I’m one of the growing number of people worldwide who cultivate lucid living – lucid dreaming as a spiritual practice. On this page I’ve gathered a small sample of my other Blog Lucid Living Lucid Dreaming – The Science of Magic.
Scroll down to read or click on the link to go to the original post.
LUCID DREAMING ARTICLES:
1. An Interview with me by Robert Waggoner for the Lucid Dream Exchange Published in the Lucid Dream Exchange Fall Edition-Number 60-September 2011
2. Mirror Mirror on the Wall Lucid Dreaming and Menopause Published in the Lucid Dream Exchange Winter Edition-Number 61-December 2011
3. The Surfer Technique for Inducing MILD and WILD Published in the Lucid Dream Exchange Issue 61 Winter Edition-Number 61-December 2011. Also published at the Dream Studies Portal
4. Healing My Tendonitis in Lucid Dreams Published in the Lucid Dreaming Experience Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2012
5. Beyond Time & Space: Telepathic & Precognitive Dreams
LUCID LIVING ARTICLES
1. Seth Speaks and Skyrim
2. What’s Wrong With the World?
3. The Modern Shape Shifter
SOME LUCID DREAMS:
1. Don’t Believe What They Tell You–Keep Dreaming
2. On and Off the Bus and Seeing God (scroll down to read)
3. You Can Have Anything You Want
SOME DREAMS
1. The Hawk and the Serpent
Lucidipedia.com a great Dream Journal
LUCID DREAMING ARTICLES
1.
Dream Speak
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIA ISABEL PITA
BY ROBERT WAGGONER for The Lucid Dream Exchange
Author of historic fiction like Truth is the Soul of the Sun – A Biographical Novel of Hatshepsut-Maatkare, Maria Isabel Pita, also lucid dreams. In this DreamSpeak interview, the LDE takes a look at the sensual and metaphysical side of lucid dreaming.
From your blog, I see that you were born in Havana, Cuba, but left before you were one year old. Can you tell us a bit about that?
My family left Cuba in 1961 before Castro sealed the borders. My father was involved in the resistance against the totalitarian regime being imposed on Cubans and had to take refuge in the Brazilian Embassy. He would stand at the wrought iron fence looking out while my mother walked by holding me in her arms so he could see us. When I was four months old, she and I flew to Spain and for about four months we lived in Madrid in a school, Our Lady of Victories, run by nuns belonging to the same denomination as the convent school my mother attended most of her life, Our Lady of Lourdes. While we were there, the two young nuns who helped care for me—one of whom rocked me to sleep every night—drowned in a boating accident. The story haunted me as a child; I felt bound to them in some mysterious way. Dressed in long skirts and veils, they were helpless in the water. I was determined to somehow make up for their tragic and senseless death by never being so helpless myself. It’s interesting, since the ocean is such an archetypal symbol for the unconscious. At the time, people were being very helpful toward Cuban refugees and the captain of a ship bound for the U.S. gave my mother a free cabin we had all to ourselves. I arrived in Miami at the age of 8 months, but my father was soon offered a job with U.S.A.I.D. so we moved to Fairfax, Virginia, where I lived until I was seventeen.
What prompted your interest in dreams and dreaming?
When I was 11 years old, my mother had a dream in which she saw a dear friend of hers, a brilliant male surgeon, lying in a pool of blood. A bicycle had fallen from the sky and crushed his skull. At the end of this dream, on a large, luminous white page, she saw a long poem written in English. It appeared before her so clearly, she was able to write it down when she woke. The poem made reference to a tragic event that knowledge, time and love would transform into something beautiful. Less than two years later—even though she had never shown the slightest inclination toward becoming a writer—she published her first book of poems in Spanish. My mother, Juana Rosa Pita, is now considered one of Cuba’s most important poets in exile, has been translated into English and Italian, and students do their dissertation on her book, Penelope’s Journeys, in which Penelope’s dreams constitute the real journey vs. Ulyses’ waking adventures. (The little we learn about Penelope in The Odyssey makes it clear she had a vivid dream life.) Then, 15 years later, my mother was going through some boxes after a move and came across the poem in English which started it all, and that night she dreamed with her surgeon friend. She dreamed she was standing at the railing of a ship and he was leaning on the same railing facing her, suspended above the ocean. Smiling ruefully, he told her he would no longer be able to be her friend, that she would have to be his friend now, and with that said, he plunged into the water and was lost. That morning my mother received a call informing her that as her friend was leaving work the previous night, he was attacked by two assailants who hit him on the head thirteen times with metal bars. Miraculously, he survived. He was a very wealthy man who was about to initiate a dream project of his—a large hospital ship that would cruise up and down the Nile in his home country of Egypt providing free medical care to the poor. The police, suspecting someone had tried to have him killed, brought in a psychic to sit by his unconscious body in the hospital (he was in a coma for 20 days) but all she picked up from him was the name Juana Rosa. As it happens, my mother was the only one in the room with him when he finally opened his eyes. Seeing her, he grasped her hand, kissed it and said, “Thank you.” The first thing she had done upon arriving at the hospital was pour water from Lourdes, given to her by another friend, over his forehead. The case was never solved, but I for one had learned that dreams are a powerfully important part of life, that they can transform you in dramatic and seemingly magical ways. I learned that in dreams time and space is somehow transcended because the future can be glimpsed and it’s possible to communicate telepathically with other people. I learned that it’s not a waste of time, that it’s actually very important, to pay attention to our dreams and believe in them.
Thinking back, when do you first recall becoming lucidly aware in the dream state? Can you remember any of your first lucid dreams (please describe some and the approximate age at which they happened)?
I was 22 years old and living on the rebellious edge in Chicago. I dreamed I was walking through a parking lot and stopped to buy ice cream from a vendor. There was nothing and no one else around, which was odd. I gave him some money and he handed me my change. “This is too much,” I protested but he said, “Keep it.” It dawned on me then that I was probably dreaming, because in real life no one gives you money, so I shrugged and slipped the $5 bill into the right pocket of my black jacket. I woke up and less than 20 minutes later, just after sunrise, I was leaning against the wall of some fast food restaurant, waiting for a friend to pick me up while staring despondently across a mostly empty parking lot. A kind looking black man paused beside me, asked me if I was hungry and offered to buy me some breakfast. He handed me his card; he was a social worker. I smiled and told him I was fine and he said, “Well, if you won’t join me for breakfast, buy yourself something to eat” and he slipped a bill into the right pocket of my jacket, the same jacket I had been wearing in the dream. When I pulled it out, I saw it was a $5 bill. I’ll never forget that morning. I truly felt I was given a clear message—dreams can and do come true, believe it. That dream was a lifeline which helped pull me out of a major depression, a lifeline that never broke because it was woven of awe and hope.
Was there anything about those first lucid dreams that you found interesting, exciting or perplexing? (pick your own adjective!) How did you manage to become lucid?
Invariably, all the lucid dreams I had before I read your book I called Flying Dreams because that’s the first thing I did when I became lucid, and the ability to fly was very often what triggered my lucidity. These dreams were intensely erotic even though all I did was fly. I would soar as high as I could, and then deliberately go into free fall. The exquisite intensity of the sexual arousal I experienced as I waited to make violent contact with the ground, with a building, with anything, is impossible to convey with words, and this from a woman who has written quite a few erotic romances! Upon becoming lucid, I experienced a rush of joy so intense I simply had to express it by taking off. I never felt perplexed, but during these early lucid dreams I barely scratched the surface of lucidity—I didn’t realize I could do anything besides feel fantastic and invulnerable. These dreams were also akin to sightseeing tours, because I would fly over whole towns and cities and landscapes and see them in such vivid detail it made me want to cry when I woke up that I couldn’t remember everything more clearly.
In some of your lucid dreams, you seem to have a strong kinesthetic feeling sense. You mention being touched in the lucid dream, and in some instances, feeling your body in the physical bed ( a possible sign that you may be getting close to waking up! ). What do you think about the sensation of touch in a lucid dream? Does it have an added dimension, since it occurs lucidly?
When you touch something, you know it’s real, not merely your imagination. Touch also seems to serve the purpose of “anchoring” me in the dream. I’ve heard the physical body described as a denser (slowed down) version of our subtle / astral / energy body (I think it’s detrimental to get bogged down by terminology.) When I sense my physical body lying in bed dreaming, I’m not at all surprised or worried about the fact that who I really am has the power to overflow physical boundaries. And both forms of my Self, both states of my Being, are mysteriously part of, and subordinate to, my awareness of them—to consciousness itself. 
Robert Lanza states in his book, Biocentrism: “No dead universe ever existed outside of Mind. ‘Nothingness’ is a meaningless concept… The universe is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.” I heartily agree, and nowhere does this feel more true than in a lucid dream, where you’re inside yourself and yet also have the potential to be outside everywhere and anywhere you can think of or desire. I wrote in a poem: “We are all creators / in the Dreaming / not mere inmates / of a concrete prison.” When I become lucid in a dream, it feels like being set free of the cells of my physical body, pun intended. It seems to me the “landscape” of the dream is Consciousness itself, which we share with everyone and everything, and that’s why time and space don’t really seem to exist and why we can interact with other beings, whether they’re currently associated with physical bodies or not. The Mind’s the limit!
Many lucid dreamers have noticed that the freedom of lucid dreaming allows for some highly sensual encounters. Have you noticed this in your own lucid dreaming? (provide PG rated examples if you wish)
Yes, indeed I have, and I believe it helped open a door in my psyche to dreams of other lifetimes where a traumatic event of a sexual nature occurred that was coloring certain emotional / thought-patterns in my current personality. These dreams were extremely vivid, but it wasn’t until I woke up that I became lucid in the sense that I recognized they weren’t dreams but Far Memories (a term coined by Joan Grant, one of my favorite writers) buried deep in my DNA. They helped me understand certain of my sexual preferences and turn-offs much better. The visceral experience of each dream mysteriously unraveled a complex knot in my psyche that was at once psychological and energetic. When I was 5 years old, my mother took me to a library where I wandered off by myself. I pulled a book off a shelf at random but it was so heavy I dropped it and it fell open at my feet to a black-and-white photograph of an ancient Egyptian goddess or queen. I ran to find my mother, pulled her back by the hand to the book lying open on the floor, and pointing down at the photo said emphatically, “Home!” A while later, I upset my grandmother terribly when, during a party at my home, I appeared in the living room holding a cardboard and crayon reconstruction of what I proudly announced to everyone was my tomb. It always seemed ridiculous to me to believe we were limited to one brief span on earth. Since I was very young, I knew my spirit was enjoying acting out passionate dramas by way of the fascinatingly varied characters of my soul, which had starred in many plays already and would star in countless more.
Of course, in lucid dreams there are no physical self esteem issues to contend with—my dream body always feels beautiful, 
it’s not a mental thing—and the sense of touch, sensation itself and the excitement it generates is so intensified, it often wakes me up, which would be more frustrating if it wasn’t for the fact that very often the pleasure my dream body experiences flows seamlessly into my physical body, which smolders like a wick after a flame is blown out.
Do you think these sensual encounters are naturally more likely in lucid dreams – they just come with the (Freudian) territory? Or does lucid dreaming’s relative freedom provide a safer or possibly more empowering environment for expression?
Freud and all other psychological schools are completely irrelevant when I’m lucid in a dream; that stuff just falls away like the stages of an old Apollo rocket. My heightened sensuality and sense of absolute well-being are indistinguishable from each other. In a lucid dream I seem to reside in my energy or soul body, which naturally translates into sexual arousal, is merely a dim echo, I suspect, of what it will feel like when, at the moment of death, we slip out of our fleshly garment and are, so to speak, completely naked again.
In this issue of the LDE, you relate an interesting story about a pair of lucid dreams that helped you overcome your fear of death. How does lucid dreaming assist with that? And what did the symbolism by the seashore mean for you?
The night before my grandmother passed away, I dreamed we were standing together in a beautiful garden and that the jeweled lizard pin she was wearing over her heart (she actually collected them) suddenly turned into a butterfly and flew away. When I woke up, I called my mother and told her Abuela was going to die soon. Then, three days after her death, I dreamed I was sitting in a waiting room of sorts, reminiscent of an airport, and my grandmother was seated across from me. She said, in Spanish, “So I’m dead, aren’t I?” “Yes,” I told her, so happy to be seeing her again even if it was only in a dream. I also understood without thinking about it that I was there to help her. I got up, and when she leaned on my arm (as though she was still in her sick old body) I told her she didn’t have to do that, that she could walk straight and tall again. I remember looking down at our clasped hands and distinctly knowing that what was happening between us was real. I told myself I would remember looking at our hands in the dream and know it hadn’t been in a dream. In the end, a tall and attractive androgynous individual dressed in a white uniform walked into the building, golden hair curling around his/her smile. The messenger said loudly and cheerfully it was here to pick up the package. When I woke up I knew the “package” was my grandmother’s soul.
After my father’s funeral, I went to bed in the hotel room absolutely determined to dream with him, to become lucid in a dream and see him again. I found myself standing in a small town of sorts staring at the entrance to a theater, and at once I became lucid. I stared at that theater door, through which people were streaming out onto the street, thrilled by the possibility that my father might be one of them. I kept searching for his face in the crowd, and there he was! 
