The gateways to the invisible must be visible.
This is my favorite line from René Daumal's Mount Analogue, a must-read for voyagers in consciousness. In our Western way, we love the play of images.
In the practice of Active Dreaming part of our essential art is to find the right images that can be portals for shamanic lucid dreaming. Quite often, in the workshops, this involves setting an assignment for a whole group of say, thirty people, along these lines: "You will journey through the gateway of the dream that has been told with such-and-such an intention."
To develop the practice of journeying consciously beyond the body, into realms of reality beyond the physical, one of my favorite training tools - both for neophytes and for veteran travelers - is to offer the gateway of a painted image.
My friend the French artist Eve Fouquet has just sent me two of her paintings as a New Years gift, and I want to share that gift with you here. The first painting (shown above) is titled l'instant présent (The Present Moment).
The second, shown here, is le mystère (The Mystery).
Both of these magical images have traction for me; looking at each, I feel myself already beginning to travel in consciousness into a deeper realm. You may want to explore what lies for you behind each doorway. If you embark on this experiment, notice the margin around each painting and see this again as the edge of a door you will step (or fly) through. When you are ready to return, turn around, inside the space you have reached, and see that door-frame again, with your body in the place where you left it....
For more on ways of stepping through a picture, please see my book Dreamgates.
