One of the great gifts of dreaming, especially welcome in these shut-down times, is that we can travel without leaving home and be as social as we please. My daily and nightly practice is to type what I recall from dreams and hypnagogia on my phone as soon as I come back from an excursion. I then email myself my reports. When I get out of bed I often make a quick sketch, a postcard from a dream adventure. Then I write up a full report in my journal.
I am going to offer a selection of postcards from my dream travels over the past month, with brief reports. My feelings around most of these dreams can be described as: just-so, been there, done that. Most of these experiences feel entirely real, playing out in another order of reality that I don't consider any less real than the physical world and sometimes feels more so.
I am posting the dreams in reverse chronological order, from the most recent to the earliest. This is how dreams tend to return to us. We stir with the final scene in our mind and then sometimes manage to scroll back and retrieve what went on before.
Dream
Arriving at an Airport in Morocco
My friend drives me to the terminal and then drops me at a parking space a long way beyond it. I'm confused since we have not confirmed that flights are taking off and there is no sign of the people who were going to accompany us to an ancient site. I decide to take a shortcut back to the terminal by climbing a hill. I am surprised to find myself walking round the blue dome of a mosque. I am careful not to touch it. I come down to the terminal without incident. There are few people there but some souvenir shops are open along the concourse.
Feelings: just-so, been there, done that.
Reality: My friend was true to character. In an earlier scene, curiously, she had a baby who was just starting to walk, which does not correspond to any current or future situation in ordinary life. I haven't been to Morocco in physical reality but many years ago I was privileged to receive instruction and initiation over several nights of hyper-lucid dreaming with an order of priestesses based in Fez. It was much warmer and dryer in my dream than in the frozen Northeast in advance of a forecast snowstorm but very dusty and sand-blown.
HG
Green Train Off the Mountain
"Get on board!" he urges me as soon as I close my eyes. He is calling from the engine of a green train. He has the quality of Gandalf or Dumbledore. I like him and I have always loved trains. The moment I join him we are on a spectacular spiral ride up a mountain. Then the train leaves the tracks and we fly over a deep blue sea to realms of magic and mystery. A black dog is with me. Yes, I'll be happy to do this again.
dream
How You Know You’re Not in Kansas Any More: The TP Test
After my encounter with a Norse sorcerer in the hypnagogic state last night, I wasn't altogether surprised to find a shift in my environment. I felt very light - not weak, but maybe flimsy - in relation to things around me that seemed to have gained great weight and density. I decided to test conditions by tearing toilet paper off a roll. It simply would not tear off, even when I used both hands and then my teeth. Teflon tp! Fortunately I did not need the tp for its usual function.
When I came out of the dream, I reflected that a change in apparent scale or proportion is often a sign that you have left ordinary reality - or it has left you - in the old wonder tales. In the voyage of Maelduin, in the Celtic imramma, the travelers know they are not in Ireland any more when they come to an island where the ants are the size of calves.
December 2, 2020
Dream
Great Turtle Rises
I am with a group in a rural location. We agree to enter the healing night together and bed down in a room full of mattresses. An elderly man moves among some of the dormant bodies with sprigs of wildflowers with lilac blossoms. I see that whatever he is doing brings immediate healing.
A woman elder is lying near me next to the wall and I notice there is a strong energy connection between us. I can feel juice streaming back and forth, balanced and powerful. I look at the wall. It is now natural stone, maybe limestone, with the clearly defined shape of a turtle. The stone turtle starts to revolve. It comes alive. Turtle raises its head and stares at me.
"Aksotha," I greet it in Mohawk, with reverence. "Grandmother."
Feelings: blessed
Dream
Street Players Outside the Conference
I am moderating an important conference about how to return to civility and decency in public life. Delegates come from all across the spectrum but are so far behaving well, accepting the seating plan and the agenda. I step outside for a break and see troupes of costumed players. Some people thought the conference should be light entertainment. I watch a group in white pantomime French sailor outfits. They start crooning "Roaming in the Gloaming".
Feelings: sober and amused at the same time
The conference and my work there were demanding yet satisfying and felt like a completely real experience in another reality. When I stepped out the door I may have entered another dream and another world. Some light entertainment was refreshing!
I love the gifts of spontaneous sleep dreams, like this one, that take me to places I never expected.
HG
Baldieri's Football
I am moving along a broad avenue that feels like a processional way. On either side are groups of royals and nobles who remind me of the courts of the tarot. They are waving me on towards what looks like a medieval city. It is floating in the sky, maybe fifty feet up. Tethered to the Earth by just a simple pinkish cord that looks like wool.
The nobles bow and wave me forward. I see that immense crowds are gathered, for the send-off for a man who was a public idol. The city is no longer visible. Instead I see a shiny-dark house-sized ovoid, also tethered to the ground by the pink string. A hatch opens and I see a well-furnished interior, leather upholstery, wooden panels. This is for deceased hero. His name is Antonio Baldieri.
Maybe he was a football star, like the recently departed Argentine player. But his craft is not shaped like a soccer ball. It’s like the balls used in American football or rugby.
Feelings: very curious
Reality: I don't know an Antonio Baldieri and Auntie Google gave me no interesting matches. I have observed that ovoid is a popular shape for interdimensional travel. I describe a group shamanic journey in an ovoid vessel to the intelligences of another star system in my book Dreamgates. Some dreamers who have made journeys to meet loved ones on the Other Side have found them living for a time in football-shaped mini-worlds.