I ran over to him and we hugged but he looked a little groggy and confused. He said in the tone of voice he had always used when he was worried about me, “You have to be careful here, Maria” and even as I looked up at his face I saw it had changed, that I was hugging a man with a similar build and complexion to my father but it wasn’t him anymore. Then all of a sudden he dropped dead at my feet as though shot through the heart. My father had been fond of detective novels and I thought, Oh please, this is too much! as my transcendent lucid dream suddenly seemed to be turning into a cheap thriller. But then I saw another man, a blond man in a dark suit, standing near the body and staring at me. I realized he was the one who had “shot” the imposter pretending to be my father, and he was smiling at me in a way that truly chilled me. I knew then I had to get away from there and I quickly flew up into the sky. I turned what was becoming a nightmare into one of the most intensely sexual lucid dreams I’ve ever had, where I hung upside down in midair and brought myself to a climax I enjoyed in real life as I woke up.
I’ve dreamed with my father several times since then, and he even seems to have pointed the way to lucid dreaming for me as a spiritual path:
November, 2009:
I’m with my father somewhere and he looks the way he did before he died. Suddenly, I see him standing outside a door, then he vanishes. Following him outside, I gaze across a narrow street and distinctly see a brick wall with an opening in it the size of a door, an opening I recognize as the entrance to a conscious dream. I cross the street and come very close to stepping through it but something holds me back. I don’t trust what I’ll encounter if I follow the path I can’t see from the threshold. I’m afraid the road will prove unpleasant or a dead end. Such dreams have shown me that death is a part of life, not the end of it. The way I see it, sleep is so vital to our health because our souls are like whales or dolphins rising into the open, lighter space of dreams, and taking a deep breath of the energy which keeps our physical vessel charged and running properly before diving back into the womb of corporeal existence.
The symbolism by the seashore—white candles partially submerged in the ocean burning bright orange flames—expresses the ultimate paradox, how we are all one being/spirit and yet also unique individuals/souls.
In a previous lucid dream in LDE 59, you recount a lucid dream of seeking out a NYC friend you call ‘S’. In the lucid dream, there seems to be considerable symbolism of death (e.g., setting sun, deserted colorless building, etc.) and you later learn that S passes away soon after. But before you hear that news, you have a semi-lucid dream that mirrors the circumstance of her passing. What did you make of that? How did this help you deal with your friend’s passing?
I was reading my dream journal—trying to feel it was worthwhile to spend so much time and energy writing down all my dreams, lucid or not—when I came upon the dream you refer to which, at the time, made no sense to me at all. I was floored. I saw it clearly then for what it truly seemed to be—an astral message from my friend. So, yes, it’s definitely worth the effort to remember and to record your dreams, lucid or not. I feel so much better now, as though I was somehow actually with my friend when she “saw the light.” Her consciousness seemed to be hovering over her body, as in all NDE’s, and she wasn’t frightened; she was letting go of this life and it was okay. Perhaps she sent me that dream, or I telepathically “saw” what happened, but the fact is when I think about her death now I don’t just see the gruesome image of a body found by the police in a bath tub, instead I’m there with her and I feel okay, even good. Something has changed, and it’s all because of a dream. I feel so strongly that dreams and lucid dreaming are a vital part of human evolution. Science has to embrace mysticism so we can finally crawl out of the rock and the hard place of religious and scientific dogma, both of which are guilty of blind faith—it has to be like this and can’t be like that.
If you don’t dream something, either awake or asleep, it won’t happen. Magic is science we don’t understand yet. My faith doesn’t depend on it, but I would love to achieve a clearer communication with the Other Side, which is actually inside us.
What other metaphysical or spiritual areas have you explored in your lucid dreaming? Or perhaps, what other lucid dreams have intrigued, delighted or perplexed you?
Most of them, really. It’s difficult to choose, but here’s one I think you’ll find interesting:
October 18, 2010—What an Intense Night!
I’m in a dress shop. On the left, there’s a small section of Gothic-style clothes, sexy black and leather outfits for women. I’m drawn to a starry black dress, the only one displayed on a headless dummy. A sales girl leads me into a fitting room and, abruptly, I’m looking down on myself where I’m lying on a bed staring at a television channel surfing. There’s a man in the room who says something to the effect of, “No matter what you do to try and distract yourself, God always steps in and gives you a sign / slap.” (In the dream these two separate words seems to mean the same thing.) I know he’s my guardian angel, that I’m dreaming, and I feel joy to be in his presence, but also a touch of chagrin it was necessary to receive this “briefing” because I’d gotten “stuck” in my progress. His eyes are so blue, his hair a dark blonde, and the whole time he talks we’re smiling at each other, both of us so happy I’m really seeing him. Then he walks out the door and stands waiting to one side for an elevator. I keep my eyes on him, both of us still smiling. But when he steps into the elevator instead of disappearing he walks back into the room. “Are you surprised?” he asks. He keeps talking to me and as he does so his appearance alters slightly—the same man in different stages of life, now older and less attractive but it’s still him, his eyes and his smile, and I almost like him better in his comfortable older persona.
Now I’m sitting in a car at night outside a building (where the above took place) and the sales girl from earlier in the dream appears and walks up to my open window. She’s very pretty and she knows that I know I’m having a conscious dream. I don’t remember what we talk about but as she walks away she says, “You’ll see, Robert is the answer to what you need.” I call loudly after her, clearly hearing my voice in the intense silence, “Did you say Robert?” but she keeps walking away without replying. I remain in the car staring up at the sky, enjoying the vision of a vast movie screen playing different colorful films in organic curved oval stages. I’m relishing being there and seeing everything so clearly in this conscious dream I’m having.
Preparing for this interview, scrolling through my electronic dream journal, I came upon the above dream, which I’d forgotten all about it. It seems obvious to me now that the dream characters were referring to you, Robert, and the spiritual path of lucid dreaming I would fully and wholeheartedly embark upon after reading your book, approximately three months later.
The following dream frightened and challenged me more than any other lucid dream I’ve had to date. From it I learned not to assume anything, that fear is as detrimental in dreams as it is in waking life, and that there appear to be mischievous characters out there who, like more benevolent guides, mysteriously assist us. This dream taught me that the voice of my Inner Self is the only one I can trust, the only one that can interpret what happens to me and whatever anyone says to me, in this world or in any other:
June 20, 2011:
I walk into a building and follow a dark current that assumes the form of an automated black ramp of sorts I make myself comfortable on. I’m fully conscious of the fact that I’m walking into sleep and into a dream, which will be a lucid dream because I intend it to be. As the black surface flows forward, the walls open up so I can see the wooden beams inside them, and a familiar blue color prompts me to declare, This is the inside of my dining room table! I’m now the size of a speck, of an atom, but that’s all right because I can be any size in a dream as I travel effortlessly between the “lattice” work. I arrive somewhere; I can see an outside now. I deliberately step off the “conveyor” and walk instead of fly (I don’t want to miss anything I might be avoiding by immediately taking off.) There’s an open space before me I immediately recognize as an airport. The planes are small, not jumbo jets, and I think they’re white with red trim. There’s a woman standing at the edge of the area where the planes sit behind a fence. She’s wearing an official uniform, rather like a security guard’s, dull blue with long sleeves and her blonde hair curls around her face. I stop directly in front of her and, looking straight at her face, raise my hands before me in prayer position and say, “Namaste.” Then I pause and deliberately ask, “Who are you?” She replies, “You know what I am.” I’m thinking she must be an angel helping souls cross over (hence the airport), an angel who helps transport people to the Other Side. Then she adds, “And you will soon be one of us.” I don’t like the sound of that. “Does that mean I’m going to die?” I query, and almost regret being lucid, since the dream appears to have become a harbinger of my impending death, which distresses me even though there’s nothing frightening about being there. She doesn’t reply, she doesn’t seem inclined to say more, but I insist, urgently asking, “How soon?” As I insist on more information, she backs away from me, actually cowering, and I say challengingly, “If you were a real angel you wouldn’t be frightened of me!” It crosses my mind she must be a dream character, not an actual angel. She mumbles something about it being two weeks or two months from now but then amends her estimate to Thanksgiving. Polite but persistent, I demand to know if she’s sure she has the right name. “My name is very similar to my father’s,” I tell her, and as she walks over to check the “book” I say, “I’m Maria Pita, not Mario Pita” emphasizing that there’s a mere one letter difference in our names, so she might very well have made a mistake. Consulting the “register” she shakes her head, a somewhat rueful smile on her lips, and mutters, “I didn’t know that.” I’m relieved since she seems to be admitting that she did indeed make a mistake; that she didn’t look carefully enough and it was Papi she referred to. (For some reason in the dream it makes sense he will die around Thanksgiving even though in reality he’s already dead). The woman is standing in a booth jammed with old VHS boxes and other stuff. I say, “Oh please don’t tell me bureaucracy on the Other Side is just as messy and inefficient? What a scary thought!” I begin walking away, looking back over my shoulder. Our eyes meet and now she’s a black woman who’s smiling at me in an oddly secretive way, as though I passed some kind of test.
You mention that when writing books, you occasionally get into the ‘zone’ or a place of inspiration. What is that like? And does it remind you of lucid dreaming?
One night I dreamed a beautiful man stepped out of the darkness, his black, elegant clothes cut from the night itself. Smiling, he walked up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “For a story.” Approximately three weeks later, I woke up one morning, reached for the pad and pen I always keep by my bed quickly began writing the first few pages of a new novel I had not planned to write (Eternal Blood a paranormal romance.)
In my dreams, a kiss seems to be a way of transmitting information and energy, as if they’re one and the same thing.
When I was deep in my fictional biography of Hatshepsut, 
I dreamed with a beautiful woman with a golden complexion who was wearing a long and light-colored sheathe dress such as an ancient Egyptian noblewoman might have worn. I was walking through a lovely town located high up in the clouds and it felt so nice there it alerted me to being conscious in a dream. As this woman approached me, I felt I knew her. She walked right up to me, her face level with mine, and pressed her mouth against mine for a long, wonderful moment. She told me I was doing very well but that I that I could do even better. She handed me a necklace, on which hung an irregularly shaped piece of silver in the center of which shone an amethyst (my birth stone) shaped like an eye. Her companion then took my hand and led me into a building on my left, at which point I began waking up.
As for the ‘zone’ I get into when I’m writing, it is very much like a lucid dream. When I sit down to write, a mysterious shift occurs in my consciousness and words flow out of me that are often as much a surprise to me as the images and events I encounter in dreams. I don’t work from an outline. I begin with the seed of an idea, which is composed primarily of feelings, and let it germinate inside me until I feel it’s time for it to begin branching out into sentences. The deeper into a book I get, the more the main characters assert themselves and say things I never actually thought of myself (at least not consciously) and soon I’m mainly following them around describing the action and how they feel about it. Things happen I don’t expect or foresee, surprising and exciting me, just as in lucid dreams. That’s what makes writing so entertaining and fulfilling, because it’s also, when it truly comes from the heart, a mysteriously profound learning process.
Have any of your books included lucid dreaming as part of the plot? What happens?
In my paranormal erotic romance, Dreams of Anubis, the heart of the plot is the dreams the main character has that take place in ancient Egypt. In my novel of Hatshepsut, dreams mark important moments in her life. But what’s truly interesting is that while I was writing the book, I myself had a lucid dream in which the symbolism was completely ancient Egyptian. In the book, Hatshepsut’s father had died recently, just as mine had in reality. I copied and pasted the dream from my journal into the novel without changing anything except the point of view, and substituting “house” for “palace”:
She was wandering through a palace filled with so much light the colorful paintings and furnishings were only luminous shadows, unless she concentrated on them and attempted to discern the objects they defined. Then she experienced a sensation like warm water rushing up through her head and realized she was dreaming. A surge of joy made her conscious of her closed eyelids where she lay asleep in bed and passionately she thought, No, I must not wake up! I will not wake up! She knew she was in the Palace of the Other World near her father’s tomb and the weight of sadness threatened to pull her back into her body. Determined not to give into the pressure, she walked to a window, open to a profusion of colors, and abruptly her father was beside her. She saw him clearly for an instant before he embraced her and became only a beloved darkness she could distinctly feel against her. He said, “Everything you do is so beautiful!” She laughed as he held onto her so tightly she began falling backwards. She ended up lying on the floor feeling only his arms around her as the High Priest of Amun’s voice said directly in her head, “Love is the light in the Fields of Re” and suddenly she found herself standing alone outside the palace in a night blacker than any she had ever known. There was no moon and she could see no stars beyond the palace’s silhouette looming to her right. She knew she had to walk around it but she feared encountering something. When she suddenly saw her cat, and its magically reflective eyes, waiting for her, it was easier to force herself to be brave and not to try and wake up. With a cat following just behind her, she began walking. Her courage received a further boost when a white dog-like creature emerged from the night on her left and trotted along beside her. Recognizing the animal of Seth, she rested her left hand gratefully on its head. Continuing along the invisible path, she summoned a small gray jackal to run ahead and open the way for her. She sensed herself approaching the open space beyond the palace where she would be able to fully claim her powers if she dared to face encountering all her fears there. Then suddenly the veil of her eyelids lifted and she woke to the safely confining light of the solar disc.
