take the action that continues the dream in the direction you wish to go: “Now that you have said goodbye to your mother, what do you want to do next?” Often the dream leaves you stuck with unwanted feelings and then the action required is to express yourself. For example, someone might embarrass you in a dream and make you feel bad. You would work out what you really want to say to that person. Speaking this to the imaginary person is taking action. Dream action is governed by the dream situation You are not completely free to imagine any action to resolve the problem in the dream. You are governed, even controlled, by the particular dream situation. Think of the dream as a rowboat in a strongly flowing river. You have some choices about what to do, but you have to flowt downstream­there is no way of changing that. You could ignore what is happening to the boat and drift wherever the river takes you. Or you could use the oars or learn about the currents and the winds in order to steer the boat as best you can. In the same way, you have some choices within the general direction that your dream is taking you, but you must work within the reality of the dream. It can be tempting to take an easy action when you are in a difficult situation. For example, suppose you dreamed you were walking through the park and saw your boyfriend necking with your best friend. If asked what you’d like to have happen next, you might want Superman to come out of the sky, beat them up, and swoop you away. That might be very satisfying but it wouldn’t really affect the dream since you’ve basically abandoned the world of your dream to people who are "doing you wrong." It would be better to articulate clearly to your dream-girlfriend and your dream-boyfriend what you are feeling. (Afterwards, Superman can whisk you away). Even in a difficult situation, it is important for you to take charge rather than exit the situation. After all, it's your dream. Forget your best behavior Dream life is, in many ways, much more rough-and-tumble than waking life. The people who visit us in our dreams are often neither subtle nor polite and the problems faced are most often not intellectual problems. You have to work at the level of the dream characters. If someone is about to kill you with an axe, you could imagine talking to him nicely. If that works, congratulations. But you will usually find that your action must equal the energy of the dream. In this example, talking is not the same as getting help, hiding, or protecting yourself. If your dream-husband is insisting that you have to visit his relatives and you are sure you do not want to, the key question is: What kind of “No” will this dream-husband understand? You may have to express yourself far more strongly than your waking-life husband would require. Conclusion You don't change a dream just by talking about it. You have to ask yourself what would make a significant change to the dream. In next week's column, we'll discuss how to talk to dream characters – they are easier than waking life characters in that you will always know what is true and more demanding of your skills since they are harder to train. DIAL-IN DREAM GROUPS Whether you live far away or close by, a phone group allows you to get a sense of dream work in a very convenient way. With this new work, I hope to communicate the pleasure and the excitement of dream work to many people. email david at davidj@dreamreplay.com for information. DREAM GROUPS The Saturday drop-in group ($20) is from 10 am to noon at 2315 Prince Street in Berkeley. The nearest major cross street is Ashby and Telegraph. Please let me know if you are coming. web: http://dreamoftheweek.com o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Signs of Simulation, Symbols beyond Value Jean Baudrillard and Grassroots Dreamwork in Cyberspace. Richard Catlett Wilkerson o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o This article was originally published as Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (1998 June). Signs of Simulation, Symbols beyond Value Jean Baudrillard and Grassroots Dreamwork in Cyberspace. Electric Dreams 5(6). http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/articles_rcw/baudrillard-dream.htm " We used to live in the imaginary world of the mirror, of the divided self and of the stage, of otherness and alienation. Today we live in the imaginary world of the screen, of the interface and the reduplication of contiguity and networks. All our machines are screens. We too have become screens, and the interactivity of men has become the interactivity of screens." Jean Baudrillard, Xerox & Infinity. Jean Baudrillard is a cultural theorist who, like Carl Jung, became concerned about Western Culture's abandonment of the symbolic and over- involvement with the sign. Unlike Jung who responded by developing an individual psychology for exploration of the *symbolic* in the personal realm, Baudrillard took on a McLuhanian like media probe and analysis of the *sign* in contemporary culture. His startling results take us into a hyperreal world where models of reality dominate and reality itself has given way to simulations of the real, and eventually to simulations of simulations that have no anchor, nor interest, in the real whatsoever. o Can Cultural Analysis be Applied to Dreamwork? The extension of humanity into computer mediated communications, as well as the general rise of technology & media has brought out the ever increasing importance of the technological interface and extension of our species. Not only will we extend the practices of dreamwork into new area, but we will continue to