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Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life Paperback – May 7, 1996
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Conscious Dreaming shows you how to use your dreams to understand your past, shape your future, get in touch with your deepest desires, and be guided by your higher self. Author Robert Moss explains how to apply shamanic dreamwork techniques, most notably from Australian Aboriginal and Native American traditions, to the challenges of modern life and embark on dream journeys. Moss's methods are easy, effective, and entertaining, animated by his skillful retelling of his own dreams and those of his students—and the dreams' often dramatic insights and outcomes.
According to Moss, some shamans believe that nothing occurs in ordinary reality unless it has been dreamed first. In the dreamscape, we not only glimpse future events, we can also develop our ability to choose more carefully between possible futures. Conscious Dreaming's innovative system of dream-catching and transpersonal interpretation, of dream re-entry adn keeping a dream journal enables the reader to tap the deepest sources of creativity and intuition and make better choices in the critical passages of life.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarmony/Rodale/Convergent
- Publication dateMay 7, 1996
- Dimensions5.19 x 0.87 x 8 inches
- ISBN-10051788710X
- ISBN-13978-0517887103
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Review
—Patricia Garfield, author of Creative Dreaming and The Healing Powers of Dreams
"This book is highly recommended for anyone wishing to explore dreams and how they can be used constructively in the craft of life."
—Larry Dossey, author of Healing Words and Recovering the Soul
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CALLED BY SEA EAGLE
My fascination with dreams springs from my early childhood in Australia, and that is where my exploration of the dreamworld began.
I had a strange, solitary boyhood—blighted or blessed, according to your point of view. Between the ages of two and eleven, I suffered twelve bouts of double pneumonia. After the third of these attacks, a Melbourne physician with a memorable bedside manner told my parents, "You'd better give up on this one and think about having another baby. This one is never going to make it."
But somehow "this one" seemed to keep dying and coming back. The doctors could never quite figure out why, just as they could never find a treatment for the swarm of allergies that for years made it dangerous for me to breathe normal air and then vanished overnight. Drugs had dwindling effect. The doctors eased off prescribing penicillin toward the end of these ordeals for fear my body would become completely impervious to it.
To survive, I had to learn how to breathe, even when I was drowning inside my own lungs. I had to learn how to shift attention so I could shut out sensations of physical pain. I became so good at this that shutting out the pain became another of my vulnerabilities. When I was nine, I mentioned a mild discomfort in my lower right abdomen to my father. He ran to fetch a doctor who lived nearby, knowing that there could be a serious problem since I had long since ceased to complain about pain. When the doctor came, he had me rushed to the hospital. My appendix was about to burst. The surgeon told my family that if I had arrived an hour later, I would almost certainly have died. My resistance had been weakened by yet another bout of pneumonia; the doctors did not believe my body could have withstood the shock of a ruptured appendix. But I had become so inured to shifting my awareness away from physical pain that I failed to report a cry of alarm from my body until it was almost too late.
The reward for long weeks and months spent in the half-light of sickrooms was an interior life that was wondrously active and exciting. In dreams and dreamlike states, I traveled to other places and times. I relived scenes from the life of a Royal Air Force pilot, a dashing fellow who was also a member of a secretive magical order. I saw him shot down over an occupied country in World War II and killed in captivity by Nazi collaborators. I felt this RAF pilot was intimately related to me. I have been dreaming about him, off and on, for much of my life.
Other dream visitors came to me in childhood. One was a radiant young man who called himself Philemon. He first appeared to me when I was about seven. He came from the edges of the Greek world, from a community on the Syrian or Phoenician coast where the tides of several world religions washed over each other in the first centuries of the Christian era. He belonged to a Mystery school and communicated with me in the precise but difficult vocabulary of the Neoplatonists, whom I discovered in libraries only many years later. He taught me that all true knowledge is anamnesis: the act of remembering what the soul already knows. He fed my passion for ancient history and comparative religion, which I briefly taught at university. I never thought of him as a dead person, still less an "imaginary companion." Philemon was wholly real to me. His guidance helped me make sense of my storms of illness and eventually showed me a path to healing. He explained the meaning of the caduceus of burning bronze I saw in the sky on the eve of my last childhood battle with pneumonia.