At present I’m incubating a story about an Egyptologist who begins having lucid dreams that are apparently related to her current area of research. Should such a form of investigation yield theories which are later verified, well then, it all becomes even more fascinating and exciting. I’m also playing with the idea of another collection of stories set all through history in which a lucid dreamer is the thread tying them all together, somehow.
Do you feel that lucid dreaming may have been a feature of Egyptian spiritual practices? When I gazed at some of the ancient hieroglyphs in the temples at Dendera and Edfu, I saw instances of apparently sleeping men who appeared to be lucidly projecting. Do you ever run across this in your studies of Egyptology?
Definitely. The Temple of Hathor in Dendera (the ancient Egyptians referred to it as The Castle of the Menit and The House of Incarnation) was renowned for its dream hospital where the cause of a patient’s physical illness or emotional malaise was diagnosed and treated by way of healing dreams. 
The Menit symbolized the female sexual organ. Hathor was the cosmic mother and wet-nurse, the House of Horus—the falcon-head god who symbolized the human soul. Mirrors were sacred to Hathor because she was the mirror of material substance an eternal Divine essence uses to experience (see) Itself. The Menit was the medium by which the creative sensuality of the Goddess was transmitted; Hathor is often shown offering the Menit to pharaoh or his queen. The ancient Egyptians apparently understood that a spiritual healing energy could be channeled into the physical body most effectively through the magical opening found in dreams. While submerged in the dark depths of sleep, alive with colorful dreams like schools of fish (which often prove equally elusive when you try and catch them with your conscious mind upon waking) becoming lucid and addressing a specific task was rather like constructing canals to direct the life-giving River where it was most needed. To the ancient Egyptians, the Nile embodied the Divine life-force that regularly resurrected the dry “dead” earth.
Are there experiments that you would like to conduct in lucid dreams? Or something that you would want to achieve? Tell us about that.
Oh yes, of course! As a historical novelist, the possibility of traveling into the past and actually viscerally experiencing places like ancient Egypt is so exciting it’s almost frightening. Once, after I became lucid in a dream, I asked to go to the pyramids in the time of Menkaure the Divine but I ended up in a fog of pure potential—it’s esoteric name being The Dragon’s Breath and the name given to it by quantum physics being The Zero Point Field. I blame myself; I’m pretty sure it was doubting I could actually do it that made the realization of my request impossible. But just last week there was something I very much wanted to achieve. My husband was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis—his right foot and the lower part of his leg was swelling up, perhaps as the result of a blood clot. He was scheduled for an emergency ultrasound in the morning. Treatment would have entailed spending several days in the hospital and then taking blood thinners for three months. That night when we went to bed, his leg was worse, growing more painful. Before falling asleep, I prayed to the Lords I’ve always felt watching over me. I asked them, with all my heart, to help me in my desire to have a lucid dream in which I could attempt to heal my husband’s leg. There wasn’t even a speck of doubt in my heart such a healing could be done (whether or not I myself was yet spiritually capable of it) and I fervently wanted the opportunity to try.
In a dream, my husband, Stinger, and I are in a grocery store shopping, but we walk out of the building without any bags or packages. I feel happy because we’re together and because everything is good—I’m mentally clear, I know everything will be all right even though we have to drive straight to the doctor’s office in the morning. It’s night and the parking lot is mostly deserted. I feel so good I do a little skip and a jump and notice that gravity is very forgiving; I feel wonderfully light in the Indian dress Stinger bought me in Brazil I love more than any other dress I’ve ever owned. I think, If this was a dream, I could fly. I do a little run in a pretend dream take off and actually keep going, rising a little higher off the ground, not moving very fast but definitely defying gravity. I’m aware of a group of people exiting the store watching me and wonder what they must think about this flying lady. Pretty cool, huh? I look down at my husband, who has kept walking across the parking lot, and say calmly but urgently, “Take my hand! Take my hand! If you don’t catch me, I’m just going to keep going.” He reaches up and pulls me down. I land facing him and, looking directly into his eyes, I ask, “Is this a dream? Are we dreaming?” His expression is more skeptical than confused as he replies, “No, we’re not.” I’m inclined to believe him because even now I’m absolutely sure myself that all of this is really happening, that we’re out in the waking world shopping and that I’m not lying in bed dreaming. But once the question is asked, I somehow know I am, in fact, dreaming. Now I point out to him, “But if this isn’t a dream, why did you keep walking? The jeep is back there.”
As we gravitate toward the eastern edge of the parking lot, I remember my intent and command, “Show me your leg.” He raises his jean and I kneel before his right leg. Where the pocket of swelling was in reality there is a largish flap of skin raised to reveal an opening through which I can see into his leg. There’s a distinct welling up of blood in there. It’s like looking into a subterranean cave where the water (blood) is getting ready to rise up over the edge. The blood is a very dark red at the center and around the edges it’s nearly black, and shining in that blackness are stars. I can’t describe the awesome beauty of this blood welling straight out of a fathomless darkness shining with stars. I will never forget the sight. The clot (for that’s what it must be) is definitely there and I’m raising my right hand (and perhaps also my left hand) in front of it intending a blue healing energy toward it. I don’t see any blue, but what I do begin to see is a reflection of my mouth taking some of the blood into it, tipping it between my lips as I massage the clot, the bulk of it, with my mouth, somehow dissolving it in this manner. I know this somehow. After what seems a short time I sit back and tell him, “I could see in there.” Crossing my legs, I assume a yoga prayer position directly in front of him. Raising my hands, I instruct him not to touch me as I separate my hands into Reiki position in order to enable healing energy to flow down between my palms into his leg. I sit there performing Reiki on his leg, and in the dream I’m there all night. In the end, however, we’ve been transported from the dark public parking lot to an intimate sunlit courtyard. The stone wall to the right of the door leading into the villa is hung with a beautiful tapestry-like painting I seem to recall depicts a golden-haired woman wearing an old-fashioned (Medieval?) dress and standing in a colorful garden.
I woke up suddenly and, after a moment, thought: I had a lucid dream in which I healed Stinger’s leg! I hope I never forget the awe and happiness I experienced when I realized this. I said softly to him as he moved slightly in the bed next to me, “I just had a lucid dream in which I healed your leg!” He replied something to the effect of, “That’s nice” and went back to sleep as I lay there remembering the dream, committing every detail to memory. I got up a short while later and looked at his leg where it was propped up on a pillow. In the dim morning light, when I pushed the blankets away to compare them, it looked exactly the same as his other leg. I could scarcely believe my eyes. I stroked the skin of both his lower legs, gazed at his both his ankles and feet, and whispered, “Stinger, look at your leg!” He lifted his head off the pillow and, after a moment, asked, “Did you do that?” I replied, “Yes!” with an elation I cannot describe. The improvement was 95% and by the time we got to the doctor’s office, there was no sign anything had ever been wrong with his leg at all. Whether or not it was merely a coincidence, there’s no telling, but my husband, who is a scientist, admitted it was, all things considered, perfectly reasonable to conclude that I had, indeed, healed his leg in a lucid dream.
Do the seasons effect your dreaming, or effect your lucid dreaming? Do you see any pattern to lucid dreaming and the seasons?
I’ve noticed that I tend to have a lucid dream around the new moon and the full moon, and the dream I submitted for this issue occurred on Palm Sunday, in the Spring, which really makes me look forward to Christmas! And most memorably so far, exactly two months after my beloved dog, Merlin, passed away, on the full moon some time after midnight on Halloween (November 1st the Day of All Dead) I had this lucid dream:
I dreamed I woke up in bed, upon which the light of the full moon was shining. Then I saw Merlin. 
He was standing beside the bed looking up, the way he had in the last year of his life when he wanted to come up but felt he couldn’t manage the jump and was waiting for my help. I tried to ignore him because obviously he couldn’t really be there, but he was. He had been a mix of white and tan, with an adorable black mask around his eyes when he was a puppy, but now he was mostly a pure white. Yet he was clearly there, my little boy, so so I reached down and lifted him onto the bed with me, watching in awe as he walked over to his usual spot. I knew my beloved pet couldn’t possibly stay for long and a part of me was afraid to touch him, but of course I couldn’t resist. When I reached for him he rolled onto his back and I rubbed his belly just as I always had. I could truly feel him, the unmistakable shape and sensation of him. “You’re such a good boy!” I cooed as I stroked him. “And you always will be!” Part of me feared this visit in a space between waking and sleeping—for that’s where I knew I was—might only be an illusion sent by a demon that would bite me any second now if I kept petting it, but the rest of me felt otherwise; my heart knew better. I was so happy Merlin had come to see me! I continued caressing him, filled with wonder at how long he was staying. I dared to touch his head and to look straight into his eyes as I told him again and again what I had told him just before I left him in that terrible room at the vet—“I love you! I love you! I love you!” I was so close to him I could hear his breaths and they sounded like a dark, soft echo, “Love you… love you…” Content, I lay back against the pillows and woke gently. The room looked just as it had a moment ago, with moonlight shining full on my bed, the only difference being that Merlin was no longer there. From that day forward, I knew in my heart that he was all right and though I still missed him terribly, I was no longer so intensely sad.
Any final comments?
The other day I was absently doing the dishes and intently recalling some of the things different “guides” have said to me in lucid dreams—characters I distinctly sensed were not merely thought forms—when I was suddenly struck by the mind-blowing realization it constitutes an ongoing message:
“Keep moving forward.”
“Don’t care too much for definitions, it’s the personal experience that matters.”
“For you all is God and riches. Don’t confuse the gifts with the givers. What flows down from your Ka, receive.”
“You’re very bright.”
“Do you remember?” he asks. I reply, “Yes.” He nods and says, “Noted.”
He asks, “Do you want this to be hell or heaven?” I answer, “Heaven!” He says, “Me too… Why did you leave me for so long?”
“Miracles can happen.”
Lucid dreams are a truly effective means to, metaphorically speaking, cleanse the soul’s lens in a way that the intellect, and all our good intentions, cannot do as effectively, or as quickly, in waking life. When I experience and confront issues in lucid dreams, a vital change occurs on all levels of my being that might otherwise take years, or an entire lifetime, perhaps even longer. “Normal” dreams can help, of course, but based on my personal experience, it’s my theory lucid dreams have the power to give you a “charge” that helps effectively “burn” away negative habits, emotions and thought patterns. Lucid Dreaming is a uniquely individual spiritual path, yet it’s also bringing me under the stimulating wing of a growing community, a movement really—a drive to expand the borders of consciousness and, ideally (inevitably) transform any and all limiting sociocultural perceptions and structures.
2.
MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL LUCID DREAMING AND MENOPAUSE
Many women who’ve experienced the ―joys of pre-menopause, and gradually crossed the dreaded threshold into the third phase of a woman’s life (so flatteringly termed The Crone) have been confronted with the option of whether or not to undergo Hormone Replacement Therapy, HRT. There are all sorts of health risks associated with this treatment, although many doctors say that’s no longer the case and that the new and improved version is actually good for you. Personally, I feel natural physical changes shouldn’t be fought tooth-and-claw; there’s a reason for these profound transformations that should be welcomed and cherished for all they have to offer. With that said, it was no fun when an ax abruptly fell that severed my mind from my sex drive in a way I never would have believed possible. The climate of my soul underwent a radical change—it was like being transported from the Amazon rainforest to the Sahara dessert at night where I stood beneath a cold star-filled sky, glorying in it. After decades of Hurricane Hormone that lessened to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression, I wholeheartedly embraced the sudden, wonderful peace along with my deepening spirituality. Problem was, I also stopped fervently embracing my husband. Although yoga and healthy eating had kept me feeling as good as I did before the change, they failed to reignite the spark that was blown out of my libido.
Fortunately, as I crossed the threshold into menopause I also began lucid dreaming as a spiritual practice. I’ve always believed in the power of thought to directly influence my circumstances, both external and internal. Convinced as I am that Mind (Consciousness) is everything, I saw no reason to entrust the magical quantum realm of my hormones to the crude mechanics of modern medicine, which normally merely treats symptoms with substances that often cause a host of other health problems. I love my husband and I knew that unless I planned to catch the HRT flight, I had to find another way off my peaceful but lonely island. Lucid Dreams proved to be the ticket.
In one dream, my husband is wearing a black robe and reclining on a bed in a hotel room, where a gorgeous young woman is standing before a large mirror with a wooden frame. She’s talking to him as she begins wrapping her perfect body in brown latex-like tape (like a mummy) unrolling broad swathes of it and beginning over her belly, which is a little puffy because she recently gave birth. I watch them from where I’m standing in a doorway and the woman keeps glancing knowingly at me. I smile back at her as though she poses no threat to me; as though I’m not jealous of her youth and voluptuous beauty. She’s totally aware of her power and is teasing my husband with it. As I watch, he gets up and brushes something off her shoulder solicitously, completely ignoring my presence. But that’s okay because now I know I’m dreaming and can walk away, which I do, feeling furious. I’m not like that woman, I don’t want to be like her, and if that’s what my husband expects, we can’t be together anymore. He appears beside me and I say angrily, ―I want a divorce! We can’t keep living in this gray zone anymore! I refuse to live in this gray zone anymore! But then suddenly we’re walking through a city at night, past pleasant outdoor cafes, hip-to-hip, our arms around each others waists, totally in love and happy to be together. I ask, ―Are we really getting a divorce? And he replies, ―I don’t know, we’ll see. It feels totally wrong to be leaving each other when we’re still so very much in love. I tell him I saw him with that other woman and say, ―It’s not right the way you made me feel, as invisible as a toad on a rock while she was around!
