The Passions of the Dream Work Magic

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

Going Raw Stories, 1

Raw chef Mila at Raw Radiance is in Delicious Magazine with an article about emotional eating. She has put up 3 other posts related to the issue: Overcoming Emotional Eating

Compulsive Emotional Eating, including thoughts about a talk given by Angela Stokes-Monarch who pioneered the change to a raw diet to revolutionize her body...

And Mila's personal look back at where she was when she started eating raw, and how far she's come.

Very inspiring!

Sacred Quinoa Facts

A sweet post from Katharine about Quinoa, the sacred grain of Ecuador: WHERE DID SHE GO?: Quinoa Soup = SUPERFOOD!


What WIKI has to say about Quinoa: a chenopod, technically...

"Committed to environmental protection and poverty reduction, Andean Naturals offers only non-GMO, organically-farmed products from small producer groups."

Beautiful photos of the Bolivian quinoa planting cycle and harvest.

"Quinoa contains more protein than any other grain; an average of 16.2 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for rice, 9.9 percent for millet, and 14 percent for wheat. Some varieties of quinoa are more than 20 percent protein." - Quinoa.net

Drink "Quinoa Gold" and step back 5000 years. A Rhode Island company developed a Quinoa-based protein drink four years ago.
Quinoa
Here's how to make a sprouted quinoa pilaf, at Coconut and Quinoa.

How I Lost 60 pounds of fat Without even Trying

Several years ago I moved to Europe. After three babies, I weighed about 260 pounds, but felt I was only about 200. That is what my driver's license said: 200 pounds. I was in denial of the extra 60. I figured I could get rid of it before anyone really checked.

I was a mother staying at home for the children. I didn't have a job. I found myself sitting daily in our Jugendstil-era apartment, alone, deciding what to do with the rest of my life. I didn't speak the language. My husband found himself working a great deal more hours than he had done in America. Our grand European adventure wasn't necessarily grand or adventurous.

Yet over the course of about two years I lost 60 pounds. Without even trying to lose it. What happened was: I gradually acclimatized to the European lifestyle, and it simply took the pounds away. I did not intentionally eat less. I did not exercise on purpose. I did not exercise any willpower to change myself, believe me. I never weighed myself. I wouldn't have dreamed of counting calories.

So what did I do? Here is the list. Here are the first two parts of a ten part series. Yes! There are ten parts to it, to post every Wednesday. Read on...

1. I never ate between meals. In Europe, if you're eating something and not sitting down during a meal, people will look at you quizzically. Why are you eating? Are you sick, is something wrong? Do you have a medical condition? We only eat during mealtimes: what's so hard about that?

2. I never ate anywhere unless I was sitting in a chair at a table. I never ate in town, walking around (rarely: an ice cream cone), I never ate in my car, I never ate standing up. People watch other people much more closely in Europe. There are people sitting at outdoor cafes and walking past you almost all the time. If you are doing something unusual, folks will look at you and not even attempt to disguise their interest, curiosity or contempt. So it feels quite uncomfortable to be the only person in a 3 mile radius walking and eating a sandwich. It is undignified, it is sloppy: not even little children do it. The public approbation really does its work on the individual. It looks desperate and wrong to eat in public unless you are taking the time to enjoy a meal. That's just how it is.

Join me next Friday for more...

Not to Meat

A friend of mine told me how he stopped eating meat. He had for years given free rein to his desires: he smoked, he ate whatever he wanted.
This was in Europe, and a heavily meat-eating culture, in a region where there is even less accommodation made for vegetarians. Where the thought of going without meat is far more freakish than in the English-speaking world of today.

My friend was also addicted to documentaries, and one night he watched one about the treatment of animals during the raising and butchering process. He went to bed that night and woke up in the morning and never ate animals again.

How did you stop eating meat? Tell me.

Here are some ideas:
The Easy Way to Give up Meat: http://lighterfootstep.com/2007/05/the-easy-way-to-give-up-meat/.

A pretty comprehensive list:
49 Good Reasons for being a Vegetarian, http://www.britishmeat.com/49.htm

Refuting one of the most common beliefs, that vegetarianism makes you weak:
Giving up Meat doesn't hurt Princeton's athletes, http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/02/27/20262

And a wonderful article by Johnathon Safran Foer about how and why he decided to go
meatless: The Fruits of Family Trees, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Apologies to everyone who decided years ago to give up flesh-eating...find out how far or how little the debate has advanced since then.