Years later, when I discovered Jung and immersed myself in his books, I was excited to find that the great psychologist also had a vision guide called Philemon. Jung perceived his Philemon differently, as an old man with the horns of a bull on his head and the wings of a kingfisher. Jung wrote that his Philemon convinced him of the objective reality of events in the psyche. One of the labors he set himself in his last years was to build a monument to Philemon with his own hands, at his home on the lake at Bollingen. 1
But as a small boy, I could invoke neither Jung nor the Neoplatonists to persuade the concerned but skeptical people around me that my encounters with Philemon and other spiritlike beings were more than fever dreams and hallucinations. The isolation imposed by my crises of illness was deepened by the fact that I was both an only child and an "Army brat," sent to eight different schools, on different sides of the Australian continent, before I arrived at university. In the small society I.knew in those days—predominantly WASP, highly chauvinistic, and classconscious—nobody spoke openly about dreams. On my fathers side, my family was straitlaced Scots Presbyterian, wedded to the fierce Calvinist teaching that only the elect will be saved, a matter decided before birth, and that even the elect will be damned if they fail to justify themselves through works. All show of emotion was frowned upon. Talk of dreams and spirits was immediately suspect as "Irish superstition," a charge to which my mother was keenly sensitive since on her side, we were Irish and in no way alien to the Celtic affinity for spirits—in both senses of the word! My mothers aunt Violet was a well-known psychic medium as well as an opera singer, Dame Nellie Melbas understudy and frequent companion. But Aunt Violet lived in West Australia, with the rest of my Irish relations, and most of my boyhood was spent on the East Coast, where my mother felt obliged to crush all outward signs of "Irish unreliability" under the stern gaze of the elders of the kirk.
My family, my schools, and my church all told me that dreams do not matter, that communication with spirits is unhealthy or undesirable, and that the dead do not speak to the living. Yet my childhood dreams were often more real to me than anything that took place in the schoolyard or my home. They were as real as the thrilling walk I once took through the Queensland bush, under a sunshower, when I heard the she-oaks sing and saw a sea eagle drop from the sky in a blaze of white feathers and cry out in a language I knew I could understand if I could only change my hearing.
An aching loneliness came with my inability to find friends and teachers with whom I could share my dreams safely and confirm their validity. For a few precious months, during one of my brief remissions from illness, this wall of loneliness was breached.
We were living at this time in Fortitude Valley, an inner suburb of Brisbane that has since become Chinatown and a notorious red-light district. I was six years old. In the street, after school, I ran into a slightly older boy who seemed as out of place as myself. His name was Jacko and he was an Aboriginal. He came from a broken, uprooted family. His fa- Introduction 5 ther was in jail, and his mother was often drunk. He spent his best times with his uncle Fred, a talented artist who made a fair living painting gum trees and koalas for the tourist trade when he was not drinking. My family had the reflexively racist attitudes toward "blackfellas" that was typical of middle-class Australians then, and perhaps now. They frowned on my association with Jacko. But I would still find a pretext to spend time with my new mate, get on a tram, and head off to hunt lizard and yabbies and talk. Our best talk was about dreams.
Jacko was the first person I knew who came from a dreaming culture: a tradition that prizes dreams as a valuable source of guidance, encourages dream-sharing, and respects those who "dream strong." As Aboriginals tell it, the ancestors dreamed this world—that hill, this river—into being. The Dreamtime is not a story of long ago. It is a sacred space, a hidden dimension of reality into which you can travel along the paths of dreaming, if you truly know how to dream. Jacko talked matter-of-factly about all of this. He might say, "My uncle Fred went into the Dreaming and he got the idea for a painting, the kind that's not for the tourists." Or: "I had a visit from my grandma last night. She's been gone ten years or so. She told me what Mum needs to take for her sciatica."
In this down-to-earth way, I heard things my own culture had not only failed to teach me but had actively denied. I learned that through dreams, we approach our deepest creative source. That in dreams, we receive messages from the dead, messages that may be vital to our health and well-being. That in dreaming, we can journey outside our bodies; we can travel into the future as well as the past and encounter spiritual guides in other dimensions of reality.
Product details
- Publisher : Harmony/Rodale/Convergent; First Edition (May 7, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 051788710X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0517887103
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.19 x 0.87 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #377,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #308 in Dreams (Books)
- #4,927 in Occult & Paranormal
- #10,220 in Psychology & Counseling
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Robert Moss is the pioneer of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of shamanism and modern dreamwork. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming and lively online courses for The Shift Network. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar.
His many books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming, Dreaming the Soul Back Home, and "The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse." His latest book is "Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life."
Moss is also the author of Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories (Excelsion Editions, 2013).
Moss describes himself as "a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture." He identifies the great watershed in his adult life as a sequence of visionary events that unfolded in 1987-1988, after he decided to leave the world of big cities and the fast-track life of a popular novelist (already the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Moscow Rules) and put down roots on a farm in the upper Hudson Valley of New York. Moss started dreaming in a language he did not know that proved to be an archaic form of the Mohawk language. Helped by native speakers to interpret his dreams, Moss came to believe that they had put him in touch with an ancient healer - a woman of power - and that they were calling him to a different life.