observe the effects and transformations in dream imagery that these organic-digital combinations produce. Although the dream resists direct commodification & digitalization, (just try to sell a dream, or even get someone to listen to your dream with interest), the transition from symbol to sign is an essential turning point according to Baudrillard in our culture becoming sign dependent. There is some marketing around dreams and dreamwork, but it is a very insignificant part of the economy of the sign, money or politics. Even Freud remarked with sadness late in this life that psychoanalysis had abandoned dreams and had added nothing to his original theory in over 40 years, an this was for the sake of the capital that could be made from developing long term transferencial therapies (I included the capital reasoning here). James Hillman might have developed a way to see commodification in dreamwork. He has warned against turning dreams into objects for use in the dayworld, but this would be a very metaphorical use of commodification. Generally speaking, dreams resist being quantified, and in doing so may offer us an alternative to being swept up in the endless march of mass media, consumer advertisements and what Marx called primitive accumulation that dominates capitalist societies that focus on the exchange and use value of objects rather than their deeper meanings. Perhaps more interestingly we might look at our dreams for clues to our own cycles of consumption. A kind of Marxian Dreamwork that exposes the places in our life we have turned into objects and been turned into objects, were we are the repressed workers and where we repress the worker. For Baudrillard, himself once a Marxist theorist, the world has moved past both Capitalism and Marxism into a Fractal economy where all meanings and options have fully extended & played themselves out and now just circulate the pieces around by means of a code that no one controls. The use we make of the dream relates to capitalism as much as the exchange value might. In this sense, the symbolic goes beyond the uses we can make of the dream, and any dreamwork that favors the dream over the function we make of it needs to gather this sense to continue. Still, we need to begin somewhere. o How Far Have You Personally Moved into the Hyperreal? Baudrillard offers us an image of the 4 revolutions that he sees having occurred in the shift from real to hyperreal. These 4 Orders can be applied to the dream world as well as waking cultural horizons. By reading our dreams for the dominate order, we may be led to insights about our relationship with the signs and symbols that make up our world and inner world. When are we more like a feudal caste society were any variance in the interpretation of an event is considered a transgression? When are we so involved in the simulatory experience of the dream that its relationship to the rest of the world is no longer important? When is our desire shifted and manipulated by the objects in our environment and where do we rebel and consider creative, subversive alternatives? o Sign Revolutions: A Sound Byte The fixed and referential symbols of the Feudal/caste societies were shaken by the Renaissance theatrics which put their meaning(s) into question. Just what signs were suppose to refer to anymore was up to debate. The industrial revolution made possible the serial replication of these signs, exterminating any reference, producing an explosion of referents.. In the post-industrial era, metaphysical models of the code create a world of simulation without any reference to the real, an order of simulation that has no interest in the real whatsoever. Finally, in the fractal order, the simulations implode into a viral proliferation infinity extended and exhausted in all directions. All distinctions and differences are interwoven, cross-bred and played out to an extreme. o Levels of Image Level 0. Aboriginal symbolic exchange cultures. The image is a reflection of basic reality. Note dream imagery in aboriginal cultures where the image is like almost a sacrament. Even in our de-sacralized society, dreams are often vaguely see as reflecting reality. Jung was interested in returning the dream image to this level, though he often wanted to bring it up into the dayworld for our personal use. In aboriginal culture, the dream can completely undermine the exchange value system, shifting the flow of gifts and counter-gifts, marriages, taboos and status. Level 1. The image masks and perverts reality. Here is more a level of Freudian dreamwork level, with the dream functioning to both express the basic reality of desires in a disguised form just enough to let off steam, but not enough to wake the dreamer. Level 2. The image masks the absence of a basic reality. The dream masks the fact that it is a dream and that there are things we don't want to dream about. "...Power is no longer present except to conceal that there is none." (181 S&S). In dreamwork, we teach people who are haunted by specters of power - shadows, bears, wolves, muggers, monsters - that these figures are involved in scenarios of empty power and can be confronted. Level 3. The image bears no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own simulacrum. Here we have moved into lucid and proactive dreaming where the dreamer doesn't care that there is any connection with reality, the event itself has become the reality of concern. o Portrait of a Dreamworker: When she was young, her dream interpretations carefully reflected the life and reality of the dreamer, almost like she was a landscape artist. Later, her own versions of reality