It took me a few days to stop feeling angry and to grasp the message of the dream—I’m the princess not the toad. The woman before the mirror is me as my husband sees me. The me standing on a threshold is the negative self-image I developed of myself when I suddenly became a fifty-year-old menopausal woman for whom the mirror is fast becoming an enemy. And yet, in truth, I’m increasingly wrapped up in exciting mystery to my husband, who makes it abundantly clear that he loves and desires me as much as he always did. How he treated the gorgeous woman in the dream is how he treats me in reality. 
My body’s physical changes have given birth inside me to a new and deeper sense of self, which is a good thing. When I told my husband about the dream, and what I had learned from it, he was so happy. He also remarked on the clever way my Inner Self used fairy tales to enlighten me (the mirror Snow White and the toad The Frog Prince) making use of the same imagery that influenced me as a child, and subconsciously caused me to identify with the ugly witch/crone when I grew older. It’s one thing to think something and another thing entirely to have your thought processes embodied in a living world.
In another important dream, I step outside onto a balcony of sorts. There’s a ledge on my left and I see that I’m really high up as I glimpse city streets far below. I marvel at how lucid I am. In fact, I’m so lucid I might actually be awake, which makes it a bad idea to jump off the building and fly. Instead I enter a dark room, where I see myself reflected in several mirrors. In these mirrors I look like myself morphed with a dark-haired, sensual young woman, Middle-Eastern in appearance, who is naked except for shimmering strips of jewelry. As I watch, she undulates her hands in front of her face as though in a dance.
That same night I become lucid again and find myself back in that shadowy bedroom with this woman who is me even though she looks slightly different; her voluptuous body makes me think of a Bodhisattva. This luscious me is no longer confined by mirrors where she kneels, cat-like and naked, at the foot of a bed. I/she possesses an incredible head of hair, black and heavy and somewhat kinky, barely restrained by thin silver bands. I’m watching her/me but I also am her; I can feel the weight of my hair as she tilts her head to one side. She raises her hands before her and undulates them while performing subtle sensual swaying motions I attempt to emulate. She cups her breasts with both hands as part of the erotic dance and I feel myself becoming aroused. Then suddenly I’m lying on my back fully integrated with this woman as an intense sexual energy courses up through my body, building in intensity. I become aware now of a young man fiddling with an electronic board to my left, where he kneels turning knobs and generally tweaking levels on the complex system. He glances at me as he works and tells me it’s possible for me to harness sexual energy in this way but that I have to be careful; first I have to know everything he has to tell me, otherwise it can prove dangerous. Completely lucid, I ask him, ―Can’t we collaborate in real life as well? He replies, ―Write down your email address as he hands me a pad of paper and a pen. I take a moment to consider which email address to give him, because he’ll know who I am in real life, and I write ―M on the paper before I lose the dream.
Through the dream of the woman standing before the mirror, I addressed the inevitable self-esteem issues that come from growing older. The two dreams of the harem dancer affected me physically—they mysteriously charged my diminished libido in a lucid dreaming equivalent of HRT with no negative side effects. Results like this simply can’t be argued with. Personal experience keeps showing me that Lucid Dream Healing is a reality and, in the case of menopause, an exciting and effective risk-free alternative to HRT. I’ll skip the pills and stick with my dreams.
3.
THE SURFER TECHNIQUE FOR INDUCING MILD & WILD
As I lay in bed, I go back to sleep mindfully by visualizing a surfer picking up her board—the intent to have a lucid dream—and walking into the ocean holding it against her. As she (me) walks through the surf—my breathing—I become more and more relaxed, and soon she spreads herself across the board and begins paddling out toward the open ocean, the rhythmic motion of her arms my heartbeat. I picture the bed beneath me being as soft and deep as water, ever deepening water. Then, where the two opposing currents meet—waves flowing toward the shore and the waking world and the strong, irresistible undertow below the surface rushing out into the depths of sleep and dreams—the surfer spreads herself across the board of her intent and observes the hypnogogic waves while waiting for the one she senses is ripe for riding into a lucid dream. And even if I don’t succeed in consciously entering a dream, remaining mentally awake until this point dramatically increases the odds that once I fall asleep I’ll be able to raise my head above a dream’s wild currents and gasp, ―I’m dreaming! 
This visualization is so much easier and fun for me to practice on a nightly basis than concentrating on my breathing while focusing on successive parts of my body in an effort to relax. I totally lose patience with that, whereas every night I have fun deepening the surfer visualization by adding more sensual details—the temperature of the water, the feel of the ocean spray on my face, etc.—and the more real I make the experience, the more effective the technique becomes. I also find it invaluable to wear a sleep mask after 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, when lucid dreams are more likely to occur. I found this particular mask on amazon.com Lewis N. Clark Comfort Eye Mask and it is amazingly comfortable; I have no problem whatsoever falling asleep with it on, and the gentle pressure of it helps focus my intent. Wearing a sleep mask also eliminates the concern my eyes will open—the board will tip over—and abruptly return me to the waking world even after I realize my body is asleep as my mind surfs the hypnogogic waves, such an exciting state. I got the idea for this technique from a dream character who appeared outside my front door dressed as a naval officer. I let him in and he stayed to talk to me, and although I don’t remember our conversation, lying in bed later that night, I suddenly found myself practicing this technique.
Once awake in a dream, physical sensations help anchor me. I find that touching different parts of my body, and if necessary stripping off pieces of clothing and planting my bare feet on the floor, deepens my lucidity and helps to prolong it, as does the classic technique of periodically raising my hands in front of my face and thinking or saying I’m dreaming. It also helps me sustain lucidity when I look around me instead of focusing for too long on one object, person or action. Even when engaged in a dream conversation, I’m careful to look away from the person’s face every now and then.
4.
Healing My Tendonitis in Lucid Dreams
As a writer, visual artist, passionate cook and Open World Video Games aficionado, I spend a lot of time typing, using a mouse, chopping ingredients and pressing buttons, activities that all make rather excessive use of my right hand, thumb, wrist and arm. In fact, I relied almost exclusively on the right side of my body until the day I tripped and fell while playing catch-the-stick with my puppy. I broke my fall with both hands and thought nothing of it, until a few days later, when it became excruciatingly apparent something was terribly wrong with my right wrist and thumb. The pain when I moved them in certain directions was so intense, I was forced to begin using my left hand for whatever tasks I could manage to accomplish with it. I bought a cloth brace and began wearing it night and day, hoping that whatever was wrong would get better, but days and then weeks passed with no sign of improvement. I continued to type and use a mouse, cook and do yoga, yet the range of motion in my wrist and thumb was limited by instant and severe pain. Desiring to avoid a cortisone shot at all cost, I tried two weeks of electrical heat stimulation, ultrasounds, massages and physical therapy with a chiropractor. After the treatment ended, I continued doing the stretches they had taught me at home, but my condition showed no real improvement.
I did not immediately attempt to heal myself in a lucid dream because I felt I was suffering from a life-style injury that was teaching me important lessons about balancing both sides of my self, in every sense. I didn’t feel it was right to want to fix a non life-threatening condition which was helping me grow. On the other hand, the constant inconvenience of a brace—and the occasional excruciating pain when it failed to keep my wrist and/or thumb from moving in a certain direction—was really getting old. There was also the concern that my tendonitis (for so the chiropractor diagnosed it) if not dealt with in a timely fashion might become chronic. Therefore, before scheduling the dreaded cortisone shot, I consciously stepped past the mental and emotional assumptions causing me to treat the power behind the dream like a genie granting me only three big wishes I should be afraid of wasting. I decided to try to heal myself in a lucid dream.
September 2011
I find myself fully conscious of being awake in a dream where I’m lying on my back on my bed in our bedroom, which is dark. I raise my right hand toward the ceiling thinking make light and violet sparkles emanate from my fingertips which delight me, and also succeed in gently illuminating the ceiling, where a circular decorative carving has replaced our actual ceiling fan. I notice then that my right hand is wearing the cloth brace I’ve been subjected to for weeks now because of a strained tendon. (Yesterday it was worse than ever; I couldn’t move my thumb in any direction without pain shooting through me, so that I was obliged to skip yoga, which really upset me.) At once, I remember my intent. Raising both hands before me, I point the index finger of my left hand at the junction of my right wrist and thumb, willing a healing energy into it. I’m delighted to see a stream of lovely blue and violet sparkles (I can’t think of better word for them.) I then take the time to remove the cloth brace so it won’t be in the way, and direct the starry healing energy to just above the tender area. At one point I can’t see anything but I’m aware of lying in bed having this lucid dream, and of struggling to disconnect the desire to open my eyes in the dream with the urge to open my actual physical eyes, which will wake me up. I don’t know how I manage it, perhaps through sheer willpower, but I find myself once again gazing at the dream room and my hands. I turn my right hand so I can see the bottom of my wrist and trace my left index finger along it. I can see beneath the skin; a section of skin seems to be missing. I discern a black line or band of sorts which at first looks like an inverted syringe with something sharp and dark moving up my arm from my wrist. I’m quite fascinated to be seeing the inside of my body as I continue directing healing energy that consists of a shimmering violet light indistinguishable from my intent, which is the real mysterious source of the “corrective” power I’m focusing on my wrist and thumb. I become aware of a golden light slightly behind me to my left and give thanks for this dream as it slowly fades and I find myself awake in bed.
At once I told my husband about the dream, and removing the cloth brace said with complete faith, “Look!” as I moved my wrist and thumb around in different directions without any pain whatsoever. “It’s still not one-hundred percent, but it’s much better! And morning is when it hurts the most! I wish I’d had more time!”
I wrote in my Dream Journal: If I have to assign a percentage to the improvement in my condition, I would say seventy-five percent. My wrist also feels so much stronger, nowhere near as weak and vulnerable to being accidentally moved in the wrong direction. It’s very interesting how connected I feel to this part of my body after seeing it in the dream, and seeing into it. I look at it now and feel as though I can will it to get better, that my intent is still connected to it in an active way. I feel my physical body is akin to an animal, to a pet of my Inner Self which also serves as a mysterious tool of my Consciousness. I’ve become aware of all my hand motions these past few weeks, but this morning I feel reverently connected to my right hand and wrist in a way I never have before. As always happens with a lucid dream, I feel differently about something, not just think differently.
Two nights later, I became lucid in a dream again. I’ll skip to the moment I woke up in the dream:
…I decide I’ll fly and rise up into the sky. I’m soon well above the trees. I raise my hands before me and think, Well, I must be dreaming. The sky is a pale, somewhat murky watercolor blue. I look at my right hand thinking I might as well heal the whole tendon as I attempt to direct a healing energy up my arm, but I don’t see any sparkling lights emanating from my left fingertip. I keep at it, and give thanks to the power behind the dream, expressing how grateful I am for all I’ve been assisted in achieving, yet also admitting to being a little confused and in need of more guidance. There still isn’t any visible healing energy emanating from my hand. Abruptly spotting a building ahead of me, I think I perhaps I need to find a doctor in the dream (I had this thought earlier while I was awake, remembering how another person did that in a lucid dream). I fly up to a platform high off the ground on which a little building sits that is more like a big closet or armoire. On the left there’s a single dark-wooden door and on the right two wooden doors. I veer to the right, but then turn to the left because that was the door I originally intended to open. 
Inside the cramped space is a very attractive naked man with dark hair. He’s sitting up slightly, his right shoulder leaning against the wood, his well muscled body stretched out in a partially reclined position. I seem to wake him when I open the door. I tell him I’m looking for a doctor. When he doesn’t respond right away, I go and open the double doors. Finding nothing behind them, I return to the man, who indicates he can, in fact, help me. Floating in the air, I rest my elbows on the entrance to the room (like in a pool, only partially needing its support.) Facing away from me and going through some drawers, he looks back at me and tells me, “Your father’s dying.” I reply, “No, he’s dead.” He adds, “Well, he’s fine” and I say, “Yes, I know, I’ve seen him a few times” (meaning in dreams after he died.) He echoes, “Yes, I know. I talked to him just the other day.” “Really?” I ask. “Cool.” I’m rather enjoying talking to this dream character who is so forthcoming. Pulling a photograph out of a wallet, he shows it to me. I see a woman and an older man and state, “That’s not my dad.” I get the feeling he really can’t help me, but as I make to leave, he abruptly tells me he’ll give me a prescription for what I need. I’m happy about that but, as I begin gliding away, I realize he really hasn’t given me anything. Yet suddenly I do seem to have a prescription in my hand. Looking at it, I make out an image of a little girl crouching in front of a pile of colorful goggles and the “pharmacy” header reads Harbor Freight Tools. It seems a joke; it makes no sense. How can goggles help me heal my tendon?
I Wrote in my Dream Journal: Yet there is something to this dream, something about being able to see better in the flowing depths of my subconscious, of my dreams. I feel encouraged to think outside the box, creatively, as I did naturally when I was a little girl. This dream also seems to reflect my deepening faith and lack of doubts and fears (the part of me who was like my father in that respect) dying inside me once and for all. And the beautiful man strikes me as the vigorous good health of my Inner Self and gaining conscious access to it.
