#active dreaming

The Keeper Of Time

One thing I have learned to watch for in dreams is the “reality check”. This is an important step included in the Lightning Dream Sharing Method, designed by Robert Moss and practiced as part of Active Dreaming. The attention to the details that appear in dreams about place and time, present ques about where and when to help determine if there could be information included for a possible future.

5/1/17: Seeking the Innermost Dream

Welcome to The Harmonic Concordance Blog, a unique clearinghouse for a select and diverse group of “Voices,” gathered in a Community of Spirit, who are willing to share some of the insights and knowledge gained from their own Spiritual Quests. These observations, presented in service to that Quest, offer each Voice’s particular piece of the Spiritual pie – and are dedicated to what may be called,…

The Power Of Active Dreaming In Healing And Transformation

Most of us think of dreams as barely remembered, passive nocturnal entertainment. But around the world, shamans have pioneered a more powerful, valuable and fascinating way to approach dreaming: seeing it as a time for transformation, healing and getting guidance from higher levels of reality. It’s literally the time in which our souls speak to us and we can access a multidimensional reality.…

Freebie Friday – Tap into the Shamanic Power of “Active Dreaming” with Robert Moss

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Freebie Friday is a chance to get something nice absolutely FREE!

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FREE online event: The Shamanic Power of Active Dreaming

Opening to Multidimensional Realities for Time Travel, Healing & Reality Creation

Saturday, November 21, 2015 12 PM Central / 10 AM Pacific / 1 PM Eastern

For centuries, shamans around the world have used dreams as portalsto receive

I don't often have dreams that I remember, much less ones that seems to be engaging me in quality conversations. I have active dreams that leave me feeling tired and drained all day, dreams that make me feel like I've been talking all night long and dreams that usually scare the begeesus out of me with a little sleep walking involved.

So before I outline this rather interesting "conversation" I should tell you that no, I have not seen "Inside Out," and that yes, I do know what the movie is about. It's about emotions.

And that is exactly what this dream's message was about. I had fallen asleep on the couch and awoke at 4am with the light still on and the living room being altogether too warm to be comfortable. I got up, opened the front and back doors for airflow, aimed the fan right at me, and turned that last remaining lamp off (not to worry, everything in my house is an LED lightbulb). I mean it was easier than unmaking a nice made-up bed in the other room. I took note that it was rather dark this way, and I've been more or less unwilling to be in my living room when it's that dark since, well, I'm not the only one living there... well physically, yes, spiritually, no. My 2-1/2 year old Nephew made friends with whomever is here, and I've even seen him/it/someone cross in front of the lamp in the corner of the dining room more than once, but that's for another blog.  So you can see why I am a little bit reluctant to be in full dark, but since I was still more or less half asleep and really wanting to lay back down, I didn't mind. I also didn't feel like I had a reason to be concerned either...

At this point in the evening is when I had my dream. The TV has a timer and it had been on showing reruns of a cooking show, and the contestants were part of my earlier dream, so at one point when I woke up briefly, it was a little disorienting.

It was a female in the later dream that carried out the conversation, all from her side, with examples and different situations to fully explain her point. And her point was that negative emotions are the easiest to "feel." I was the student to watch and listen.

We are emotional beings whether we like to admit it or not. Men like to think emotions are for women, but do something that impacts their emotions, how they "feel" about something, in either a negative or positive way, and they'll respond in kind. I already know this about myself, how my logic and reasoning are hard-coded to my emotional response to something. It's why I take my job seriously, the tasks I'm entrusted to do are my responsibility, so when I make mistakes, or great strides, I feel the impacts: shame, guilt, satisfaction, happiness, etc. Apathy is an emotion as well. Sometimes I'm apathetic towards my job, where if something goes right, great, something goes wrong, who cares, and that usually comes along with high stress. I'm still registering the emotional communication of outcomes. Even if it's our friends and family - something goes wrong, we feel bad for them , something goes amazingly well, we're happy for them. We care about the quality of life in those around us, the continued success of our employer, whom ever is running for a major political position, and our favorite sports teams. We are emotional beings.

It was explained to me that the negative emotions we feel are the easiest to feel, which I thought was a little absurd. I mean I've been told before that I remember the negative things that I've felt an emotional impact from more so than the positive, but for the most part, we're supposed to focus on the positive. And it isn't because we're an emotional species that is incapable of focusing more on feeling positive, it's that as a society we're programmed to recognize the negative aspects more.