Dream scene
They Go Through the Doggy Door
I am with a slim younger woman and her little son in the UK.. They want to get butties from a cafe. To dodge the line they go through the flap of the doggy door. There is no way I can get through that. I walk round to the front of the shop and see them at the head of the line, choosing their sandwiches
Feelings: amused
Context: this is one scene from a dream excursion in which I spent at least two days in the UK in one hour of clock time back here. Getting Brits in workshops accustomed to how I use shamanic drumming was a major theme so I am carrying my drum in the sketch. If you don't know what a butty is you don't know much about popular English culture
They Go Through the Doggy Door
I am with a slim younger woman and her little son in the UK.. They want to get butties from a cafe. To dodge the line they go through the flap of the doggy door. There is no way I can get through that. I walk round to the front of the shop and see them at the head of the line, choosing their sandwiches
Feelings: amused
Context: this is one scene from a dream excursion in which I spent at least two days in the UK in one hour of clock time back here. Getting Brits in workshops accustomed to how I use shamanic drumming was a major theme so I am carrying my drum in the sketch. If you don't know what a butty is you don't know much about popular English culture
Dream
Pigeon Shooting at the Palais Royal: From the Other Side to Another Time
I am with a dear friend who passed years ago. We sit on a warm sandstone boulder overlooking the sea. I start talking about what was right and wrong in our relationship and then- WHOOSH - we are transported to another scene. We are in the gardens of the Palais Royal in Paris circa 1700. I am dressed in the gentleman's clothing of the time complete with tricornne hat. I am with a group of aristos who are shooting at pigeons. I am handed a flintlock pistol, primed and charged, and in this body I know what to do with it.
Feelings: excited, intrigued
Reality: I don't have a linear view of reincarnation but my experience has shown me that our present lives are related to the dramas of other personalities in other times, who are part of our multidimensional families. I am quite familiar with another 18th century personality; I had to write two historical novels to do justice to his life and also set necessary distance between us. I have been given another assignment in far memory and parallel lives.
HP (hypnopompic zone)
Hanuman Productions
I return from a dream in which I feel I am playing the role of a different person. I ask, What kind of dream was that? Immediately I see the logo of a film company. It shows Hanuman flying through the air brandishing a movie director's bull horn. I have long had the impression that some dreams are produced by film companies behind the curtain of the world but this is the first time Hanuman Productions has been identified as one of the studios.
Dream
Getting On the Number 2 Bus
I am waiting with two women organizers I like to go on a bus to a campaign event in the beach suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The bus that turns up is unusual. It is bright yellow but not a school bus. It is very clearly a number 2. There is something at the back that looks like a big cement mixer, maybe some new form of propulsion. When the doors open I see the interior is also unusual. There is something like a little picket fence around some of the benches, and lots of animals with their people. Someone cautions me, "Don't let the dogs out."
Feelings: I really enjoyed the sequence of which this scene is a part and stayed with it for a long time after waking.
Context: I seemed to be monitoring a political contest. Everything was so civilized compared to the state of play in the United States. The woman candidate my companions were supporting was offering creative and nurturing remedies. I was glad to be going back to the beach suburbs of Sydney.
Dream
Lion Man Rising In the City of Cats
In the City of Cats, lions are on guard on the ground floor of a vast palace complex. I check back from time to time to make sure they are still on the alert, and am satisfied they will not allow any intruder to pass. My main focus is on the lion man who is slowly reviving inside an open casket. He was very white when I first looked in, but now he is coming back and his eyes are open. This is wonderful. We need him now.
Feelings: Excited, almost exultant.
Reality: Yes
Postscript from Café Jet-Lag
As I said, what I offer here is just a series of postcards from dream excursions over the past few weeks. The full reports are much more detailed and complex. Then there are all the dream travels I did not turn into sketches: for example, all the workshops and trainings I find myself leading in dreams almost every night at widely scattered locations all over the maps of more than one world
I must admit that there can be a penalty for traveling far and wide in your dream body. Here is a note about that I recorded on November 25, 2020, only part of which is conveyed in my sketch of the "Doggy Door":
In dreams we generally travel in a subtle energy body that can suffer wear and tear that we feel when it rejoins our physical vehicle.
I am in recovery from at least two days of intensive travel in the UK (during one hour of tick tock time before 6:15 this morning). I led a workshop where there were issues because some people didn't understand that they were not supposed to talk during my shamanic drumming sessions. I harvested an advisory about the need to take care in setting ground rules for some coming online workshops hosted in the UK.
However for the most part my dream excursion - including my stay in a flat near Eton College, my search for that number on a High Street, my visit with that mother and son to a food shop they entered through the flap of a large dog door - feels like a just-so experience in another reality. Rather tiring this time but hey, I did not have to navigate covid restrictions or wait for my luggage at an airport baggage claim.
Did anyone say "etheric (or astral) repercussion"? That's the old name for what happens when you have an experience on the astral plane that leaves marks on your physical body. Good thing that man who was rearranging seating for an outdoor gathering in the same dream sequence narrowly missed my left eye with the metal leg of a chair that he swung carelessly over my head. He meant no harm but I might have surfaced with quite a shiner today.