began to appear in her interpretations. Some saw this as her distortion of reality phase, others as drawing the world through her own reality. The interpretations often seemed to mask and pervert the reality of the dreamer. Then a desperation began to emerge, and her interpretations masked the absence of reality, as if to protect herself and others from a flaw at the center of the universe. Finally, her interpretations bore no relation to any reality whatever and reproductions of images that had no original began to proliferate. o Dreamwork and Levels of the Sign A way we might use these ideas in dreamwork is in recognizing the different levels of power scenarios that play themselves out in dreaming. Baudrillard speaks about the orders of appearance of simulation: pre-simulation feudal/caste societies, counterfeit pre- production societies, production societies and re-productive simulation society. ORDER: FORM - LAW - SEMIOTICS - PROCESS 0 Feudal/caste societies - signs and their meanings are pre-determined 1 Natural - Counterfeit - Arbitrariness - Corrupt Symbol 2 Market – Production – Seriality -Icon 3 Structural - Simulation – Codification - Linguistic Sign 4 Fractal – Proliferation - Viral metonymy - Index o The Feudal/Caste Society Ever have a dream that felt like you were at the Round Table? Or how about another type of cast of class society where everyone's roles were set and fixed? Typically we like to romanticize the symbolism of such a dream. Perhaps we might see our dream knight as an indication of our relationship to the Higher Self, pre-figured as the king or head lf the society. Our knight and his or her behavior becomes a symbolic singular indication of our ego's relationship to wholeness. Baudrillard's work may offer an alternative view. In these caste/feudal societies the representational systems; the codes, the symbols, the signs carry clearly marked, commonly held and limited numbers of meanings. One knows immediately another's caste or rank by the garments one wares. The status is clearly indicated and there is little hope of changing one's class. Anyone who tries to change the meaning of a sign is risking punishment for the transgression. Signified and signifier are fixed. Transgressors of this reality, dragons, heretics and infidels, must be hunted down and slain. All unstable reference must be punished and free interpretation is prohibited. In our dreamland we may find concerns about taboos and transgressions. Concerns about one reality dominate. Dreams in this style may indicate a part of personality that runs a very rigid yet meaningful game. o The Counterfeit Renaissance There is a period of time before production society sets in and after the feudal/caste society which we often refer to in the West as the Renaissance. Now the signs begin to loosen and what they signify are more arbitrary. Does the bible mean this, or that? Protestant movements demand that each man must make his own interpretation of the bible. But why stop there? Everyone begins to have his or her own interpretation of everything. The particular meaning of a sign is freed, and an abstract code analogous to money is born. Theater is born and there is destruction between a thing and what it represents. Psychology can begin as we can now question who we really are. Nature becomes important because it is lost. In the Renaissance we find stucco floral outpourings everywhere, in fountains, in buildings in paintings, in clothes, in books and on weapons. Stucco was the first plastic. The sign is stripped of its original meaning, but still refers dimly to a time when it did mean something. Too late. The natural world unfolds in every form, but it is all on stage. It is the theater of appearance and disappearance and changing forms. I am reminded of the movie "Interview with a Vampire" where the vampire's stage a show, a parody of their life which unfolds endless "real" scenarios against the background of vampirism, but unable to refer to anything outside of the play itself. Their reference to the real world was cut by their condition. So too this early production society feeds on the real but is really cut off from it. In dreams, we often encounter these worlds as well. Sometimes they are joyously filled with creative and theatrical energy, oddly meaningful and yet free from meaning. Strange forms evolve, masks and mistakes in identity trick us and make us laugh. Reversals and getting back to where we once were becomes more difficult. We find ourselves marrying people we don't know, making alliances with strangers and creating art forms we never imagined. On the darker side, this world can be uncomfortably unstable. Pets turn into insects, chairs are haunted with ghosts, hospitals become prisons. Mom just ain't what she used to be. Reality refuses to stabilize. This is the first order of simulation, the corrupt symbol that no longer refers to what it used to refer to. At one level this validates the living symbol that evolves and wants to grow out of its old form. But what Baudrillard is suggesting is that these images that have outgrown their original reference will never be able to find a happy home to live. Desire has become grandiose and swirls upward in Baroque productions of a Heaven in process, cupids arrow spiraling ever upward and outward. o Modern Production Society Here the sign produces neutral values can be exchanged in an objective world. Just like the free worker who is now free to make what he or she wants, but there is little meaning in the work. There is a nostalgia for ancient meaning, but it is all appearance. The Marlboro Cowboy is a billboard commodity used