October 2011
In a dream, I’m looking at my right arm and seeing deep blue blood rushing along my veins quite vigorously pumped by my heart, which I distinctly feel beating swiftly. About where my wrist still hurts in waking life when I touch it, I see a circle rimmed in yellow, a pool of sorts with a dark orange-pink center around which my blood flows freely. My mother and I are studying my arm in fascination, and I personally experience an awe tinged with fear, because it’s very clear that should something happen and the river of blood cease to flow, or rise beyond the banks of my skin, I will die. Part of me experiences a frisson of fear but a very calm, centered part of me faces the inevitable and transcends it with the thought, the knowledge, that I will continue (my awareness, who I am) even outside the confines of my body. It is a highly lucid moment, after which I drift off into another dream.
I Wrote in my dream journal: It may not be related, but my wrist feels a heck of a lot better today than it did yesterday or even in the middle of the night before the dream. All I remember doing is looking at it, marveling, and then having that lucid moment where the twinge of fear was quickly overcome by the knowledge I would survive even if my heart stopped beating and my blood stopped flowing. I’m thinking now that a healing energy was flowing from my heart down into my arm because all day I have felt much better, not just in my wrist area, which is noticeably stronger, but in my right shoulder and my entire arm. Mind/Consciousness is the infinite ocean of creativity (the Dream) in which the shells of our skulls live, and information/energy rushes as blood through our veins, just as rivers flow between solid banks, carving the four dimensions and chambers of our heart, the “house” of our soul. Moving out of one, we can always build another. I learned from the chiropractor that the trauma feels concentrated in my wrist because where the tendon meets the bone there’s less circulation, less blood flow. My dream seemed to be increasing the blood flow to the affected area even though I wasn’t lucid.
October 2011
Walking back to the center of our living room, I raise my right hand before me and realize I’m dreaming! At once I remember my intent and, holding my wrist up before me, I instruct blood to begin flowing down into the affected joint. I can see blue veins beneath my rosy-beige skin in the location of the troubled area and am pleased. I open the door to the rec room and walk in. It’s dark in there but I head toward the bay windows as I plant my lips on my wrist. I push open the windows (which don’t open in reality) and there’s our yard. As I take off, I see Arthur (my puppy) shoot into the woods, a white streak beneath me. I’m here on our mountain property but the night is so alive, profoundly quiet on the surface and yet subliminally almost noisy. 
Coming from every direction, I hear a faint and lovely yet also eery music. I make out the faint drone of airplanes high above and see the tell-tale red and yellow lights of one going by. I just barely register a sound like voices, which I seem to know are other people having out of body experiences. I’m floating slowly and easily around my yard in a night subliminally lit by a silvery aura that isn’t actually light. I’m enthralled by the energy-music-voices humming all around me, and I know the moon is out tonight but I don’t see it or notice many stars. I turn toward my favorite tulip tree and greet it; I’m definitely really outside, this is not like a lucid dream. I try and remember to keep my lips on my wrist but the night is so oddly creepy and yet so real and the music fascinates me. I go peer through a window at the right side of the house and think Oh, that’s a room in my house! even though it isn’t really—I see an odd straight-backed narrow brown chair sitting before a bed. Floating over the yard again I say, “Arthur, did you go out?” but I realize it’s silly to worry because obviously he didn’t since I’m dreaming and he’s in his crate sleeping. I return to the rec room, moving my mouth over my wrist now, attempting to massage the tension out of the joint with my lips as I enter a room we don’t really own, and abruptly wake up.
I Wrote in my Dream Journal: My wrist feels the same as it did yesterday, but I think I know why—I was in a lower vibrational body. I have to be in a less dense, in a higher vibrational body, so to speak, to access healing energy that can flow down into my denser physical form. It seems to me the Other Side isn’t just one other level or world but multiple “realms”.
October 2011
I’m lying in a bed, not at home but in a room that seems related to a previous dream. I experience that wooshing sound with flashing lights and a loud noise I’ve read traditionally signals the beginning of an OBE. I remain calm; I scarcely need to tell myself not to be frightened; I know what’s going on. I imagine myself floating up out of my body, but nothing seems to happen. I know I should be out of body so I remember the technique of simply sitting up. I feel myself, and somehow also see myself, sit up out of my physical body. It works just fine and I think This is great, I’m going out to the ocean now. I walk to the door and open it. In the dim nocturnal atmosphere, I glimpse the dark figure of a young woman leaving the building ahead of me. I seem to startle her and I say something like “Don’t worry.” I go through a second door and the ocean seems to be getting farther away. Next I have to traverse something like a pub-restaurant and decide to fly over the tables toward a window. But I have to navigate through yet another space like a kitchen in the back. There’s a wall in my way and I’m getting impatient. I begin going through the wall, I can feel the texture of it and know I can make it through the barrier, but I don’t really feel like dealing with the slightly unpleasant sensation and decide to simply walk out the door.
I’m on a beach and there are lots of people, but I can’t seem to get to the water. Then all of a sudden it gets more confined feeling, as though the ocean is limited to an indoor space like a really nice resort built from dark wood with red carpets. But it’s no longer the open ocean, which is what I want. I command, “More blue! More water!” and am happy to see more blue, but I remain confined. I command, “More ocean!” and it seems to work but I’m still confined! I reach a point where I say, “I’m going to close my eyes and when I open them again I’m going to be at the ocean.” I envision a white beach and clear, bright blue water with no one around. I open my eyes. It didn’t work! All I see is a large pool in a room. I feel quite frustrated but decide to get on with my intent, which is to send healing energy into my wrist. As I look around at this open yet enclosed space divided into different areas I can see into (there are no people around) I think that perhaps I’m not supposed to change the environment in this dream. I begin walking down a corridor and, looking down at my wrist, I move it around and don’t feel any discomfort or tightness. I think that when I wake up my wrist will feel just like it does here in my dream body. I turn around and start walking back the way I came. Then, standing against a wall, I recite, “I’m radiant with health, I’m radiant with health” and begin walking again. I raise my hands slightly before me and visualize blue healing energy coming out of my left index finger toward the problem spot in my right wrist. I’m gratified to see it, and by how effortless it is. Then I decide to make the healing energy more direct and intense, like a laser, and it transforms into a violet shaft of solid light that darkens to a shimmering purple. I look for my tendon to make sure I’m directing the energy into the right place, and gradually begin waking up.
I Wrote in my Dream Journal: This morning I’ve been able to stretch and move my wrist and thumb even more freely than before just by remembering what my dream body felt like, and by visualizing the tendon as I saw it in the dream. The lucid dreams in which I direct healing energy into my arm seem akin to the electrical stimulation and ultrasound treatment I received at the chiropractor before doing physical therapy exercises. I’m concentrating on my thumb’s mobility now and on opening my hand fully, as I haven’t been able to do in weeks.
After each lucid healing dream, the flexibility and the strength of my injured tendon markedly improved. The area where my thumb meets my wrist is still a bit stiff and tender, my tendon isn’t one-hundred percent healed, but after only the first dream, I was able to remove the protective brace, and I haven’t needed to wear it since. I appear to have reduced the inflammation in a lucid dreaming equivalent of cortisone shots. Each time after I woke up, I moved and stretched my thumb and wrist in ways I couldn’t before, and I repeated these exercises several times during the day, feeling I was helping align my physical body with my dream body so that its healing energy could be more effectively absorbed. At first I was disappointed I couldn’t just wave a magic dream wand and completely heal myself overnight, but the process itself is so fascinating, my tendonitis now feels like a mysterious gift I’m still unwrapping. I’m discovering that if I strive to live as lucidly as possible, this spiritual practice carries over into sleep and enables me to become conscious in my dreams more often, especially if I’m passionate about accomplishing something. For me, the smallest events of every day life feel increasingly like choreography, and the more gracefully I dance—the more positive and lucid my thoughts and responses to everything are—the more life unfolds in a beautiful, magical way, not despite problems and pain but sometimes because of them.
5.
Beyond Time & Space: Telepathic & Precognitive Dreams
Everything you’re about to read is true …♫Music from the Twilight Zone♫… Seriously, it’s a fact that dreams can and do come true; it’s not a Disney platitude. The typical cynical rebuttal it’s just a coincidence is an insulting slap in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary. Personal experience—which continues when our body is asleep—has taught me my soul lives in multiple worlds. Physical existence is an important but also deliberately constrained sphere of activity in which gravity must be obeyed, time appears linear and space separates, but every night we travel to realms beyond time and space. We all “break on through to the Other Side” when we dream. Hey, it’s the 21st Century, it’s okay to really believe this (again) and make our lives vastly more interesting and exciting 24/7.
When I was twenty-two-years-old, I dreamed I was walking through a parking lot. I stopped to buy ice cream from a vendor. I gave him some money and he handed me my change. “This is too much,” I protested but he replied firmly, “Keep it” so I slipped the $5 bill into the right pocket of my black jacket. 
Less than twenty minutes later, just after sunrise, I was leaning against the wall of some fast food restaurant waiting for a friend to pick me up. A kind-looking black man paused beside me. He asked me if I was hungry and offered to buy me breakfast. He handed me his card and I saw he was a social worker. I smiled and told him I was fine. “Well,” he said, “if you won’t join me for breakfast, buy yourself something to eat” and slipped a bill into the right pocket of my jacket, the same jacket I had been wearing in the dream. I’ll never forget how I felt when I pulled out a $5 bill. With a shock, I realized I’d just been given a clear message—your dreams are real, believe it. Unfortunately, though I cherished the memory in my heart, I continued to be afraid I was merely deluding myself. You see, science had apparently made it clear that even though life and the universe are fascinating they are also ultimately meaningless, a random explosion out of empty space which, by sheer coincidence, created us human beings and all our silly, i.e. powerless, dreams.
My soul knew better and kept dreaming away. Then, years later, I dreamed my husband and I were the only customers in a dimly lit shop. We entered a small, cave-like alcove in which were displayed exquisitely lovely and colorful pieces of expensive-looking jewelry. I selected a tiny butterfly pin and took it out to the cashier, a young woman. She rang it up, I paid with a credit card and she handed me a receipt for $0.00. Obviously a mistake had been made but she insisted we take the receipt. 
The next day, my husband and I were standing in a check-out line at Whole Foods when I noticed the register was subtracting prices instead of adding them up. I said to him, “This feels really familiar” as the cashier, a young woman, continued ringing up our items, unaware of the problem. I paid with our credit card and was handed a receipt for a negative amount -$220.00, at which time I was compelled to point out the error. A manager was sent for who, after nearly half-an-hour attempting to correct the problem, declared that in all her years working there she had never seen anything like this. For some inexplicable reason the computer, which was working just fine again, had decided to credit instead of debit us. The exasperated woman swiped our credit card and handed me a receipt for $0.00. We walked out of the store with the manager’s apologies and lots of free expensive food. Much more importantly, my dream had come true.
I got the message loud and clear: Pay attention to your dreams. Since then I strive to live as lucidly as possible, both awake and asleep. Most of us have heard of the Horse Whisperer, even the Dog Whisperer, and our ego—abused since childhood by materialistic pseudo-science—needs the same kind of firm, loving understanding only our soul, our Inner Self, can provide. The result is a healthier, much more enjoyable and mysteriously empowering life as the the artificial barrier erected between our waking and dreaming self is—like the Berlin wall—joyfully torn down.
Approximately three years ago, I dreamed I was asleep in bed when a woman woke me up in the middle of the night. I was still asleep but believed I was awake as she told me to get up and get dressed because she and my husband and I were going dancing in Washington D.C. I felt confused and yet also very happy as I slipped into a black dress glimmering with silver stars. A few days later, my husband returned from a totally unexpected job interview in Virginia (we were living in Louisiana at the time.) Remembering the woman from my dream, I thought to ask him if the woman he had spoken to had short light-brown hair with bangs, was slightly overweight, etc. He was astonished; I had described her exactly. A few days later, I dreamed I saw my husband walking through a building flanked on both sides by smiling people sitting at their desks who all now worked for him. Then I was standing outside the building, where I distinctly saw the initials of the agency he had just been appointed the head of. Waiting for him a few yards away, I watched him through the glass doors as he delivered a smiling, animated lecture to his new employees. I noticed there was a little more gray in his dark hair. Then my husband’s mother appeared. As we began walking together, I noticed she was limping. In waking reality, I wasn’t surprised when my husband was offered the position and we moved to Virginia, where I grew up and where I longed to return. One afternoon, approximately a year after the dreams, my husband called me one afternoon and declared, “You’re amazing!” He had just been appointed head of an agency with the initials I had clearly seen in my dream. He was also given an office in D.C. His parents, now only three hours away, came to visit us and, on their way home, his mother fell at a rest stop and broke her hip. She recovered well and is otherwise in good health.
There are so many elements in these two dreams which accurately foresaw future events it would be irrational to dismiss them as coincidence.
