January Group Project- Joint Dreamwork

[thelerner]

Wanted to know if people were interested in trying a group project?  As aspect of dream work, notably meeting each other in dreams.  Throughout the centuries this has been done purposely and/or accidentally.  It has a long history in shamanic and religious lore.

 

Rawn Clark a hermetic teacher talked about having a group that would meet in the astral plane on certain nights, later calling each other to confirm details on what they saw/remembered.   Some early websites  specifically dealt with such astral meetups, with mixed results. 

 

I have little skill in dreamwork, but others here do.  I suggest we use a tool, Lilian Eden's guided meditation called Meet Me in The Dream; Lucid Exploration with Friend.  It an explanation and hypnotic script, though an hour in length the audio instructions are quite short.  It's mostly biaural relaxing sounds with no 'wake up'. 

 

Its on youtube and I'll try to include download of it here albeit in a low bit rate.  You can grab it on higher bit rate off youtube. 

 

Let me know what you think.  I suggest people listen to it, then we experiment.  Having some nights where we start it together.  Perhaps hooking up on Live Chat with a ready set go.  Giving it a few tries.  I've found early morning to be the best time to practice.  Waking up at 4 or 5 am, focusing on intent, then listening and allowing it to send me back to sleep.  Whatever protocol, afterwards people record there dreams as well as talking about there general experience.  See if we have any 'hits', clear of fuzzy meet ups.

 

I note that some dream groups pick a location.  Such as the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Field of Dreams baseball, in a field looking up at the full moon (during full moon, Jan 12th the Wolf moon). 

 

If people are interested and or have suggestions we can start next in January. 

 

 

**note I shrank it to 16kps but it was still 7.5 MB.  Below is the youtube.  There are  browser addons that allow making it an mp3 or aac or you can just listen to it on the computer. 

 

 

 

**keeping this in General area for now.  Might move it later to Esoteric or somewhere else later, where it won't be moving up and down so much. 

[Kar3n]

I'd participate. 

 

[thelerner]

I'd participate. 

 

Wonderful.

 

Later on, I'll have to get people's time zone and maybe do an informal poll on what timing is best. 

 

The first rule of Dream Club is Remember your dreams. 

   without that, you may be traveling, talking to gods, being naked infront of your class, but it doesn't matter cause you won't remember.  So keep a journal, nothing fancy and write down your dreams.  At least a title, preferably more.  If you have a hard time, then set an alarm early an hour or so before normal.  Get up, stand, set your intent to remember your dream, have journal ready, go back to sleep and/or listen to guided meditation.  The last REM period tends to be the easiest to remember.  If possible get to bed early.

 

The second rule of Dream Club is talk about Dream Club.

  the more you keep it in your consciousness, the more likely it'll stick.  Every time you walk through a door, stop, ask yourself, am I dreaming.    Make it a habit, look at your hands, look at writing, clocks, look twice, be aware. 

 

I'll have to think of something witty for the next rule or two.  It makes sense to familiar yourself with the guided meditation before hand too.

 

For success:

Dreamwork requires strong intent.  Don't go to bed too tired.  Focus on what you want-  Remembering our dreams. 

Be patient, some are blessed and naturals.  My aikido sensei was a serial dreamer, each night picking up the story line where it left off.  For most of us, its a skill that requires time, effort and the right mindset. 

 

The Healing Tao US teacher Michael Winn talked about having his friends and students join him during dreams where he'd hold a flying school.  Many people will have visits from teachers during there dreams.  Ultimately we want lucidity and to connect, even if that connection seems at first murky and seemingly coincidental.    And realize it'll take time and patience. 

 

The low lying fruit is more consciousness of our dreams, then there's the playground/holodeck in the middle, going higher there are dimensional learnings that are very powerful, or so they say.  

 

I've got some book learning here but little expertise.  I look forward to input from teachers and those with experience with this caveat, I'd like to keep the intent of the thread, meeting up as the goal.   Don't know if I'll get there, but we have some very talented people here and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them make it. 

[silent thunder]

I'm interested.

 

Pacific time zone, america.

 

"Myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths."  ~Joseph Campbell 

 

This statement resonates with me on a foundational level.  I find, imagination, dreaming, wonder and the surface of the mind-pond to all be in a relationship.  We have so much more in common than we do in distinction. 