Out of these experiences he wrote a series of historical novels (The Firekeeper, Fire Along the Sky, The Interpreter) and developed the practice he calls Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of contemporary dreamwork and shamanic methods of journeying and healing. A central premise of Moss's approach is that dreaming isn't just what happens during sleep; dreaming is waking up to sources of guidance, healing and creativity beyond the reach of the everyday mind.He introduced his method to an international audience as an invited presenter at the conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams at the University of Leiden in 1994.
Core techniques of Active Dreaming include
The "lightning dreamwork" process, designed to facilitate quick dream-sharing that results in helpful action; the use of the "if it were my dream" protocol encourages the understanding that the dreamer is always the final authority on his or her dream
Dream reentry: the practice of making a conscious journey back inside a dream in order to clarify information, dialogue with a dream character, or move beyond nightmare terrors into healing and resolution
Tracking and group dreaming: conscious dream travel on an agreed itinerary by two or more partners, often supported by shamanic drumming
Navigating by synchronicity: reading coincidence and "symbolic pop-ups" in ordinary life as "everyday oracles".
Dream archaeology: melding the arts of shamanic dreaming with scholarship and detective work to access other times and cultures and bring back fresh and authentic knowledge that can be tested and verified.
Exploring the multiverse and the multidimensional self.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book provides a comprehensive and accessible method for learning about dreams. They find it useful and accessible, providing inspiration and advice for dream study. The writing quality is described as delightful and easy to follow, with an honest author who selects his words carefully.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book provides a comprehensive method for learning about dreams and dreaming firsthand. They say the author has achieved some level of dream mastery, providing inspiration and advice for getting more deeply into dreaming. The book helps them understand the messages that appear when they dream, offering interesting insights into the way dreams work. Readers appreciate the authentic voice and personal experience. The book offers motivation for out-of-body exploration and provides information that is not available elsewhere.
"...A useful, accessible, and comprehensive method for learning about dreams and dreaming first hand is laid out step by step, along with ample examples..." Read more
"...His voice is authentic and speaks from personal experience and vicarious experience sharing his own dream worlds and those of others...." Read more
"...interaction with the book--indicates to me that he has achieved some level of dream mastery and captured that energy in these pages...." Read more
"...would seem a daunting task, but you quickly realize that further exploration is made easy through the personal stories of other people...." Read more
Customers find the book useful and engaging. They say it's better than commercial dream dictionaries, with practical advice about being present in dreamworlds. The book is described as interesting and inspiring, making it a joy to read. Readers mention it helps them understand more than their nightly hours.
"...This is NOT the case with Moss's books. A useful, accessible, and comprehensive method for learning about dreams and dreaming first hand is laid out..." Read more
"...He gives practical and impractical, but workable advise about how to be present to the dreamworlds while waking, sleeping, or journeying, giving..." Read more
"...me that he has achieved some level of dream mastery and captured that energy in these pages. I'm excited to work with the rest of the book...." Read more
"...It approaches lucid dreaming in a down to earth, practical way that makes is accessible to anyone...." Read more
Customers find the book's writing engaging with its easy-to-follow exercises. They describe the author as honest and helpful. The book is described as dense but not intellectual, and the author is praised as a gifted storyteller.
"...Moss selects his words carefully, so he ends up saying a lot with one sentence (vs. those who have a lot of words and say nothing)...." Read more
"...Not only has it been a pleasure to read, but by surrounding myself in a focused "study" of Moss's dream theory/reality, I've immersed my..." Read more
"...With his delightful prose and easy to follow exercises, author Robert Moss instructs readers how to deep dive into their dreams to discover a wealth..." Read more
"Robert Moss is a highly gifted story teller, very educated, just a joy to read. Learning so much! Highly recommended!..." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2009There are countless books on dreaming and I've looked hopefully at many of them. Usually I've been disappointed by the fact that they really have nothing to say and seem to know nothing more than I do about the subject. Mostly, they are rehashes of other people's psychological analysis of what dreams *might* mean. Since we each dream in our own unique symbolic language, such books are not only useless but misleading. This is NOT the case with Moss's books. A useful, accessible, and comprehensive method for learning about dreams and dreaming first hand is laid out step by step, along with ample examples of many different kinds of dreams, dreamers, and dreaming traditions, to help readers avoid the "one right answer" trap and find their own truth as reflected in their own unique dreams. Dream ethics (ethics, that long-neglected topic!) are also explored.
When I was browsing this topic and reading the customer reviews on Moss, not a few of them gave me real pause, claiming he was a fraud who was only out to make a buck on his outrageously priced courses. Well, his courses are expensive, but then it's expensive to go to an ivy league college or study with real Druids too, because what they learn requires them to travel far and spend years of their lives in disciplined practice. The expectation that everything should be free because it comes free from the source is an interesting one. Nothing is free. There is always a price to pay, whether you are paying a person or a travel agency or an institution. If you want something real there is always a price.