Recently, I had a dream involving my deceased father, my sister and the woman who, at the time, was her girl friend. My father and I were talking, seriously worried about my sister as we watched her and her lover drive off some place together which I somehow knew would take them from Route 81 to Carl Road. Later that night, I had another dream in which I followed a mysterious trail of water to my study, and realized it was how my sister had found her way in. Her furious ghost, white with shock, stood before me in the kitchen yelling, “I’m dead! I can’t believe I’m dead! She drowned me! She drowned me! I can’t believe it!” over and over again and letting me know it had happened off Route 81 in Tiverton. The next day I phoned my sister. Seriously concerned, I asked her if she ever made any sales calls off Route 81 in a place called Tiverton (she lives another State in an area I’m not at all familiar with.) She told me there’s a Route 81 twenty minutes from her office but that she’d never heard of Tiverton. I asked her to be careful should she ever have to go there, and to be especially wary of Carl Road. I didn’t tell her I had seen her ghost, only that I had had a bad dream with her involving this location. Two days later, I received a text message from my sister informing me that her partner had spent the first seven years of her life in a house off Route 81 in Tiverton, on Carl Road. Her early childhood had been harsh and was, it began to seem, the root of destructive behavior patterns in which my sister’s own personality and happiness were “drowning”. I’ll never forget receiving that text message—an address from a dream displayed right there on my cell phone as actual physical fact. I knew next to nothing about my sister’s new girl friend or the area where she grew up. The address was communicated to me in two dreams, all I did was choose to remember them and respect them. This, I believe, is the most important choice any of us can make when it comes to our dreams. The effect they had on my sister and her former partner cannot be measured, but a relationship that might have lingered unhealthily took a different direction and they managed to preserve their friendship.
Excerpt from my Dream Journal: Vivid dream last night, a long dramatic scene of S. trapped in a car running out of power fast; she barely had time to key in the code that would bring her help (my 4 bank pin numbers) as at first I observed her and then became her. 
When it was too late, when I knew the power was pretty much out, she frantically began pressing buttons as I heard someone on the other end urgently telling other “rescue” workers something had to be done to make it possible to help her.
S. was my best friend and approximately three weeks later she passed away. I had other dreams which subtly warned me she would soon be leaving this world. After she died, but before I found out, I dreamed I was putting my hair up and slipping a shower cap over it as I stepped into a shower. I realized I had forgotten to remove my house shoes when I saw dirt mingling copiously with the water and sullying the tub. I kicked off the shoes but now I was wearing slippers which, by the time I slipped them off, were already too wet to save. I had intended to wash my hair but changed my mind because it would be less work. I was wearing a thin, flesh-colored robe. It was all quite strange; I wasn’t sure why I was still dressed in the shower. Suddenly, I was lower down in the tub watching numerous and varied items flowing swiftly toward the drain. Unless I made an effort to stop them, they would all be sucked down by the force of the current and disappear forever. I let things go, one after the other, but then decided (as I focused on them) that I should probably try and save what looked to be a jump drive, a phone, a letter, and a box of cleansers or medicines; everything else was expendable. I wondered at my detached attitude, at the fact that I didn’t care everything I owned, everything that defined me, was flowing away. A young and robustly healthy looking young woman stepped into the bathroom just as I saw a luminous golden glow appear on the eastern shower wall. She said to me, “Good job.”
My friend’s body was found in the bath tub, where she had fallen when she apparently went into a diabetic coma. I truly feel as though I was with her when she “saw the light”, that I experienced what she did as her consciousness hovered over her body. She wasn’t frightened; she was letting go of this life and it was okay. I don’t know if she sent me the dream or if I somehow “saw” what happened but it doesn’t matter. When I think about her death now I don’t just see a body lying in a bathtub discovered by the police, I’m there with her and I feel at peace, even good. I’ve seen her several times in dreams since then, we’ve talked and been together, but that’s another story for another day.
It may not be required, but an emotional connection—the power of love—makes communicating beyond time and space possible.
One night I dreamed my husband, Stinger, and I were in his workshop threatened by a man with a gun. Stinger seemed oddly groggy and passive. The man shot him in the neck and then started walking toward me. I sank to my knees, pretending to submit to him so he would delay in killing me as, behind him, I saw Stinger get up and clumsily approach us. When he finally grabbed hold of him, I silently commanded my husband to slit the intruder’s throat. I saw it happen very clearly, and marveled at my lack of remorse, but it simply had to be done. Over dinner the following evening, I described the dream to Stinger and he looked at me strangely. He confessed that at some point during his colorful but formless dreams that same night, he had understood it was imperative he leave his dreams to perform an urgent task, which turned out to be slitting the throat of a man who was threatening me, after which he promptly returned to his own dreams. Something very strange and intriguing had happened—my husband felt compelled to enter my dream and obey my command to slit a threatening dream character’s throat. And we had both suffered the distinct impression it had to be done.
When an Air France plane exploded over the ocean just off the coast of Brazil, I was dreaming… I was falling through the sky helping a group of people descend calmly, without fear. I could see other small groups of people in the sky around me, other “guides” accompanying individuals who believed they were plummeting to their deaths and showing them there was nothing to be afraid of, that everything was all right and they could land as lightly as dancers. I was wearing a form-fitting uniform composed of three different colors. My duty done, in my mind I phoned my mother and told her I was somewhere off the coast of a country with lots of tall mountains whose name began with the letter “B”. I woke to the news of the crash and wasn’t surprised the colors of my dream uniform corresponded with those of Air France. I truly believe we all have the power to help each other in more ways than our current level of science recognizes, but that we catch tantalizing glimpses of in our dreams.
I’ll conclude my brief personal list of telepathic and precognitive dreams (because there are more) with one I had approximately two weeks ago. 
I dreamed of a woman who once lived in Virginia, a woman who wasn’t me and yet who, in the end, was me; I both observed her and became her as an old woman I “saw” pass away. Then the year of her birth appeared before me. I “squinted” my awareness, making an intent effort to focus, and clearly distinguished the date: 1880. I also saw/heard spoken the name of the place where she was buried: Buckeye Cemetery. In the morning, I Googled the name of the cemetery and, to my astonishment, it actually exists not far from here in West Virginia. And, remarkably, I was able to view all the tombstones because they had been photographed and put online. I scrolled through them. There was only one person, a woman, born in 1880: Susie S. Mayo 1880-1950, and carved on her memorial plaque were the words: LOVE LIGHT MY WAY TO GOD. I thought, Yep, that’s something I might have written on my grave. I was grateful to her/me for reminding us of what really matters.
As I was writing it, I emailed my friend Hugh O’Connor the first paragraph of this article and he replied: “One of the effects of this point of view is to make people more observant of whatever reality they find themselves in at any moment. If you expect interesting occurrences, you are more alert and on watch for them. And if you find them… life becomes so interesting that you start becoming perpetually appreciative of the marvelous everywhere around you. Dismissing synchronistic events as coincidence is another way of saying: There’s no point in deepening my moment-to-moment attention to the world and its possibilities, because there is nothing really interesting going on there. That conclusion leads to progressive inattention to the evidence of mystery, as people talk themselves out of seeing the magic that plays out persistently right before their eyes and of which they are always a part.”
Not to realize this is to sleep through life even when your eyes are supposedly open. It’s time to wake up to the knowledge we’re all dreaming, both awake and asleep, and that we each play a special, vital part in creating the worlds we inhabit.
OTHER ARTICLES
1. Seth Speaks and Skyrim
I was fortunate enough to begin my gaming life in the realm of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, 2011 game of the year, renowned for its huge, beautifully rendered world through which it’s possible to wander freely in an open-ended system that enables you to accept and fulfill quests at your leisure. And just as in so-called real life, curiosity and a sense of adventure—with all the seemingly random encounters and conversations it leads to—opens your character up to more and more intriguing possibilities and challenges. Frankly, I was blown away; I had no idea how much fun I was getting myself into.
With just a brush of a fingertip, the little black electronic temple of my Xbox 360 awakens with a musical trill as a green light opens the way to another world… a world that exists simultaneously with my own and yet which I enter as a character, a creative projection of the real me… I’ve read about all the latest scientific theories concerning parallel universes and infinite probable selves and circumstances all existing simultaneously, but it wasn’t until I began gaming that these theories, intertwining with my belief in reincarnation, began having a visceral, liberating effect on me. And it just so happens that at the same time I began gaming I began re-reading Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul by Jane Roberts. By then I had created two separate characters in Skyrim, the first a male Mage, the second a female warrior.
Skyrim felt like a totally different place when I was playing as my fearless warrior; I traveled routes, met people and had experiences my first character never even dreamed of. As she relished all the quests my other character avoided—they each had distinct personalities—I thought how strange and exciting it was to wander the same streets as a newborn, so to speak, while never running into my other, older character. I thought how cool it would be if they could meet up, for the real me was aware of both of them, engaged in their adventures and growth without being subject to any of the rules and constraints they were forced to live by. Even though the Mage felt older to me, my two characters exist simultaneously inside the game’s mathematical molecules, the magical building blocks of 0 and 1. Then I read what Seth had to say:
“Now these various plays, these creative period pieces represent what you would call reincarnational lives. They all exist basically at one time… these “plays” are highly spontaneous affairs in which the actors have full freedom within the play’s framework… Your own multi-dimensional personality is so endowed that it can have these experiences and still retain its identity. It is, of course, affected by the various plays in which it takes part… in them the multi-dimensional personality learns through its own actions… You are the multi-dimensional self who has these existences, who creates and takes part in these cosmic passion plays, so to speak. It is only because you focus on this particular role now that you identify your entire being with it… consciousness is in a state of becoming. It is learning the art of actualization… And all of this is done with great spontaneity and unbound joy.”
After only a few days of playing Skyrim, the world felt less solid, less real in the sense of confining. I would step outside and perceive the light, the inner glow of trees, leaves, clouds, sky, everything. 
I felt distinctly surrounded, embraced by a creative force shining in and defined by forms no more real, as in permanent, than the world in a video game. In those moments, it was easy for me to believe my current personality, my ego, is merely one character or expression of who I truly am. Creating and playing are indistinguishable from each other. I felt what I believe—the individual I presently am is a creation even though there’s no separating my limited, seemingly confined existence from the Creator anymore than you can separate video games and the characters inhabiting them from their creators.
Just as characters obey the rules of the game they’re a part of, rules which are irrelevant to the Gamer, so too do we obey the rules of our physical existence even though these laws are, in essence, creations of our Inner Self. The ego we’re currently playing through lives by certain rules but, like our virtual characters, we possess a mysterious mainline to the creative consciousness defining and manifesting these specific parameters. Games provide their characters with clues about how to proceed by way of messages that flash outside the action, for example “Your health is low, take a potion” or “You do not have the necessary skill to do that (yet.)” We’re never really alone. In our hearts, with our intuition, we feel and therefore know things the brain merely serves to put into words.
My characters make mistakes and learn from them, and so do I. The other day my husband told me he could see changes in me brought about by my virtual experiences, “as though you actually lived them.” Some may say games aren’t real, but by that very logic you would have to say life isn’t real either, because all experiences are real in the sense that the soul is stimulated and even transformed by them. I wholeheartedly believe we are all of us part of one infinite drive to create, to play, and that existence on the physical plain is specifically designed to drive that point home while helping to teach us how. Life as we experience it now might be akin to a first grade classroom, who knows. Imagine how boring, how crazy it would be to identify exclusively with one character in one game.
My Xbox 360 and Skyrim were the Christmas gifts I requested last year. Gaming has deepened my identification with my Inner Self, for which time is always an exciting, perpetually unfolding present, pun intended, a gift we’re unwrapping inside the tree of Life. The more I play Skyrim, the more my own home feels like a virtual house and my current persona like a character of the real me—the Divine Gamer, if you will. Gaming highlights the haunting, thrilling truth that neither home is more real than the other one to my Inner Self, who loves inhabiting potentially endless creations.
I thoroughly enjoy the adventures I have through game characters, each one akin to a life time as I become mentally and emotionally involved in their experiences, but at the end of the day, I am so much more than they are, and much more than myself.
2. What’s Wrong with the World?
Someone inspired me to concisely sum up what’s wrong with the world. My response:
The concept of an immortal spirit battling to transcend our mortal flesh has murdered the Goddess, who in ancient Egypt and other enlightened cultures was revered as God’s Hand. Hence the worldwide subjugation of women and the violence perpetrated against them as on the body of our planet. When sensuality and spirituality are unnaturally divorced from each other, death becomes something to be feared instead of merely one side of a Divine currency.
All current global issues, mass extinction of species, the “war on women”, unrest in the Middle East, etc., revolve around the centuries-old abuse of the feminine principle—the Goddess, the Mother of God, God’s Hand, the Body of God—suppressed and suffering in service to the idea espoused by most organized religions of “pure” spirit, which in social and economic terms translates into profits achieved primarily by heartlessly controlling and destroying sensual, corporeal, manifested life by viewing it as ultimately inferior to the divine (masculine) will.
The hatred of women, the gateway into sensual life, is rooted in a visceral terror of death. Idealization of the pure masculine principle justifies abuse of the feminine in all its forms as the vehicle for this (totally abstract) fall from grace. But since pleasure as well as pain is an indelible part of physical incarnation, this extreme patriarchal attitude disguises what is, in fact, a spiritual impotence—which distorts healthy joys into abusive lusts—caused by the terrible fear that this life, this imperfect world, is all that actually exists.
The world is increasingly suffering from a crisis of faith exacerbated by materialistic pseudo-science stoking this destructive attitude by implying, if not outright stating, we are all serving a meaningless life sentence because there is (supposedly) no evidence of spiritual dimensions beyond our physical cells.
