|
[Return to Home Page]
(January 1995) DREAM MAGICOriginally uploaded to the Amentet BBS ("Alpha State" Section) in six
parts on 4 January 1995. *Introduction*There's a common misconception that anything is possible in dreams. In fact dreams have inertia - changing any aspect of a dream-reality takes effort. Some things are easier to do than others. In this [essay] I shall be describing actions which can, with practice, be accomplished in dreams; actions which, if done in the outside world, would be considered miraculous or magical. I call these abilities *Dream Magic*. Like any skill they require practice - this is primarily to hone up the imaginative machinery. -i.e. You can say "I shot up into the heavens like a rocket" but can you imagine exactly what the sensation would be like? They are all mental-disciplines for the dreamer. When you learn to do Dream Magic you will find yourself with a host of new abilities which can be helpful in many dream situations - and it can be tremendous FUN! Everything in Dream Magic is based on my own experience and experiments with dreams. I am **very** interested to hear of other people's experiences with any of these skills, or of other skills they may have developed. *Levitation and Flying*This is a very common dream skill - but have you ever given it much thought? Why should we dream that we can do something which we can't do when we are awake? I've heard theories that we are supposedly responding to primordial subconscious memories of when we were birds - but I think this is nonsense! I think the answer lies either in the area of deep symbolism or parapsychology. When I was very small I couldn't fly in dreams. I found out when I was about four that, unlike in real life, in dreams I could stand on *no* legs - lift up one leg and then the other, effectively kneel on the air. A bit later I found that if I looked up at the roof of the house I could mentally "pull" myself up towards it - but if I looked down I would fall. (I could never in those days ascend higher than roof height.) My practice in later years mostly involved flying up to the roofs of increasingly tall buildings. Then there was the frightening practice of stepping off tall buildings. I had my share of terrifying falling dreams - but I knew that I could levitate up when I was standing on the ground. When I got near to the ground I was able to generate lift! This is how I learnt to fly! Nerys Dee in her book "The Dreamer's Workbook" talks about flapping your arms when you fly. I've never done that. My flying is more akin to self-levitation or self-projection. In some dreams it is easier to fly than in others. I suspect it is mood related - I don't fly so well when I am fearful or disturbed. *Telekinesis*This is an odd skill. It involves concentration and for me at least, the utilisation of a specific area of the brain. It *always* feels the same way inside my head when I do dream-telekinesis! (A sensation in the centre left- hand side of my brain. When I'm awake and try telekinesis I find this sensation curiously unfocussed. I don't know why.) Good objects to practice dream-telekinesis on are matchbox cars - I can make them race across the room and go in circles around me. It's fun! As might be expected pendulums are very easy to influence and so are marbles in motion. It is more difficult to get a marble to start moving. It is difficult to get an object with friction like a die to slide, and very difficult indeed to get an object to lift up in the air. I've been practising this for many years - and yes you *do* get better and better at it! (I had the odd sensation last year of telekinesising a skateboard I was standing on. Much better than using it in the conventional way [my subconscious knows all about gravity and friction] - I didn't have to worry about running out of power when I pushing out into the middle of the road - which curves upwards of course.) *Wishing-Chairs*In the last few years I have had an increasing number of dreams in which I fly on a wishing-chair. (Read Enid Blyton's "Adventures of the Wishing Chair" for the mental template.) Basically it is a magical flying chair. To find a dream wishing-chair, I first sit in a dream-chair. (A rocking chair is best.) I rock back and forth, gradually getting a feel for the motion of the chair. Then holding on tightly to its arms, I begin delicately to levitate up the chair and myself. I continue rocking it telekinetically, as I attempt to lift it. Initially this is difficult and there is no visible effect. But in my mind I *know* the chair is becoming lighter. Then it lifts into the air - and its motion is much easier and faster. It is no longer an ordinary chair (if it ever was) - it flies under its own power. My Dream Magic has created a magical object! Flying on a wishing-chair is a marvellous sensation. The sense of power is exhilarating, and it's so manuveurable and fast, and I really feel the G-forces. (It's even better than your own supersonic jetplane - it's portable and the view is incredible.) *Teleport*Very difficult dream skill. Basically blank out the world around you, and - without waking up - let it reassemble into a new pattern. (You can close your dream-eyes for this.) It can be done without closing your dream-eyes I've discovered recently, but I haven't yet figured out how I accomplished it! *Swallowed up by Earth*Not difficult. Close your eyes in your dream, and imagine the earth opens and swallows you up. There should be an immediate sensation of falling. This practice often takes you deep into the psyche, and what you see when you open your dream-eyes can be very frightening. Not for the faint-hearted. (Can also be a very effective form of escape from a dream-predator.) *Transformation of Object*Very difficult if you are actually looking at the object. Hold the object in your hand and move it around. Try and imagine the changes you wish to happen to it - i.e. change size, colour. Do this slowly - if you concentrate too hard you will wake up! *Breath Underwater*A simple case of belief. (It sometimes helps when you fall into deep water in a dream, to remember that you are dreaming, and that therefore breathing for you is not a problem.) Being able to breath underwater is a neat form of Dream Magic. Not only can you hide from dream-predators in the deep ocean, or indeed explore the deep ocean - it's a great way to meet mermaids! *Disguise*Not difficult as you cannot directly see yourself in dreams. However you have to believe that you look different to other people in your dream. *Invisibility*You often do not see yourself in dreams, so you'd expect invisibility to be not very difficult. It works well - but if you have any fear at all that others might see you - they will! Also if they brush against you, they'll know someone is there! *Wisping*Basically you squeeze your whole self up into a point and hover in the air. Coupled with invisibility - it is a way to become the ultimate spy camera. Careful though that people in dreams do not touch you - then they will know you are there. *Spin to Change Everything*A curious property