to sell cigarettes. The real meaning of the sign easily exchanged. There is an expansion here of the production of goods, science and technology. There is an explosion of transportation, products to buy, and services as commodities. There is an explosion of science and technology, of national boundaries, of different social spheres, topics to discuss, money and value. In the Modern society there is a constant proliferation of commodities. In dreams we find modern images in the factory, the conveyor belt, the assembly line. But this is also the world of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Duplication proliferates. Dreams of serial duplication, hordes of animals without a queen or leader, clones and eternal returns may appear. The simulation begun in the previous stage now accelerates and a great deal of energy is put into covering up the loss of reality. I recall a Gaham Wilson cartoon where a group of scientists were in discussion in a large astrolab, above unnoticed, a piece of space had torn and several angels were trying to quickly pull it back together. Dreams where maps and territory are confused speak to this level. Baudrillard sites Borges' story where the makers of a map had it laid out so perfectly that it covered the real territory, except in places where there were tattered corners. The busy activity of hiding the fact that reality has disappeared may take simple and less harmless forms like going to Disneyland, or stronger forms like Auschwitz where death is produced and reproduced. Since the surface of things is now suspect and devoid of meaning, one Barbie doll as meaningful as another, the Modern turn was to Depth. If the Real can no longer be found on the surface, then in it must be found beneath the surface. Once the unconscious is revealed, then what you really feel, what you really meant, is re-discovered. Look for dreams where you feel that what is "really" going on, where is it "really" happening is somewhere else. We can say that psychoanalytically the self is in projection in this Order. It is in the group that won't let your in, in the party that is just over when you arrive, in the gift and prize given to someone else. Just not quite "here". Detective dreams, an inability to find your way home, all lost and found dreams are of this order. As are all equivalences, such as dreams of balance, or weighing and measuring. What is it worth? If there is even a hope of answering this questions, we are still in the Modern Order of Signs. o Post-Modern Hyperrality "The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control-- and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against an ideal." from Simulacra and Simulation Had the truth been that we remained in a production reality, Marxism may have continued to be a viable theory in the world. But Baudrillard sees that what Marx called the "nonessential" sectors of capital to be what the global process of capital is founded upon. Fashion, media, publicity, information & communication networks, cybernetic control systems, computerization, cyberspatiality, digitalization and genetic code proliferation. The organizing principle is no longer production but re-production. In this society of simulations where it is more interesting to be involved with a simulation of reality than reality itself, a new social order establishes itself. With the collapse or implosion between image/simulation and reality, the ground for the real disappears. People write in to Robert Young, an actor who played Dr. Welby, for medical advice and Raymond Burr who played the lawyer Perry Mason& Ironside for legal advice. Now doctors and lawyers are expected to act like Dr. Welby and Perry Mason. The models are the pivot point of reference rather that reality itself. Simulations now determine reality. The continual solicitations to buy, to consume, to work, vote, give opinions, and participate in social life consume meaning and value as distinctions become meaningless. Simulations have devoured reality, and models have taken over. The production of reality in the Modern phase resulted in saturation and explosion. Now we have implosion. Reality and meaning melt into a nebulous mass of self-reproducing simulation. Simulations have taken over for reality, and now generate nothing but more simulations. The boundaries between entertainment and news collapse. The news becomes spectacle, entertainment. Politics and entertainment implode. Polls turn the elections into image contexts, a war of signs. We still consume, even more feverishly. But now we buy status and presence instead of objects. Here in San Francisco, my neighborhood has filled with four-wheel drive wagons. We used to call them jeeps. I doubt most of these all-terrain vehicles have even been anywhere off the road beside perhaps a sidewalk. There are hills here, but never any snow nor weather that would warrant a 4-wheel drive. It is very cool to be part of this urban safari. In hyperreality what is produced and consumed are signs. The pressure on the individual is to be socialized. Production is irrelevant and secondary. In a surreal mode, we find pleasure in finding the unnatural in the natural. Eruptions of moments of surreality break into the course of everyday life. In the hyperral, the real and imaginary collapse together everywhere. Any moment might be a media event and we have a kind of sixth sense for this. We scan for fakery, montage and overlay. Absolut Vodka ala the latest artist, Absolut Mc Glynn, Absolut Philip, Absolut Goodman.... A kind of non-deliberate parody clings to everything. No one believes it is real, nor cares. Do you have