The fear of death, of cancer, of our body betraying us is exacerbated by the lack of connection generally believed to exist between our thoughts and feelings (our soul) and our physical health and circumstances, which conventional “wisdom” tells us is merely the result of either genetic “fate” and/or mindless (Godless) chance. If God only cares about our immortal soul, the body is left to the devil and becomes an enemy constantly threatening to betray us no matter how religiously we exercise and diet. The loving union of spirit and flesh, God and Goddess, thought and reality (now termed matter and energy) has been disastrously severed.
The Catholic Church accepts the principle of “incarnating the divine” but condemns sexuality except as a procreative act, and hides women and their bodies away in convents while only men perform the sacraments. What happened to the priestess?
Patriarchal civilization has crippled the Goddess—the creative forces of nature, unquantifiable intuitive realities, the mystery of the so-called subconscious and the power of dreams—with its linear conquering rationalism, which is not sustainable because the human soul will always fight back. Humanity is now in the desperate, critical throes of a battle in defense of life’s true eternal-sensual nature.
3. The Modern Shape Shifter
Shamans, the original shape shifters, understand that spirituality and sensuality are the two sides of a Divine currency. Enter onto the stage now the ultra sexy shape shifter hero of the contemporary paranormal romance, a modern yet ancient, timeless man. By his very nature, the modern shape shifter transcends the strictly rational view of the world expounded by pseudo-science, and the society that spawned it, in which our awareness with all its miraculous subtlety and detail is viewed as interesting and worth studying even though it’s only a coincidence of chemicals. What makes the modern shape shifter so sexy and desirable is his tormented spirit; he embodies the magical importance, the transcendent nature, of consciousness itself as independent of forms even as it mysteriously relishes the experience of inhabiting them. He lives in the world of quantum physics and true scientists who joyfully explore reality without limiting it.
Vampires also embody the profound frustration the human soul is currently suffering from; the emptiness experienced by so many people (and which drug companies happily strive to fill with anti-depressants) even though their lives are brimming with material gratifications easily obtained without any apparent consequences. Those are the good, romantic vampires vs. the evil ones, the vampires of soulless corporations and governments that continue bleeding the planet dry of its resources, selfishly clinging to an unnatural, heartless lifestyle. Evile vampires are personifications of a civilization that’s been dying for centuries because it’s based on unsustainable principles.
The undead can’t enjoy food or drink because the feeling of pleasure, along with all our other perceptions/emotions, arises from the inscrutable “part” of us at every instant mysteriously and effortlessly processing the information picked up by the senses—our soul. For centuries, the human soul has been crucified by social structures that treat the earth primarily as an external resource providing physical nourishment, necessities and luxuries divorced from our innermost being. If it exists at all, eternal life is generally conceived of as insubstantial, the abstraction of pure spirit. And so the magical womb of corporeal experiences, quickened by the Divine “force” of life itself, is regarded instead as a prison (cushy for some harsh for most) where we’re all serving meaningless life sentences, either ideally anticipating the freedom of heaven or like zombies (also significantly popular these days) dreading an eternal grave. Vampires are irresistible because they prove immortality is a fact and that it’s intensely sensual, alive with potentially unending desires, not an abstract heaven or merely an extinction of consciousness.
The romantic shape shifter women of all ages are drawn to was born in the desperate space created by the war between spirit and flesh. There’s no difference between energy and matter that isn’t fabricated, exquisitely woven, by the physical senses consciousness–the Supreme shape shifter–is currently creating and playing with. The real fun hasn’t even begun.
LUCID DREAMS
1. Don’t Believe What They Tell You, Keep Dreaming
I’m living in an apartment in some quiet city and I really want Mami to come over for dinner. I know she lives nearby and that it will be a simple matter to drive her home afterward. I really want to see her and have her over, so to this end I find myself out on the street in front of my building communicating with my brother, ostensibly by telephone. He seems to think it isn’t possible and I say, “Ah, but you see, I’m dreaming, and in this dream I know her address. It’s 118 Vial Street.” I begin walking as I speak, clarifying, “V-i-a-l as in a vial, not v-i-l-e.” At this point, I can’t see a thing, as though my eyes are closed, but I’m determined to imagine/visualize the streets and houses as I know they’re laid out. I come to a corner and have to decide if that’s zero or 1st street. I determine the next one down is 1st street and I keep following my visualization even though it’s difficult to construct an entire residential neighborhood with just my imagination. I make myself arrive at the appropriate address (these are older three-story residences as found in Arlington, MA) walk up the steps and tell my companion, a featureless silhouette, to try the key, and it works! “Good job,” I say, and enter the building with confidence, because now I know the door to the apartment can also be unlocked.
I start up the steps and when I come to the first landing, suddenly I can see it very distinctly. Yes, there’s the white paint and slight orange stains on it, all very familiar, I’m really here! I made it, I’m in a lucid dream. In that instant, someone grabs me from behind and propels me up the remaining steps to the door of the apartment. It feels good, part of the thrill of being conscious in a dream, but I don’t want to get too excited and wake up. We enter the apartment and I wonder to which one of my probable selves it belongs and what I’m meant to discover and do there. Such a sense of achievement already that I made it into the world of one of my Soul’s other selves. 
The person behind me is still propelling me forward and I see a man’s silhouette as we pass in front of a mirror hanging on the wall. A very small part of me is anxious but for the most part I’m more curious than concerned when I ask him, “Who are you?” and when he doesn’t respond, again, “Who are you?” I manage to turn around and am pleased to make out in the darkness a hard but handsome face and hair that’s at least shoulder-length even though he remains a silhouette. “Is there something I’m supposed to know?” I query, thinking he might have something to tell me. I think I repeat the question before he answers, “Just go for it” his voice firm yet encouraging. I say, “Okay!” I get that he wants me to just flow with the dream and see where it leads and I’m more than happy to do that.
Now it’s obvious that the occupants of the apartment are asleep because it’s night time and the place is dark and quiet. I get the sense of white walls and furnishings. It’s laid out essentially like my waking life house but it is not in the least familiar; it’s another home entirely. 
I head down the hallway and see a little boy standing just outside the bedrooms in the dark corridor. I approach him smiling. “Hello,” I say, “are you dreaming too?” He seems to nod but I sense he’s confused, he’s very young, and like many little kids he has a natural ability to see disembodied people. I speak reassuringly and brightly, “That’s great, we’re all dreaming. We’re awake in a dream.” What’s curious is that he has what appears to be a mask that covers his entire head quite tightly, as though made of thick plastic wrap that’s a rather sickly green in color.
The door to the master bedroom is open and I can see his parents sleeping in there. I know without thinking about it that they are not very pleasant or intelligent people, and I discern the big pot belly of the boy’s father and the not generous or caring thinness of the woman. Their personalities are clear to me even though I can barely see them. I follow the boy into his parents’ bedroom, into which he’s backing up as if pulled in that direction. Indeed, his mother sits up and impatiently tugs him up onto the bed with her, telling him to shush because he’s mumbling as though talking in his sleep. In a flash, I understand that he’ll grow up being told dreams aren’t real and receive no encouragement in developing any ability he possesses. I lean over him where he’s lying in bed with his mother and tell him, “Don’t believe what they tell you. Keep dreaming!” As I speak I understand that I’m a teacher and that the man with me has brought me to, and is supervising, my first lucid instruction, because I know that I’ve been helping, or teaching people in a similar fashion in non-lucid dreams for a very long time, but that I’m being promoted, in a sense, and this is my first time on this level. I understand all this in a flash but don’t allow the thought to distract me with pride; I’m simply content.
As I leave the bedroom, I wonder how the kid can breathe in that mask, which he has to wear around his parents, but I am hopeful, I seem to know for a fact, that for the rest of his life he’ll remember this dream; he’ll remember the man and woman he met in a dream who confirmed the fact that he was dreaming and that it was real, and that this memory will aid him in overcoming all the obstacles he will encounter in his upbringing. 
Back in the living room, I am drawn to the western wall, which has a window lining the bottom, where I crouch and gaze out at a beautiful bird sitting right outside the glass. “Oh, look at this bird!” I exclaim to my companion, clearly seeing it’s deep yet bright-blue feathers that are faceted like jewels with other rich colors. I force myself to look away from it because I don’t want to wake up as a result of focusing on one thing for too long.
I can feel the sun rising and it does indeed seem to be morning because the family is waking up, walking out into the living room. My companion (still a tall, dark presence I don’t really focus on) remarks on the attractive sight of the man’s hairy pot belly rising from the mattress, which amuses me. And what’s interesting is that the little boy can still see us. As his parents go about their groggy morning business, he stands against the wall staring at us. My companion then demonstrates to him that you can fly in dreams, that you can do anything, and I join in by rising off the ground and doing a slow backward flip, something I’ve never done before in dreams, and I’m not quite sure how to do it, but I seem to succeed and understand that I’m educating myself as well, learning not to be so linear in the sense of behaving in dreams as though I’m in waking reality.
I get the feeling it’s time to leave but for some reason we can’t go out the front entrance and I spend a few urgent seconds prying open a glass door from the wall. I succeed and it’s a relief to get out of the apartment’s stuffy atmosphere into a lighter, fresher space. 
I can see through the walls and ceiling of the corridor to the outside world, a sort of city street scene, but I’m still inside. This is a familiar problem from other lucid dreams, and I’m determined to find a way out. I spot some stairs and head down them, wondering and hoping my companion will follow me, but then I hear him ask me where I’m going. I look up at him and tell him, “We went up to get there, so I’m going down to get outside” which makes perfect sense, but he informs me, telepathically (as all the speaking in this dream has been really) that’s not where we want to go, and I understand he means it’s real busy and distracting down there. But I’ve found a door and walk outside in triumph; I’ve made it out of the confining space and am now free to fly away if I please. I distinctly see two men in suits speaking and I admire the face of one of them as I walk by, especially his mouth, thinking, what a sexy mouth he has and hoping he’ll notice me and tempted to interact with him, but I keep walking and feel the dream fading away as I find myself lying in bed at approximately 5:00 a.m.
***
In another dream, I recognize events as ones that I’ve foreseen in a dream. Walking past my sister sipping juice in a corner of a restaurant, I tell her I’ve seen her doing this in a dream. I’ve also seen the men helping me load my belongings into a moving truck doing it in a dream. I’m elated that what I’ve dreamed is coming to pass exactly as I saw it. I walk outside at night, on cold wet flagstones, to the shining dark-blue car I’ll be riding in to my new home, and in which I sense deceased family members already sitting, waiting. I watch as items that might have been left behind are hastily stacked on a round, Indian-style table with a raised gilded border, items I recognize from already having unpacked them in reality, so I know they’ll make the journey safely. I seem to recall a carved ebony elephant and other aesthetic items with an Oriental look. Then walking with Mami inside a small, shadowy, tasteful gentleman’s-club-like bar, I’m telling her, in an excited voice, about how my dreams are coming true. The dark-haired bar tender can’t help but overhear, and I’m glad he’s interested in what I’m saying. But then someone walks in and demands his attention and I have to keep moving. Just beyond the bar, in a white, well-lit foyer of sorts, I pause before walking outside. 
Now the man is standing in the doorway of a small space like a break room listening to me and watching me as he leans against the wall smoking a cigarette. I really have to leave but, before I go, I walk right up to him and kiss him full on the lips. When I step back, he dramatically blows out the mouthful of smoke I almost made him swallow. I know he’s deliberately being amusing, but that the truth is he doesn’t really want me to go, he’s only acting this way to make it easier for me. I recognize, as in countless other dreams, that we can’t be together now, not yet.
2. On and Off the Bus and Seeing God
I’m on a bus at night. I have no clue I’m dreaming; it feels quite real being on a bus driving through a city, a poorer section, not dangerous but not the best place to work, which is vaguely why I’m there. It’s dark on the bus as well as outside it, although I can just make out sidewalks. As the bus takes a right, I realize my stop is coming up any second now. I see the push bar/chord just ahead of me on the right but I won’t be able to reach it in time. I cry, “Please stop the bus! I can’t reach the chord, my arm is stiff!” I’m a little surprised and very glad when the driver breaks and stops the bus smoothly and in time, because we were going at a good, accelerating pace. I see and feel myself get off the bus and yet I also remain on the bus. I think the me who is out on the sidewalk now should just stand there for a moment with a stiff arm so the bus driver won’t suspect I lied to him but I discard the thought as dishonest and unnecessary.
The me on the bus is relieved for the me who needed to get off, that it went smoothly. There are no other passengers and the bus driver is invisible in the darkness but I sense his presence. I become aware of the fact that we’re going faster and faster, accelerating through the absolute darkness, which I think should alarm me and yet it intrigues me. The driver’s confidence and unrelenting drive, literally, pleases me, they feel good in a way. And yet we seem to be going much too fast for it to be even possible, a fact that is confirmed when just above us (I can somehow see through the roof of the vehicle) I discern what looks to be a military plane, one of the fastest known to man, and we’re not only gaining on it, we’re passing it! I must be dreaming!