of my dreams is that although what I am looking at remains quite invariant, objects out of my line-of-sight can be changed quite radically when I look at them again. (It's like my mental machinery is focussed just on what I am looking at and little or no attention is given to other stuff.) A quandary with this is that if I want to change the nature of my dream world - I can turn slowly around looking at everything in turn and by the time I get back to where I was first looking, everything will have changed! *Pass Through Solid Object*Not difficult if you close your eyes before approaching the object. I think this is because touch is subservient to sight in dreams - What you can't see you can't feel. (This isn't always true!) It's a good way of going through locked doors or getting into stone towers. It is also possible, but more difficult, to pass your hands through a sheet of glass to clasp something beyond and then bring it through. Hard to describe what you have to imagine - a bit like imagining the glass is a very viscous fluid perhaps. *Create Doorway*A pretty difficult dream-skill only recently introduced to me by my anima. You regard a blank-wall etc. in your dream. Now imagine there is a secret- opening there, flush with the wall. Reach out and open it. What do you see beyond? *Added Functionality of Object*This is a "belief skill" and is related to the creation of hidden doors. It works like this: there is an object in your dream - e.g. let it be a pocket calculator of unusual design. You pick up the dream-object and say to yourself "there is a secret button here which if I press will switch on a two-way radio." You fiddle with the calculator - and if your belief is strong enough you *will* find a button which activates a radio! *Telepathy*Easy. In fact it can be so easy you can wonder why it doesn't happen all the time you are awake! *Alter Beliefs in Others*An odd skill. I can somehow make characters in dreams overlook you (be invisible without being invisible), or believe things about me or the situation which they otherwise wouldn't. I don't know how it works. It's a sort of projecting outwards into other minds, and imposing patterns on them. *There are other forms of Dream Magic. Some are rather scary to think about, for example a couple of years ago I discovered it is possible to eject souls from dream-characters, even from characters who are not yourself. Odd Aspects Of Dreams1.False MemoriesI have had dreams in which I have lived in a house which is totally different from the house I live in, but I have believed during the dream that it was my home, and it felt at the time very familiar to me. Also I have had friends in dreams who have no counterpart in the outside world, and I have known all about them. I get the *uncanny* thought sometimes that when I slip into a dream I not only pick-up a dream-self, but that dream-self's entire memories and life experience. I leap into a whole scenario. I become *somebody else*! 2.Multiple Layers of DreamI discovered many years ago how to wake up from nightmares. Basically I give myself a mental activity like reciting tables and push myself to go faster and faster. This gets the slumbering mental-machinery activated - and you wake up pretty fast. (Saying prayers works too, especially if you've encountered something with the ambience of a demon.) What happens when you don't wake up all the way? This happened to me - and I found myself in the midst of another dream. Unlike my original dream this one was flat and black-and-white, but I knew the scenario! I realised that I'd been dreaming this dream too. This is a frightening thought - the mind had multiple layers and something was going on in each level, I'd been dreaming multiple dreams at different levels. *Try the partial-waking experiment and see if this is true for you too! 3.Multiple Selves and ViewpointsIn some ways my dreams are like movies. I sometimes find that I am playing more than one role in a dream - sometimes fluttering between selves. (I can alternately be a character - e.g. I was an oriental girl once, and be someone looking at or talking to that character from outside.) Sometimes I leave dream-selves altogether and watch them from outside, like watching a movie. (Unlike a movie - I can leap back into someone whenever I like.) 4.Linkages to Other DreamsI am not referring to recurring dreams - recurring dreams are normally caused by psychological problems or dilemmas which have still not been solved by us. I, like everyone else, have had tons of dreams which I have forgotten upon waking. On several occasions in the midst of a new dream I have suddenly remembered details of these "forgotten dreams!" Quite often this is because the "new dream" is a new instalment in a sequence of thematically linked dreams - and the older dreams had been forgotten. I am not sure whether this is an instance of "false memories", or whether the subconscious mind actually retains "recordings" of the dreams we have dreamt, as it seems to retain logs of our memories. It excites me because it implies that no dream is really lost - it can be dragged back to conscious memory by later dreams. 5.Entering Books and MoviesI have found in dreams that if I concentrate on what is written in a book, or more powerfully what is illustrated in a book or shown on a dream-TV or movie screen, I find myself drawn into the picture or situation. What was a sub-creation becomes my primary reality. This can lead to some marvellously inventive dreams if you choose the right book!
(As explained in Multiple Selves and Viewpoints - you can also leap out of a dream situation sometimes, to find yourself watching a movie or looking at a book.) * An interesting exercise is to look at photographs or Tarot cards in a dream. 6.Ordinary Objects in Extraordinary RolesIn dreams I've had there has been a telephone box which could fly, a garden shed which was a starship, and an elevator which transported you between multiple alternative realities! I don't know why my subconscious enjoys imparting mundane objects with marvellous properties. I used to think it was because my internal "image banks" lacked models for these marvellous objects, and like a theatre group with few props had to use what few it had in many different ways. I *used* to think that. Then I had this dream in which I and my former-girlfriend were piloting this small spaceship - and its interior and controls were unlike anything I'd ever seen before! Most peculiar and futuristic. I had to conclude that my subconscious is perfectly capable of creating marvellous objects which *look like* marvellous objects - it just chooses not to! ConclusionThis is a gathering-together of various ideas I've had as a result of experiences and reflections with dream-realities. It is far from a complete guide to all the issues raised and observations made. I welcome any ideas any of you may have about any of these things. Summary Of ContentsI. Dream Magic*Introduction II. Odd Aspects Of Dreams1.False Memories Copyright © 1995 by Michael F. Green. All rights reserved. Last Updated:17 August 2002 |