Her examples were that why we feel negativity more is because, in some ways, we're trying to find a way to off-set those emotions. When we're feeling angry, sad, guilty, ashamed we look to blame someone. We do this because that is the only way we know how to get rid of negative emotions. Positive emotions such as happiness, joy, contentment, and passion don't necessarily need anyone to be 'responsible for," therefore we don't feel the 'need' to off-set them somewhere else. We want to absorb them. I mean you would think those really should be the ones we feel more at ease to recognize first and foremost recognize, right? Wrong. And here's why.

Say you've reached a life goal you have worked long and hard to achieve. You set yourself out to accomplish something great and dear to yourself that will no doubt add more joy and contentment to your existence in this life. You want to shout from the roof tops, hug complete strangers, you seem to grow a foot in height and you can take on the world. But because time marches on, good or bad, that moment's euphoria starts to spread itself out and metabolize to your spiritual self. And while it does so, your brain starts analyzing things using its own programming. You start to see how your euphoria may come off as vulgar, conceited, and glutenous. It applies shame when it asks you to look at the world at large, or the next ten human beings you come across. "Look at their suffering," it whispers. "Why should YOU get to experience all those wonderful emotions when they can't? Why YOU?" And then you find yourself rationalizing why you should feel almost ashamed at shouting from the rooftops. Because feeling guilty is a negative emotion, those are the easiest ones we're programmed to feel.

Has it ever been considered glutenous to drown in one's negative emotions? No. Not ever. But it has for positive emotions. Because not everyone can be happy. It's a "privilege."  "Too much suffering exists," says the world, "too much pain and greed, neglect and contempt. How can you possibly feel happy?" When something terrible happens to us, we cry out for someone to take responsibility for it. We don't go around in our lives feeling guilty for spreading our pain. Some of us are not even aware that that's exactly what we're going. It's like we say "you should feel bad, for me, because I feel bad,” or "why don't you feel bad for me because I feel bad!" And we feed our own negative emotions when we perceive that someone else isn't registering them in response.

As a society we're taught about personal responsibility; no one is going to support you save you. We're also taught about the need for helping others. Some say that should be the priority. So which is it? No one will support us but ourselves, but no one will help their fellow human unless you do it? It sounds counter-productive and in direct contrast to its own ideals. However we have that exact emotional imbalance happening with individuals who focus solely on their success at the expense of others, and those who solely rely on the help from others at the other's expense. One side is blindly happy, while the other is blindly suffering. We see that the top of that structure as glutenous and vain, greedy and apathetic while feeling envy and jealously, while we look to the bottom of the structure and feel ashamed and guilty that we don't join in and feel their pain with them.  We are programmed to focus on the negative emotion. Even those beings balanced in the middle, and those beings being slight on either side, will find some way to justify the negative. We say things to others and ourselves like 'why should you be so happy while that person, those persons, are so unhappy,' but we never, ever say 'why should you feel so badly while that person, those persons, are so happy.' It's because positive feelings are considered a privileged, while the negative are the right. Compassion is what we feel in tandem with the positive when we have acknowledged that we still feel positively while faced with negativity. Still, however, we justify the later.

In each of the situations, cases and examples shown to me during this dream, it was always to prove that however that impacted the person or persons involved on a negative emotional plane, those persons accepted those emotions so that they could get rid of them. We want to unburden ourselves by handing them off on to another, which is why we're so focued on them. We don't want them! And yet at the same time, we want the positive, but dissolve them so as to make more room for the negative in the search to give them away. I realize I've never said we give our happiness away. Does that mean we absorb as much of that as we can get like sponges? It sure does. However, while thinking about this and expanding in fully conscious, an abundance of positive emotions can be just as infectious as the negative. When we radiate the positivity, others will feel it.

Think about it this way. You're at a friend's wedding, graduation, baby shower, birthday celebration, etc and you're truly open to celebrating the positive emotional landscape that is present, you feel happy. Happy for them, but also happy for yourself. There's happiness to be felt for yourself by being happy for others. You just have to let that happen, and not fall into that programming  of 'oh wait a second, I need to leave room for the negative!" What if that was the reprogramming we took on? What if both sides of that scale took that on? The top wanting to spread their happiness to those mired in negative emotions, while the bottom is happy that positive, caring people want to help them be happy. This elevates the whole to a higher plane because everyone is allowing the positive to be the overriding program!