political concerns about the integrety of the politicians? Get with it, its cool that Newt brings his laptop to congress! In dreamwork, we cover the full spectrum. Some people use dreamwork to patch up the holes in their reality - or gaps in their illusion of reality - places where meaning and value have dropped out of their lives. Much of therapy is about patching up holes in the ego. Deeper work is statistically rare. Dreamwork can go the other extreme as well and be a vehicle for promoting a particular singular reality. Here, the interpretations will always be the same, and the interpretive process determines reality. Just as vexing can be the dream as god approach, where the dream reality is determining all the reality and dreamwork becomes a kind of religion, the dream an object of worship. o An Alternative to Signs - The Improverse While Baudrillard exposes very well the simulated reality we are moving so rapidly into, his alternatives are somewhat lacking and under theorized. The gist is to enact scenes that return us to the symbolic and burn the sign. But his suggestion of becoming more real than real, more the worker than the worker, more the consumer than the consumer, seem to have little or no effect on culture and quickly play out to exhaustion in avante-gaude art scenes. Big History may truly have ended and in our postmodern world all we can do is play with the pieces. While this may cause sadness for dictators, nationalists, classicists and others desiring massive changes, for most of us exploring dreamwork in cyberspace it offers the opportunity for play and experimentation. A personal alternative is the Improverse, the intrusion of a symbolic exchange into sign value and exchange. In the improverse, reality is created out of the interaction of two or more singularites (dream, person, mood, sound in the distance..) intruding into the exchange value and signs. One might say that reality is co-determined by the participants on a local level. Avens once said about the dream, we give it meaning, then it reveals to us its significance. If we can hear it. Listening is as important as signing in this universe. Having an ear for the other and being able to play off of the song that comes from neither but from the relationship is much like the old technique of impovisational music. In blues and folk rock jams, the musician is called upon to listen while playing. Improvisations lead to a temporary reality or song/jam world that includes all that are listening, musicians and non-musicians alike. Thus the subjective-objective world is crossed. On a Social-Political level, subversive activities often erupt in the same manner. On a larger scale we can see the effects in such events as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall coming directly from grassroots cultural exchange programs. On a more local level, Bikers, sick of Auto dominated streets began erupting into spontaneous Critical Mass bike-a-thons in the Bay Area in the late 1990's during rush hour traffic. In dreamwork we approach the dream without a sense of knowing, but of interest - we try a note. This boy in my dream is my own undeveloped boy. We listen and maybe we hear yes, maybe we hear no - but usually a whole intuition appears that leads us on. The improverse comes into being. References and More on Jean Baudrillard: www.dreamgate.com/pomo/ ----------------------------------------------------------- TERMS: Hyperreal: A phenomenon where one can no longer tell the difference between real and reproductions of the real. Reproductions even become more real than real and experiences of hyperreal more satisfying than experiences of the real. Image: Sometimes a visual presentation, but not always. In a larger way, more as an understanding, as in "Let me give you an image of what happened the other day." Sign: Something that usually points to something else. It can be a part of language or an event as well as a traffic sign or dream image. The sign has parts, the signifier - like the word "couch", the signified or concept it is referring to like the idea of couch and the referent, a concrete object like my couch in my living room. In Postmodern theory, there is more and more emphasis on the material signifier and less on the concept to which it refers. The actual object in the real world, the referent, often seems to disappear altogether. Simulacra: In Plato a false copy. But in modern thought were the distinction between appearance and reality are challenged the simulacrum has more value as a critical idea and becomes a copy without an original. The idea here being reproduction without interest in first causes or reference. Simulation: The process by which something real replaces the thing being represented. Language does this in being able to transform something specific and concrete into something abstract and universal. This brings up notions of map and territory. For Baudrillard, the transformed "map" may be more real than the original territory. I might enjoy a film on sky-diving more than actually doing it. Baudrillard sees history as sliding from attention to the land to the map leading to the disappearance of meaning. "simulation is . . . the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal" (Baudrillard, 1983: 2). