My son Stuart and I went to the Tattered Cover Bookstore last night to listen to Robert Moss speak about his book, Dreamgates.
He was very engaging, a great storyteller, clearly at the top of his game in a genre: shamanic dreaming, that he has been restoring to the western world for decades. It was inspiring to be in the presence of someone who radiates authentic, grounded shamanic wisdom. I was charmed by his Australian accent, which reminded me of my four years there, and would gladly undertake study with him.
From his website: "A central premise of Moss’s approach is that dreaming isn’t just what happens during sleep; dreaming is waking up to sources of guidance, healing and creativity beyond the reach of the everyday mind."
I asked about the fragments of dreams. I often have dreams that are so psychedelic that I can't find the thread of the meaning. Surely it is easier to bring a dream's message into this waking world when there is a logical narrative to follow. My dreams tend to go like this: While tulips sprout from the ceiling, my mother hurriedly drops a package of bacon on the floor while an albatross taps its beak against the window.
A friend of mine has the most lucid, fairy-tale like dreams. She is English, and has a memory and talent for narrative that can only be said to have been cultivated over the millenia from Taliesin onwards in her bloodlines. She dreams like this: A white owl spreads its wings and leads her to an abandoned church where a wizened hag stoops over a steaming broth...
Mr. Moss said that he is in favor of dream fragments because they provide disparate clues which one can follow further during shamanic journeys, or even further in dreams. Journey separately to the tulips, or to the albatross, or to the bacon, for further enlightenment.
Especially relevant was: perhaps the appearance of a particular food in a dream provides a clue that you need that food (or should avoid that food) in your waking life. Let's say that food is carrots. The circle is completed when we recognize a wink and a nod from spirit during our waking life: a friend shares a recipe for shredded carrots, our attention is drawn to a handbag with carrots on it.
From his blog of that night: "We need to regard dreams more literally and waking events more symbolically."
He went on to speak movingly of other cultures' centrality of dreams and attention to sharing them, and how dreams in modern society are disregarded, how even the human need to dream cannot be satisfied during our unnatural sleep patterns -- this has a great deal to do with why so many people suffer from a dream drought.
As he was signing his book for us, Mr. Moss introduced himself to my eleven year-old son and shook his hand. He gave me an intense look after he asked Stu if he remembers his dreams, and he suggested that we buy him a notebook in which to write them down. (With workshops filled with dreaming women, there is a shortage of male dreamers.)
Stu's grandfather is a great dreamer and rememberer, so notwithstanding my bizarre dreams, I believe Stuart was there with me to brush his dreamer's wings against the dreaming expert that night.
www.tatteredcover.com/
www.mossdreams.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1577318919/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=051788710X&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=08BECDW42KP1RV8ZCJC6
http://mossdreams.blogspot.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin
No comments:
Post a Comment