Moss has provided an easy way to determine if what he is "selling" is real. His books. And unlike most books by people who offer coursework, which hold back all the vital information, Moss puts it all out there. What he is offering is real, it works, and it's authentic in its claims to derive from native worldviews and practices. These books are called "New Age" only because mainstream society is afraid to validate anything *new* as authentically "native". But we are all native to this world. The same source informs us all, if we are open to it. These books ARE the real thing. Along with Caitlin Matthews' books on soul flight, they are outstanding resources for the novice and the experienced traveller. If you have a serious interest, I urge you to treat yourself to something real and affordable. This is what most of us have been looking for.
Enjoy!
- Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2013During the past several years, frequent, recurring nightmares have disturbed my sleeping dreams. A co-worker and healer suggested that dreams recur because they are trying to get a message through and that I might enjoy reading CONSCIOUS DREAMING.
Enjoy is not the descriptor I would use for how I interacted with this book. Words more like absorb or consume might be better. I was mesmerized.
The writer, Australian born American Shaman, Robert Moss is a dreamer, workshop leader, and author. His voice is authentic and speaks from personal experience and vicarious experience sharing his own dream worlds and those of others.
He gives practical and impractical, but workable advise about how to be present to the dreamworlds while waking, sleeping, or journeying, giving examples of how one might hear or see the message being sent. Among these possibilities are incubating a dream (asking for an answer to a specific question to come to you in the dream state before going to sleep) and a special way he shares for recording the dream story upon awakening and processing the dream.
The writer also gives many examples of dream stories told in dream-groups or workshops and how the dreams came to be understood by the dreamer.
His most important point: you are the master interpreter of your own dreams.
For me, this book and one particular other, (JOURNEY OF SOULS, Michael Newton) informed my own dreamworld study over a two-and-one-half year period following the deaths of my parents in 2009, especially focused on the nightmares I mentioned.
I am profoundly changed for the better, and further am currently working to finish a full-length manuscript of poetry born out of that study, messages from the ether I continue to process and integrate into my world view and understanding.
I own this book. I will keep and revisit this book. I highly recommend it to you, the dreamer seeking consciousness and connection with the dreamworlds.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2010I'm not new to dreamwork but I've only just started reading this book. I read a bit of the intro but skipped over most of the narrative to go strait to the first and second sets of dreaming instructions. I was pleasantly surprised to read some dreaming insights and information in the book that I've not read elsewhere. More importantly, I am impressed with the raw power of dreaming awareness behind the book. Example: Before I even read a word from the book, I slept with the book next to my head. That same night, I had a lucid dream (deliberately inducing lucid dreams is one of the reasons I was interested in the book). The next time I slept with the book next to my head (maybe a week later), I had read the second set of instructions involving dream incubation and some other elements. I had also started a new spiritual journal and had written the word "consistency" just as a general objective in life, not really thinking of dreamwork. That night, I experienced an unusually high level of "consistency" in my dreams. I dreamt the same continuous dream all night, even though I woke up once or twice between segments. That is new for me.
I have never heard of this author before and I've only read 9 pages so far. But my two dream experiences so far--both of which happened immediately after some interaction with the book--indicates to me that he has achieved some level of dream mastery and captured that energy in these pages. I'm excited to work with the rest of the book. Plus, I got an AMAZING idea that was inspired by the work.
Top reviews from other countries
- Vickie GraysonReviewed in Canada on October 25, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars expansive & eye opening
The knowledge and experiences shared in this book is expansive. Robert's relationship to the dreamworld is beautiful and inspiring.
- Zia KabeerReviewed in India on December 26, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Good knowledge
Need to have some experience in finding the right clues
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2012
5.0 out of 5 stars Conscious Dreaming
Judging by how long ago this book was written, it is probably one of Robert Moss' earliest books on the subject. As one who likes to go to the source of things, I have found this book to be a foundation to Moss' more recent works on the subject. One would find Moss using the same life instances in this book in his more recent works. Never the less, this in no way diminishes the value of his works.
I am yet to finish this book because I read slowly, and I have other competing activities to attend to. However, the much I have studied of this book has provided me with valuable tools to work with my dreams, and I am already experiencing greater insights into my dreams. Therefore I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding his/her dreams. The exercises are very useful, and as in any other activity, one improves with practice.
- An honest person, but Amazon will not post my "truths"Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars PERFECT!!
Haven't read it yet. No damages. Item arrived.
- Dr SuesaReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for studying dreams
I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to work with their dreams. A well researched book with lots of useful exercises.