How did I get here?

You set off from home and find yourself on a high mountain top, or another country, with no idea how you got here.

You close your eyes in a dream and wake up somewhere else.

You're in one place and then suddenly in another, without any recollection of how you got from A to B.

These are common experiences in dreams.

If we are too quick, on waking, to flatten our adventures into a single linear narrative, without pausing to reflect on the unexplained transits, we can miss a very important opportunity to learn more about what goes on in dreaming - and about the nature of reality itself.

When you jump from one scene to another, you may have stepped from one dream into another, as you might step from an outer to an inner courtyard.

Make it your game to ask, while dreaming, "How did I get here?" when a sudden scene shift takes place. This may cause you to wake up to the fact that you are dreaming.

Stay with your experience, and you may find yourself embarked on a full-fledged lucid dream adventure.

Look deeper, and you may find you are traveling between different realities, no less real than the one where your body is lying dormant in bed. You have not only switched dreams; you have changed worlds.

Drawing: "In the Dream Cinema" (c) Robert Moss

IN THE DREAM CINEMA

It's 3 in the morning. I don't feel like sleep so I go to the Dream Cinema. Lion is with me. I'm not surprised; I felt him stirring beside me in bed. Like the neighborhood the cinema is dark but the lights come on as we approach

"You can't bring a lion in here," says the ticket person.

"Nonsense. This is MY cinema."

We take comfortable seats in the screening room but no movie comes on. Maybe this is punishment for bringing the lion. I feel relaxed and close my eyes

When I open them I see an amazing complex of stone arches and structures, some natural and some shaped by hand, in a desert landscape. There is hidden danger here. An adventure is about to unfold

A man in bush clothes steps into the middle of the screen. He is dressed like Indiana Jones. No wait. He is wearing a leather hat with a crocodile skin band, one I brought back from Australia a quarter century ago. I am looking at a screen version of myself

The lion pads ahead of him, ready for trouble. So the Dream Cinema is screening a movie for me after all.

I step into the screen, with the lion, and we take on our starring roles

- the opening scene in a thrilling series of cinematic dream adventures between 3 am and 7 am on April 25th.