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Finding worms in hair, falling off a bridge, watching a plane crash… it could only be the dream section of the Electric Dreams! Dream title: Baby Dream date: march 21, 2007 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I had a new born child and I was holding it; I was so happy. One day I let an old friend baby sit for me and she stole the baby from me. I never saw my baby again and I just kept crying and crying and crying. I called the police and told them what happened and then I woke up. Dream comments: I might be pregnant but from my boyfriend Dream title: Dying Dream date: none given Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I’m in a car accident and fall off a bridge. I’m falling and I see my self crying and falling and dying. When I hit the bottom of the bridge, I see a coffin, but I don’t see myself. I don't know who it is in the coffin. I just see myself just crying. Dream comments: I’ve been having this dream dying for about 7 years; I think it’s me in the coffin. Dream title: Weird Dream date: march 20, 2007 Dreamer name: anonymous Dream text: I was in a huge castle-like home. I had twice the number of brothers and sisters that I have in waking life. This home that we moved in seemed so weird. There were so many people in the house running around because my parents had something going on, like a meeting with their company. One of my sisters and I were fighting about which room we would choose to live in because each room was better than the other. Somehow my sister got the better room (like she always gets the better life then I do) with manipulation. I got the smallest room. My parents were still working with everyone downstairs in some big meeting. Another sister and I went exploring the home. One place seemed like we shouldn’t be near it. Then my cell phone rang I put it on speaker phone so my sister could hear it silence...deep breathing on the other line. Dream comments: weird dream! Dream title: Airplane crash Dream date: 3/19/07 Dreamer name: yaakbaby Dream text: I was standing in my office with some co-workers and all of a sudden a huge jetliner crashed nose first right outside the window. It didn't even break our windows. We watched people gathering up parts. Suddenly I said "Look at the basket of heads! They’re all smiling". Dream comments: I dream about airplane crashes a lot and I am not afraid of flying at all. Dream title: Worms in hair Dream date: 3/23/07 Dreamer name: mirasaza Dream text: I was in the bathroom; it was dirty and I needed to clean it because guests were coming over. I picked up a black vent brush, like the one I use everyday, and brushed it through my hair a few times. I noticed some difficulty, like my hair didn't feel right or look right when I brushed it. I looked at the brush and there were big long worms in it. I freaked out, and ran my fingers through my hair, and started pulling out worms, lots of worms. My hair was dry to start, but by the end of my dream I was bent over a tub with sopping wet hair pulling out long worms and clumps of tiny worms too. Dream comments: I've never had this dream before. Dream title: OMG! Doggie Conundrums! Dream date: 28/09/2006 Dreamer name: PJ Dream text: I dreamt that we had bought ourselves a pet dog, a Labrador-Border Collie mix. After getting home, it decided it was feeling horny and tried to "Make Whoopee" with my youngest child, and then after pulling the dog from him, it tried to do the same with my youngest daughter. My partner pulled the dog off my daughter and began to masturbate, which sprayed all over the lounge walls and the kids. It smelled so bad it, that I ran outside and I became violently sick. Dream comments: This is one of the rudest and strangest dreams I have ever had. ------------------ END DREAM SECTION ------------------ -------------------- 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. If you can, be clear what name you want or don't want. Most people use a pen name. Please include a title for your dream and add them at the dream temple at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple ** All dreams considered anonymous, so you must carefully indicate if you do want your name or email left on the dream. Otherwise we substitute first or pen-names. ==================== DREAM-FLOW MAIL LIST The dreams we receive are all circulated anonymously on the dream-flow mail and discussion lists. 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See http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z= The Electric Dreams Staff (Current) Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z=Z= Harry Bosma- Global Dreaming News E-mail: ed-news@alquinte.com http://www.alquinte.com Nick Cumbo – Electric Dreams PDF Archive http://www.dreamofpeace.net/community/electricdreams/ Phyllis Howling - Dream Wheel Moderator (eDreams list) E-mail: pthowing@yahoo.com Lars Spivock - Research and Development Director E-mail: lars@dreamgate_remove_to_email_.com Dream Section Editor Kat Peters-Midland http://www.rmdjournal.com/ Archive Specialist Janet Garrett http://www.improverse.com/ed-articles/index.htm Richard Wilkerson - General Editor, Publisher, Articles Editor Subscriptions & Publication E-mail: rcwilk@dreamgate.com http://www.dreamgate.com o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o All dream and article text and art are considered (C)opyright by the writers, artists and dreamers themselves. Anyone other than the authors may use or reprint the text for non- commercial use, but all other use by anyone other than the author must be with the permission of either the author or the current Electric Dreams publisher. o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o DISCLAIMER: Electric Dreams is an independent electronic publication not affiliated with any other organization. The views of our commentators are personal views and not intended as professional advice or psychotherapy. o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o