I’m happy to realize I’m in a dream even though I can’t see a thing. Darkness and the sense of moving forward at a great speed adds up to a sense of peace and contentment. The darkness seems to concentrate in a center like the spokes of a wheel where I discern a faint but distinct orange light/circle, what I saw the other day looking directly at the sun with my eyes closed. I have no idea where we’re going but that thought doesn’t even cross my mind; I’m there and I’m going, but being there is the same thing as travelling. Difficult to put into words how I felt.
When I can see again, I can see through the bus. I’m looking directly out at the sky, for I’m in the sky now, high above the world I no longer have any sense of, or thought for. I see the upper part of a man rendered in a gentle black-and-white (sort of like snow on bare tree branches), his head and shoulders and part of his torso. That’s all I can see of him because he’s huge, colossal, and slowly turning in the sky toward me. I think, “In a moment I’m going to see his face, Hapuseneb’s face… the face of God…” Yet at once I know that any man’s face I see will be the face of God for all men are God. There is no coherent sense of up and down where I am, and though He stopped twirling toward me just before I would have clearly seen His face, I’m expecting, waiting to become one with Him, to embrace Him, and when that doesn’t happen, I reach up so I can at least caress his chest, run my hands along his pecs, feel Him. I encounter a glass ceiling. “What’s this?” I exclaim, slapping my hands in frustration against a clear barrier that shouldn’t be there but distinctly is.
I lower my hands and center myself as I become aware of my tank top or bra beneath my shirt slipping down over my nipples, making me very conscious of them in an arousing way that grounds me in the dream. I feel the rising tide of sexual desire but let it flow past me instead of jumping on it like a surfer catching a wave I know will land me in my bed. The “bus” is still moving forward, but I can’t think of where it’s going as I simply concentrate on rooting myself in the dream. I feel myself waking up. (Next time I’ll think of a place I want to go and ask the driver to stop there!)
3. You Can Have Anything You Want
I had this profoundly seminal lucid dream on May 27th:
I’m with someone I identify as my husband standing near the entrance of a large open yet enclosed space difficult to identify, a cross between an airport, a mall, a great hotel, etc. I look into his eyes and immediately realize this is a dream. I tell him, “We’re dreaming! This is a dream!” hoping he’ll understand and his unfocused eyes will focus, but if they do so, it’s only the tiniest bit. Impatient and eager, I grab his arm and declare, “Let’s fly!” Still holding onto him, I ascend into the open space surrounded by colorful walls. “Do you see the same colors I do?” I ask my zombie-like companion, who doesn’t reply. Bright red, yellow and white are angled into shining neon shapes that are also words as we float east toward the entrance.
Outside it’s night time and I fly out eagerly, losing my companion, who I look back and see is standing/floating near the entrance to that vast, amorphous structure as though he can go no farther. 
I’m not inclined to go back for him and wave a farewell as I proceed eagerly up and out into the open sky. I’m high up and yet still feel close to the earth as I distinctly see a woman–her arms at her sides and her posture as still and vertical as a carved figurine’s even though she’s real–plunge straight down through a layer of clouds that part around her then close again. I think this cloud-mist, what I could discern of it in the darkness, was tinged a bluish green. I have to remind myself to do a deepening technique, giving my chest and breasts a cursory pat down; I feel perfectly rooted in the dream.
There’s a long moment where I simply look around me, open to whatever I might see, to whatever the dream might put before me, but then abruptly I remember what I was worried about before I went to bed. I ask the dream a very specific (personal) question then I look around me for some place where the answer might be found, a doorway I can open, something. At once I see a brightly lit room at the western end of a long, single story building. In the darkness it stands out like a light house and I can even see the shapes of wooden furniture inside it. I fly straight down toward it and into it, eagerly looking for a drawer to open. I distinctly see clean, new-looking wooden furnishings, which include one or two picnic tables. It feels somewhat like a room used to hold the work of a single expert carpenter and craftsman. I alight/kneel before a table/dresser with a drawer and open it. 
Inside, and yet now also on top of it, a little pig carved in blue wood comes to life and says clearly, almost urgently, “No! No! False alarm! False alarm!” almost jumping up and down it’s so apparently intent on answering my question. I laugh out loud it’s so adorable and because I’m completely surprised and thrilled to get a straight answer from the dream; not merely a “yes” or “no” as I had hoped for but a resounding “No!” And though the object was a little pig it was also shaped like a clock, round, with a straight base, and yet there were no arms or numbers, which in retrospect made it look more like an animated Shen Ring, the ancient Egyptian symbol for eternity.
I leave the room absolutely delighted and, flying low through the sky, almost immediately come upon a large mirror with a gilded frame, just like in my last lucid dream. However, this time I see myself reflected as I look now, not younger, wearing the dress I wore in waking life the evening before, the only difference is, I’m black! I study my skin and see that it’s not paint, or ashes or anything smearing me; I distinguish the natural pores in my flesh. I smile at myself, intrigued to see what I would have looked like as a colored woman. (This is another subconscious reference to ancient Egypt, where only gods and people who had achieved their divine flesh were portrayed with black faces.)
As in my last lucid dream, I fly around the left side of the mirror. Somehow, I end up in front of a long and tall white walls which for some reason I feel I have to climb rather than fly over. I’m not alone; there are several other women standing in this narrow corridor between these pure white walls. The women are all attractive, I notice, dressed in form-fitting outfits of various colors, and very briefly, in passing, I entertain the possibility of becoming a little more intimate with one of them, but the impulse vanishes almost the instant it arises. We’re all intent on scaling the white walls, and suddenly I wonder why the hell we can’t just fly over them, at which point I do just that. Other women follow me up, but one of them is more concerned with me, in fact, she’s attacking me; before I know it, she’s bitten the right side of my neck. I push her away and prevent her from coming near me again, I have the power to do so, and I can’t believe it when she complains to the others about my aggressive behavior. “Are you kidding?” I say. “You’re the one who bit my neck!”
Wanting to just get out of there, I fly Superman style straight up toward the ceiling, intending to go through it. I penetrate it easily, but suddenly I have no desire to make the effort to go through this white material which is like no material known to waking reality, a pure white that is both a solid and a liquid, dense and yet no more substantial than fog, impossible to describe.
I don’t feel like struggling with it in this particular lucid dream and I reverse direction, the only problem is, the ceiling follows me down, collapsing, as it were, around me. I’m surprised, this has never happened before in a lucid dream. There’s no getting away from it, I’m pushed down and engulfed in this impossible substance pinning me beneath it. I’ve never had a lucid dream end on a negative note before, and have no intention of waking up at this point. Picking myself up, I don’t fight the substance in which I find myself but instead attempt to transform it into pure potential, to visualize its infinite white as separate points of light akin to all the stars in the universe and all other possible universes, willing myself into the light so that a faint golden glow begins very faintly suffusing my white “prison.”
Then abruptly I’m whisked away from there, carried out of there by a force cradling me from behind that propels me, if I have to describe it with words, at the speed of light. And I see light not far below me in the form of a golden electricity illuminating a diner/cafe/bar with glass walls very much reminiscent of the painting Night Owls. At the same time I distinctly hear a voice, that comes from so close behind me it’s ostensibly inside me, tell me, “You can have anything you want.” This voice/telepathic communication is different from that of other dream characters, it is a presence in itself and what it tells me rings with the truth of revelation. Almost impossible to put into words the intensity and depth of what I felt cradled, embraced, rescued by this “force” propelling me forward while at the same time “settling” me inside the cafe’s golden light at a small round table while explaining (I paraphrase) “It can’t (ever) be defined, the mistake is to try, because if It could be (so contained) It wouldn’t be what It is.” It’s not like I’m being told something I don’t already know, it’s as though the knowledge is now mysteriously branded into my soul by this voice, which verifies what I already knew intellectually in a visceral way that will somehow free me in the future as it freed me from that engulfing “milky” substance.
I suffer a false awakening in which our bed is outside on a dark, quiet residential street. Lying there remembering my lucid dream, I’m facing a gray mailbox shaped like a cow’s head that turns and looks at me; it’s alive. (Another reference to ancient Egypt.) I think it very curious, it’s like a mailbox in a dream, and yet I’m awake, I know I am. Stinger isn’t in bed, and suddenly I see he’s gotten Arthur out of his cage even though it’s still dark out. “Why did you wake him up?” I cry, “it’s not morning yet!” at which point the stress wakes me up for real.
DREAMS
1. The Hawk and the Serpent
In a dream, I’m standing outside near the corner of our house where, in waking reality, the asparagus bed is behind me and the humming bird/butterfly garden is beside me. I’m looking north in the direction of the vegetable garden. I’m unwrapping a large dark-green insect of sorts, the tiny feet of which I’m eating, one, two, three pieces, delicate, luminous and delicious. I know it’s odd and I should be disgusted, but I can’t be because these tiny treats dissolve in my mouth in a similar fashion to our waking reality wine berries. But then I notice the insect is still alive and it’s large; daunting. I decide to step back and let it escape; it’s not harmed, and I don’t want it turning on me. I’ve enjoyed enough of these mysterious little treats, time to let it go and get on with its insect life.
I notice then that our property is bursting with even more life than usual, and the color of the grass and trees is as deep as in waking reality but more luminous. 
I see a small bird or two and butterflies before I notice a really large feathered creature sitting in the somewhat tall grass just a few feet away from me. An owl? No, a hawk! Horus! I’m thrilled to watch this bird that means so much to me spiritually casually feeding, without fear, in front of me. I assume it must be attending to some tiny creature it’s caught. Then I see the huge, bright green and gold-trimmed cobra to the right of the hawk. It’s magnificent, and although I can only see its distinct hood and the top part of its “body” it’s obviously longer than I am tall; monstrous. I realize this snake is the hawk’s target as it attacks it, but the snake fights back. This is all happening a mere foot or two away from me, a glorious, horrifying battle.
At first the hawk seems unstoppable, but then the snake takes the upper hand in the struggle and I take a step back, then another one, and another one, enthralled and yet thinking I really shouldn’t be standing so close to this awesome, deadly serpent. I back away slowly and then run around the corner of the house, intending to continue watching the battle from the safety of the rec room bay windows, where I will have a clear view. But once I’m inside the angle of the sun or something makes the lighting such that all I can distinguish is silhouettes of the bird and the serpent. Thankfully, the hawk has taken the upper hand again.
I should be filming this! I run into my study, grab my video camera, turn it on as I run back into the rec room, switch it to the red camera setting and begin shooting. Unfortunately, someone has called the police and all I get on film is the aftermath of the epic battle. The snake, still alive but wounded, is carried east wrapped in cloth. Meanwhile, a woman in a dark, official uniform of sorts holds out her right arm and calls the hawk to her. The bird alights obediently on her wrist like a trained falcon. She quickly heads north with it and at the edge of the trees releases it, sending it soaring over the forest and back up into the sky. I’m impressed a modern emergency response individual has been trained in falconry. I have all this on film but I missed out on capturing the battle. I’m glad Horus is unharmed but a little concerned and annoyed (who the hell called the authorities?) he wasn’t able to finish off the serpent.
Dream Notes:
The beginning of the dream seems to relate to sustainability, to not feeling guilty about being an omnivore even while respecting the need for moderation, the delicious insect representing the earth and all its resources. The bulk of the dream has to do, I feel, with an ailing friend whose physical body is struggling fiercely to preserve itself, at war with his spirit. Stubbornly, this person longs for the return of earthly comforts and pleasures but he has lost his appetite; his body is slowly but inexorably shutting down. The snake/body was wrapped up in blankets, not dead but not completely alive anymore either, merely existing. The emergency response people are the doctors keeping him alive. The woman who took hold of the hawk and urged it up into the sky is how I feel about it all–that death is a joyous freedom and hell is lingering in an ailing, pleasureless body. There should not be this terrible struggle. We should be able to die with as little fear, even excitement, as we fall asleep to dream every night. That’s the ideal, and the sweetest side effect of spiritual development.
In the dream I was on the side of the falcon, of Horus, of the soul, even while the beauty and power of the serpent was also awe-inspiring. It’s not easy leaving behind our physical vehicle, I’m not so foolish as to imagine it’s not a battle, but it should be a beautiful, majestic, mystical struggle in which there is no doubt Horus will triumph because he and Wadjet (the serpent) are two sides (eternal energy and the forms it assumes) of a conscious creative power, which is why a bird and a serpent appear side-by-side on Pharaoh’s forehead. I was disappointed that all I captured on film was a black-and-white struggle and the “paramedics” because in our society there are only secular institutions, like machine shops, where old bodies/cars go when they no longer run properly, and no real care goes into the transition from this dimension of being into another. There is no priestess to urge the soul to take flight without fear that the spirit world has nothing to do with life as we know it. Death, at best, looms as a sterile, formless paradise. But in reality, Horus and Isis, spirit and form, hawk and serpent, are united on the Other Side, which we escape to every night in dreams. Ideally, dying should be a conscious transition into lucid dreams, the ultimate WILD.*
The rest of my life is devoted to becoming as that woman who called the hawk to her, walked it to the edge of the forest of this side of being, and launched it up into the sky and the ultimate spiritual-sensual freedom, for which I’ve already begun practicing in my lucid dreams, to the benefit of my waking reality–the magical moment when I saw the hawk and the serpent sitting side by side in the grass of my yard, of my life.
*Wake Induced Lucid Dream
Pingback: Surfer Technique for Lucid Dreaming | dream studies portal