PLOT nce erste f oo FRR CT AT a Ll ha Dreaming Shapes OU ‘uture and Change Your Life for the BetterWe can dream our dream and we can dream our world remember, like Harriet Tubman, that we can fly - —FROM Dreaming True “J am profoundly convinced, after many years of working in these areas, that the futures we see in dreams or intuitive states, for ourselves or others, are possible futures. The actions we take (including action to unfold the full meaning of the dream) can change the probability that any particular scenario will be enacted. Once we wake up to the fact that we dream the furure—maybe all the time—we can play the powerful improvisational game of changing the future for the better.” —Robert Moss Praise for Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss ‘A triumphant contribution. ... Contains revelations for the advanced dreamer as well as the neophyte.” —ParriciA GARFIELD, AUTHOR OF Creative Dreaming ann The Healing Power of Dreams ‘Highly recommended for anyone wishing to explore dreams and how they can be used constructively in the craft of life.” —Larry Dossey, auTHOR oF Healing Words AND Recovering the SoulREAMING TRUE How to Dream Your Future and Change Your Life for the Better Robert Moss PUBLIC LIBRARY ST ORANGE AVENUEPreface: Dreaming True - xi Introduction: The Underground Railroad of Dreams « xvii part one THE ART OF DREAMING TRUE one Journaling for Dreaming True - 3 two Keys to Dreaming True - 11 three Waking Up to Dreaming True - 26 four When Dreams Seem False - 42 five Listening to Nightmares - 61 six Dreaming for Others - 82 seven Becoming a Better Dream Journalist - 100 part two _ SEVEN LEVELS OF DREAMING eight Ways of Dreaming - 123 2 L One: Dream Recycling - 139part three DEEPER DREAMING — sixteen Dream Hunters and Dream Healers - 241 seventeen Becoming a Waymaker - 260 eighteen Bringing Dreams into Waking Life - 265 nineteen Dreaming and Future Science - 285 twenty Changing the Past - 298 twenty-one Dreaming Humanity’s Path in the New Millennium - 311 Notes - 317 Bibliography - 327 Resources » 333 Acknowledgments - 337 Index - 341preface DREAMING TRUE Thave a dream today. — Martin Lutuer Kine Jr., Aucust 28, 1963 The common wisdom of most human societies, as far back as we can trace, is that dreaming is central to the human condi- tion. Dreaming gives us direct access to the spiritual realms, and allows our spiritual teachers to speak to us clearly. Dream- ing also helps us to keep body and soul together, by showing us dangers and opportunities that may escape our ordinary aware- ness. “Strong” dreamers, those who have the ability to provide accurate and helpful information—on the location of food in the hungry times, for example, or the movements of a hostile War party—are greatly revered and rewarded. The first business ‘the day, for many people in a traditional dreaming culture, me together and share dreams. In dreaming cultures, it ed that in “big” dreams, we journey beyond the body the laws of spacetime, or receive visitations from ‘not confined to physical reality. The dream- world, more “real” than much choca ipeoples such as Australian "Ae the hill tribes of S ‘east Asia, and many Native Americans. It is a better guide to the possibilities of dreaming than scientific findings based on monitoring brainwaves. We need to know about these things for ourselves. Dream- ing is not a spectator sport (although in dreams we can cer- tainly look in on many interesting situations). Theories about dreams are worse than useless if they come between the dreamer and the practice of dreaming. True dream scientists are active dreamers who work carefully with their journals, share their dreams with others, and research the frontiers of dream- ing inside the dreamstate itself: As we explore the meaning of our dreams, and what we should do with them, we can always benefit from another person's insights and suggestions. But the final authority on any dream is the dreamer herself. The only “expert” on your dreams is you. This book focuses on a vitally important aspect of dream- ing that is familiar, on some level, to almost everyone—and yet has been almost completely ignored in the modern litera- ture. This is our ability to dream events and situations before they take place in physical reality. Knowledge of the future may come to us in various ways, waking or sleeping. It may be an extrapolation or projection from information already available to us. In dreams, we some- times access larger or deeper data banks than are available to our everyday awareness and make brilliant connections that escape our surface mind. The dreams that come from these Processes may not always be “psychic’—because they do not introduce information that goes beyond what may already have come to us (perhaps subliminally) in waking life. But they sometimes offer marvelously clear and instructive scenarios about the possible future that should certainly be considered as xiiPREFACE examples of dreaming true. Since dreams of this kind often help us to prepare for future situations, or weigh the conse- quences of alternative courses of action, I call them rehearsal dreams. Then there are those dreams in which the body shows us what may be going on inside it. I call these bodytalk dreams, Sleep researchers call them “somatic” dreams or—when they show us developing symptoms—“prodromic” dreams. Bodytalk VEEN the dreams give us impeccable X-rays of our present condition and show us where it could lead. Best of all, they offer us fresh and powerful imagery that we can use in healing and recovery. In dreams we also have access to information about the dream. future that goes far beyond what is stored in the body and the aning of personal unconscious. Four psychic functions—dormant in most of us in waking life, apart from occasional intuitive flashes—come richly alive in dreams. These are telepathy the ability to pick up another person’s thoughts or feelings at a dis- tance; clairvoyance or “distant seeing” (which Pentagon types like to call “remote viewing’—and is just that); psychokinesis, the power of the mind to influence physical events or objects; and precognition, which could be defined as knowledge of future events that does not come from any source available in ordinary reality. In practice, lines between these four psychic functions are often blurred. If you dream about an incident in another town that you read about in tomorrow’s paper, did you (a) have telepathy with someone you know in that town; (b) have a clairvoyant sighting of the incident at the time it took place; (c) help to bring it about through your own (possibly unsuspected) mental powers or (d) experience precognition of tomorrow's newspaper headlines? _ The boundaries are porous, but it is useful to draw them on nd, if only so we can enjoy playing hopscotch over key point is that all four of these psychic func- often regarded in waking life as extraordinarycated training—come f ‘the most natural thing in the world, accor ° dreaming traditions and 21* century science. The anci dom is that in dreams, we travel beyond the body and beyond time and space, and receive visitations from other travelers, who may include ancestors or angelic beings. The new science suggests that time travel is a physical, as well as a metaphysical possibility,’ that the mind is never confined to the body and the brain, and that consciousness—once released from self- limiting beliefs—can take us to the ends and the inner work- ings of the universe. Once we wake up to the fact that we dream of the future (maybe all the time) we are ready to play a more exciting game. This is the game of using dream information to change the future for the better. The futures we see in dreams are possible futures. If we catch our dream messages, and act on them, we can improve our chances of bringing about a happy event—or avoiding an unpleasant one. As we become more active dreamers, we'll make a bigger discovery: that nothing in our physical reality is necessarily as fixed as we may have told ourselves, or been told by others. Dreams are our bridge to a deeper reality, in which the events and patterns of our waking lives are forged. We return from our dream travels with images and energy that can carry us beyond our personal histories, our self-limiting beliefs and our stuck places. Dream images give us power to heal our bodies, our relationships and our environment and return to our soul’s purpose in this lifetime. They put us in touch with what one of the most gifted dreamers I know, a Catholic sister, calls our “Moreness.” When we connect with that Moreness, in our- selves and others, we are more generous and creative and brave. Ihave a dream: that we will again become a dreaming cul- ture, where dreams are shared and celebrated every day, in our