The point of negative emotions is about learning and growth. Their existence is to give perspective and insight on the work still needed to get where we want to go. If we're always so happy, we become complacent, and our roads are like an overexposed picture - we can't see ahead, so we just kind of stay where we are. We remember what we've learned or moved on from because our current positive emotional state lends itself to that achievement. Right now our society is so unhappy. Our world, emotionally and physically, is like an badly underexposed (pardon the sudden photography references) picture where everything is too dark. We can't see that happiness is right in front of us if we just allow some positive light, nor can we see the mistakes we're supposed to have progressed from. So we make the same ones over and over as if fumbling through the dark because there isn't any feeling that we've achieved anything. In fact we just feel worse and worse.

I see that myself and some friends around me fall into that programming where we focus on the negative things happening without allowing to feel happy about what is positive. In the same way that focusing on the negative allows for that energy to infiltrate and perpetuate, focusing on the positive will do the same, so when the negative comes along, we can shrug it off the same way we used to do with the positive.

I'm sure this has already been explained before, that positive and negative emotions are like light and dark. The darkness is not complete so long as a tiny amount of light is left, but the lightness is not diminished even if there's a little shadow. Because there's light in that shadow. That's how we should approach our emotions. So long as you can find some reason to allow the happiness to be the majority of our programmed emotional default, the negative will never take over completely.

Are you stuck for ideas for a homework task or university assignment or just not sure what topic would be the best to explore? Why not dream on it? Through dream incubation or lucid dreaming (realising that you are dreaming while inside a dream) you might be inspired to approach the task a different way. Note: Original article posted to my website Sea Life.

Image: Intention by Keturah, http://www.flickr.com/photos/22304420@N05/3374447352 In an article titled The “Committee of Sleep”: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving (1993), Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. demonstrates how dreams and hypnogogic imagery (the imagery that forms between the state of waking and sleep) have been a source of creative inspiration for scientists, writers and musical composers alike. She points to specific examples, showing how the Russian scientist Mendeleev developed a more complete version of the periodic table of the elements after a dream, and how the author Robert Lewis Stevenson “dreamed the two key scenes of his novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

Image: The Periodic Table of the Elements (today), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_table_large.svg

While many of the accounts of “solving problems or producing creative products during sleep” that Barrett highlights were the result of spontaneous dreams, she suggests that we can also learn to incubate dreams with a specific intention or question in mind. She describes an early study she conducted with 76 college students, who were asked to incubate dreams addressing problems of a “personal, general objective, or academic nature.” Students were asked to write out the problem in a simple form and carry out dream incubation according to a particular method.

Incubating a dream to help with your homework While I’m not familiar with the specific approach for dream incubation used in the study, the process is generally straightforward. If you’re looking for assistance with your homework, you might approach it as follows:

Decide on a problem that you want help with, e.g. “What would be a good topic to write about for this assignment?”

Write down your question/problem on paper.

Clear your mind and remind yourself of your intention just before you go to sleep.

Keep a pen and paper by your bed and record the resulting dream as soon as you wake.

Write a personal comment to explore any connections you notice between your dream and your original intention.

In Barrett’s study, students were asked to follow the dream incubation procedure nightly for a week, or until they had a dream which solved the problem. Interestingly, Barrett found that about half of the students were able to recall a dream which they felt was related to the problem - and of these seventy percent believed that their dream contained a solution to the problem. In addition to the students themselves, independent judges were also asked to rate students dreams in terms of their relevance to the problems identified, and the capacity of the dream to find a solution. The results were surprisingly similar.

An example from the study demonstrates how one of the students was able to incubate a dream seeking assistance with a personal problem.

Problem:  I have applied to two clinical psychology programs and two in industrial psychology because I just can't decide which field I want to go into. Dream: A map of the United States. I am in a plane flying over this map. The pilot says we are having engine trouble and need to land and we look for a safe place on the map indicated by a light. I ask about MA which we seem to be over right then and he says all of MA is very dangerous. The lights seem to be further west. I wake up and realize that my two clinical schools are both in MA where I have spent my whole life and where my parents live. Both industrial programs are far away, Texas and CA. That was because originally I was looking to stay close to home and there were no good industrial programs nearby. I realize that there is a lot wrong with staying at home and that, funny as it sounds, getting away is probably more important than which kind of program I go to.

If you want to know more about how dreams can be used for creative purposes like these, check out a much more recent book by Deirdre Barrett, The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving - And How you Can Too. It looks like a good read!