 

I became a playwright and actor in my early life due largely to my experiences in dreamscapes and my love of consciousness exploration and a desire to enter the shared realms of imagination with the audience.

 

Many potent realizations have crystallized for me through experiences in dreamscapes, so as a disclaimer... dreams are as real to me as sitting here typing is for most folks... and that to me, in a very literal sense, I consider the 'waking or conscious state' to be a shared dreaming state.  So for me, going to the store, or the beach, or sitting here typing a conversation, is a form of shared dream work. 

 

I would sincerely value the opportunity to meet up with anyone else who is willing to invest the intent.

[thelerner]

Update:  We have 3 people participating and its going well.  One early interesting hit of mutual coldness and on Wednesday people feeling they are in the same prescribed room.  Nothing too incredible or fully lucid, but, it is just the beginning.  And ofcourse it happened to other guys, because I have little talent for this. 

 

We're working twice a week, meeting up on live chat at a prescribe time, getting a theme and location then listening to the hypnotic audio mentioned above.

 

The work is tricky, dreams are slippery and fade fast.  Its only in the last 15 years the science has accepted that lucid dreaming is possible.  Thanks in large part to Stephen LaBerge who set up one of the earliest science based dream labs in Stanford and got graduates students as test oneirauts.   Yet indigenous cultures from Tibet to South America have millennia of experience in dream work.  Every culture has stories. 

 

If their experiences are reproducible then perhaps what is considered legendary or 'fuzzy' psychic skills; connecting in dreams, is possible, and for some, with practice, luck, and grace a learnable skill.  One that once accepted, can become wide spread, our generation's 4 minute mile. 

 

Rawn Clark, a hermetic teacher mentioned in his blog (no longer up) that he met up with other hermetic 'magicians' in the astral and would talk on the phone afterwards to compare notes.  With the internet, there are groups doing this.

 

We have our trio.  I'd suggest other people interested do something similar, also in a small group.  Plan a brief meetings 2 or 3 times a week to discuss theme and location (real or archetypal)  and confer on the results later.  Keep it short and simple; be patient, experiment, improve dream recall, and see what happens.    

[thelerner]

I wasn't participating. But I had a rather strange dream not too long ago. I was at work (or some place that looked similar) and I felt like I was being followed

That reminds me of a book I read over 25 years ago in college on psychic research.   A psych professor was studying hypnosis and had grad students as faithful guinea pigs, picking those who had a talent to fall easily into deep hypnosis.  He taught them to hypnotize not only each other, but set it up so they after going into hypnosis the hypnotized would hypnotize the first person; then lead them on a hypnotic trip.

 

At one point the two student performed this infront of an audience.  One hypnotized the other, who then hypnotized them back and began a story about walking through a cave.  The professor noticed a one of the people in the audience had there eyes closed and seemed to have been gotten 'caught' in the induction. 

 

Keeping the first two under hypnosis the professor asked them questions.  Both talked about walking through the cave and  both claimed they were being followed but couldn't see who it was.  Intriguing because with eyes closed they couldn't have known a person in the audience had fallen into hypnosis. The professor then went to that student, told him to stay in a peaceful state and answer some questions.  The third student talked about being in a cave, seeing things the first two had described but being unable to catch up to the group in front. 

 

Interesting stuff, the section ended by saying that ultimately the practice freaked out the students and they stopped doing performing it.  Most of the rest of the book was on the fuzziness of psychic research at the time.  Titillating possibilities but few were reproducible. 

 

When I research astral projection years ago, I could never get a simple clear answer to, if you put shuffle a card deck and put a random card face up on a desk, don't look at it, can you see it in the astral and correctly write it down when you awaken.  I never got a clear answer, mostly evasion and that things were shifty in the astral.  And maybe they are. 

 

There are many stories about students meeting up with meditation teachers and gurus in their dreams.  Sometimes with shared knowledge other times seemingly only one realizes it, as if the senior's spirit teaches unconsciously.

 

Last tidbit, I was reminded in Awaken's PPD that in taoist tradition the best sleep is deep and dreamless.  Still, this is worth while enough skill to try a few nights of the week.  And perhaps others trying to reach that deep recharging sleep.