Does your phone work in your dreams?

I like to spend quiet time with my journals studying how a certain symbol or dream situation recurs and evolves over time. This can amount to constructing the biography of a dream symbol. Recently I have been looking at how my phone functions - or fails to function - in dreams.

My phone camera usually seems to work in my dreams but the pictures aren't in my camera roll when I return. I have received phone calls from the departed over the years but it is far more common for me to visit them in their current environments. I usually can't make calls on my cell phone in dreams and the screen becomes very strange, which is sometimes a lucidity trigger.. Sometimes my cell phone morphs into an amazing multidimensional device.

Here is a sampling of reports I pulled up from the past dozen years. No analysis here, and few complete dream reports; just a glimpse of variations on a recurring theme. 

Interdimensional Phone and the Instant Pool 

I am traveling in a far land, where I do not expect my cell phone to work. The phone looks like a longish silver TV monitor. A male companion encourages me to try the phone any way. I hit a button at the bottom right and to my surprise a woman's voice answers immediately. I am so startled I hang up.
    She calls back immediately and I recognize her as a woman who lives with a psychologist friend. She tells me he wants me to come over that same evening. I explain that I am very far away. She's insistent. She explains that the psychologist is busy digging a pool with a backhoe since he knows I like to swim. The pool will be ready by the time I get there. I say I'll get there if I can.
   I'm aware, in the dream, that the "far land" from which I am calling is not of this world, but a country in the imaginal realm, and that my phone is more than in ordinary reality. It works to open communication between different mental planes. 4/5/09

Different Phone, Different Self

Traveling in Europe, I can't find my way to a house where I am expected. I reach for my cell phone to call my hosts. I'm surprised to see there are three or four little windows on the screen displaying maps. When I try to use the phone function, I discover the switches are different - this is not my phone, and I don't know how to work it.
     Now lucid, I make a further discovery. I am not my regular self. My hair is a mass of lustrous black curls. I appear to be in my twenties, almost absurdly pretty for a man, though well built and strong, my muscles stretching the fabric of my suit jacket. 9/25/10

Flip-Top Phone with Cartwheeling Dwarf

I have trouble with my cell phone. It's one of those old flip-top models. It has a little plastic receptacle on the upper left hand side. As I handle the phone, this comes off and falls to the ground. Other things now go wrong with the phone; the screen goes blank. It will still work as a phone, but I can’t access the address book or other functions. I could now miss an important phone interview becuse I don't recall the number and can’t look it up.
    This is unresolved as uncanny elements emerge, notably a cartwheeling dwarf. 7/8/12

Departed Family Member Calls from Embassy Party

We usually meet in person at one of her places on the Other Side, but she is calling me on my cell phone on an urgent family matter. She says she is at an embassy party with a new boyfriend. There is lots of static on the line and I hear snatches of Spanish and Portuguese. I get the message. 1/17/19

Photo Odyssey in Wild North

I take a long wak through a wildly beautiful northern landscape, along a river. A young woman experienced in seidr tells us that when she invokes the spirits she starts by calling on Polar Bear. I am eager to photograph extraordinary scenes. The river now seems to be a deep fjord. Across the water I see what may be an ancient bridge or palace facade, with zigzag patterns of green and purple and many arches.
    I take many, many pictures on my cell phone camera. As I return to the body I parked in the bed, I am disappointed to realize that these photos will not be in the camera roll on my phone. I check anyway. Hey, you never know.4/34/21

Survey says

In the midst of my search, I conducted an informal survey of some 200 dreamers who follow my work, asking the question, "Does your phone work in your dreams?" The responses fell into three roughly equal-sized cateories:(1) I never dream of a phone;(2) my dream phone doesn't work; (3) my dream phone usually works.
     Those of a certain age reported that they could typically make and receive calls in their dreams only on rotary dial phones; they had trouble with mobile phones.               Many dreamers reported receiving phone calls from the deceased, and sometimes from friends at a distance. 
     Sometimes issues with dream phone seem to relate to problems with communication in ordinary reality, or the need to get some help. 
     Many dreamers report that problems with the dream phone provide a lucidity trigger, an alert that they are dreaming. For some,a call coming through on the dream phone flags the message as important: listen up! Sometimes the dream call seems to reflect dream clairsentience or precognition. You talk to someone on the phone in your dream and then they call you or show up in ordinary reality.
     A few active dreamers say they try to stay off-grid in their dreams, and use free-floating intuition or bird allies to send and receive messages.

Explain Your Cell Phone to a Space Alien

I want to play the Space Alien Game for a moment. Suppose you had to explain a phone - specifically, a so-called smart phone - to a visitor from  a far galaxy who understands little about humans and Earth conditions What would you say? I might say:

A cell phone is or may be

a mobile communications device

a way to send and receive messages

a camera and recorder

a search engine

a way to send and receive money

a home entertainment system

a geo-locator

an alarm clock

a calendar

ID

a portal to the world-wide web

No doubt you can add to the list and decide what are the most important features for you. So an issue with your mobile phone in your dream might reflect issues on any of those fronts. It might also alert you to the fact that you are not in ordnary reality and have extraordinary access to the multiverse and the quantum information field, according to your lucidity and ability to pursue an unfolding adventure and bring back gifts.

Back to my personal journals. Here's my report of an experience that opened me to the fuller possibiities that may be on offer when your dream phone starts working differently.

April 23, 2019

THE AMAZING STATE OF MY PHONE

My phone isn't working properly. It seems to have lost its keyboard. There is a beautiful but unfamiliar picture on the homescreen,which seems have lost its icons.

I realize that the picture is a loose leaf drawing pinned at the top of the device. I remove it, expecting that this will reveal my keyboard and familiar homescreen. Instead I find another drawing and another. There are many.

I ask a pleasant young woman - an Eng Lit type, I think - if she knows about cellphones. She's willing to help but is soon marveling with delight over the pictures falling from my phone. As I unpin the pictures money falls out - greenbacks in all denominations and dozens of quarters. And other things.

When I remove the last picture the shell of the phone gleams silver. It is tilted and narrows at the top so it looks like a vessel, a miniature starship from Star Trek or Star Wars.

Dream reentry

I stay with the dream after waking. I try to study the pictures. The first one looks something like a lilac tree and something like a waterfall. When I look more closely I see the shape of a great tree that is rooted in the sky rather than the earth.

The second picture is of a dacha in the snow, maybe in Russia, and a wolf. Another shows a belle of ancien regime France in full regalia. Another shows a royal Egyptian couple enthroned. Other pictures are blurry or abstract. I understand that they are portals or storyboards through which it is possible to communicate with these personalities and even enter their lives.

I understand the symbolism of all that change that fell from among the pictures. I am being invited to change my mode of communication and perception.

 

Photo and Journal Drawing by Robert Moss