E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Subscribe: electric-dreams-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: electric-dreams-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Subscribe Online: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o E.l.e.c.t.r.i.c D.r.e.a.m.s Volume #9 Issue #3 March 2002 ISSN# 1089 4284 o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Download a cover for this issue! http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-covers o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o C O N T E N T S ++ Editor's Notes ++ The Global Dreaming News Events - Updates - Reviews - More From Peggy Coats - www.DreamTree.com ++ Column: An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis ++ Article: Maslow's Map A New System of Dream Classification Chapter 3: Taking the Temperature of Your Dreams By Linda Lane Magallón ++ Article: The Self, Lucid Dreaming and Postmodern Identity By Raymond L.M. Lee ++ Article: In the Night Minds of Children By Ann Sayre Wiseman D R E A M S S E C T I O N : This issue includes volume # 379 - # 398 D E A D L I N E : March 20th deadline for APRIL 2002 submissions XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Send Dreams and Comments on Dreams to: Richard Wilkerson Send Dreaming News and Calendar Events to: Peggy Coats Send Articles and Subscription concerns to: Richard Wilkerson: o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Editor's Notes o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Welcome to the March 2002 issue of Electric Dreams, your portal to dreams and dreaming online. Our news directory, Peggy Coats, from dreamtree.com, has gathered dreaming news from around the world. In the Global Dreaming News you will find the latest dream and dreamwork events, conferences, and seminars. Also you will find research and research requests for subject, updates on your favorite dream websites, book reviews and more. If you have news items about dreams and dreaming for Peggy, send them to her at web@dreamtree.com Lucy Gillis explores the world of lucid dreaming and this month offers a short article by Kacper on staring and visualization techniques that may enhance and improve lucid dreaming. Kacper offers personal experience about meditation and lucid dream induction in the Excerpt from the Lucid Dream Exchange. Linda Lane Magallón, author of _Mutual Dreaming_ and long time dream researcher of outer reaches of human potential, began last month an investigation of a neglected area of dreams in the work of Humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow. This month Magallón continues with _Maslow's Map A New System of Dream Classification_ with a selection titled "Taking the Temperature of your Dreams." Have you even wondered whether your dreamwork approach was addressing the wrong level of needs? In this chapter, Magallon show you how to determine your current need level and address the dreamwork with the appropriate technique. I'm very pleased to offer you an article by Raymond L.M. Lee, Ph.D. who comes to us from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Dr. Lee explores in his article on lucid dreams the question of our identity through the concepts of postmodernism and many of the major theorists in the postmodern movement. For those of you who are not familiar with postmodernism, please see my article Postmodern Dreaming, summarizing many of the issues at stake here including the self, unity, knowledge, certainty, history, progress, and many others. http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/articles_rcw/ed4-5pom.htm Though the postmodern writers can be very critical of modern thought and practice, Raymond Lee take a productive, creative approach and shows how we can use our lucid dreams to enter into a postmodern space that offers a wider range of possibilities than we once imagined. Be sure to read "The Self, Lucid Dreaming and Postmodern Identity." Ann Sayre Wiseman, artist, writer, Author of 13 books on the Creative Process, including DREAMS AS METAPHOR THE POWER OF THE IMAGE; NIGHTMARE HELP, A guide for Adults from Children; MAKING THINGS Handbook of Creative Discoveries, is with us this month with an article called " In the Night Minds of Children." Wiseman has been teaching children for decades to confront the monsters in our dreams, and this article she shows how this included dreams children may have regarding the 9-11 attacks in NY and DC. Our dream-flow Dreams this month come from all around the Net and have been organized by the software developed by Harry Bosma. Be sure to look through the dreams and see what on the mind and soul of dreamers in Cyberspace. Thanks to all who sent in information for the Dream Resources pages. There is still time to get your site updated. You can look through our collected website links at: http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/ Dream Artists, please note the march deadline for dream inspired art entries to the ASD International Conference in Boston at http://www.asdreams.org/2002/ NEXT MONTH: Computer and digital dreams coming in. Hey, didn't I promise that for the last two months? Again, we just had too much material to get out to you this month. Perhaps we'll get to that next month. For those of you who are new to dreams and dreaming, be sure to stop by one of the many resources: http://www.dreamtree.com http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/library -Richard Wilkerson /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< G L O B A L D R E A M I N G N E W S March 2002 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< If you have news you'd like to share, contact Peggy Coats, pcoats@dreamtree.com. Visit Global Dreaming News online at http://www.dreamtree.com/News/global.htm. This Month's Features: NEWS - Unimagazin, Dreams Issue - Janine Antoni, Dream Artist - ASD - Desert Dreams Regional Meeting - Clear Dreaming Dream Software WEBSITE & ONLINE UPDATES - Dream Reader - Precognitive Stock Market Dreams DREAM CALENDAR for March 2002 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< N E W S <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< >>> Unimagazin, Dreams Issue http://www.unicom.unizh.ch/magazin/archiv/pdf/magazin2000-1.pdf The unimagazin is a quarterly magazine of the University of Zurich. Each issue is dedicated to one major theme. The first issue 2000 was dedicated to "dreaming, soul and world in dreams" It gives a good overview of the main approaches to dreaming at the University of Zurich. These are the (Freudian) psychoanalytical and the empirical scientific approach (studies with a sleep laboratory). The dream issue contains articles on - (Depth psychological) Schools of dream interpretation - The dream - from wishes to the reality of life - The broad (psychoanalytical) way to the unconscious - The dream of the burning child (thoughts on dream, which was first published by Freud) - The import of dream interpretation books during the past centuries. - A empirical investigation on the sources of dreams - Dreaming, thinking - dream thinking - Dreams of children - Dreams of elderly persons - Dreams of blind persons - The pictorial representation of dreams in old Chinese book illustrations - The dreams of Goethes Faust The magazine ends with a critical footnote on Freud where the writer comes to the conclusion that the best what Freud could happen, is that some of his books or parts of them would or could be lost. >>> Janine Antoni - Dream Weaver Artist on PBS Series EGG http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/205/antoni/index.html Pairing scientific technology with a traditional craft, Antoni uses an EKG machine to make a record of her brainwaves while she dreams. Then, tearing strips from the nightgown she wore as she slept, she weaves that pattern on a primitive loom of her own construction. Antoni has performed "Slumber" in museums around the world, and her dream blanket is now over 200 feet long. >>> Desert Dreams Regional Meeting, March 23, 2002 www.e-dreamdesigns.com/desertdreams.htm Come to ASD's Desert Dreams regional meeting Saturday, March 23, 2002, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. This wonderful regional activity will be held in Cathedral City, California (next to Palm Springs, approximately 100 miles east of Los Angeles). Help us spread the word! Forward the Desert Dreams website to people you know. >>> Clear Dreaming Dream Software http://home.adelphia.net/~clefevers/ClearDreaming/index.htm Clear Dreaming is a program designed to catalog and index your dreams. Using Clear Dreaming you can keep track of a wealth of information about your dreams, as well as perform searches and view statistics concerning this information. Presently Clear Dreaming is still in development, but within a few months it will be available to purchase for $15. For now you can download the most current demo at the bottom of this page. Keep reading for more details about the program. Clear Dreaming has all of the basic features you would expect in a program of this type, such as the ability to record the content of your dream and add comments, as well as several other items of information about your dreams, for example, the senses used during the dream, what type of dream, etc. Also included are many other features, for example the following: extensive search capabilities, statistics, a personal dream symbols dictionary, the ability to add user-defined information fields, the ability to import images to illustrate your dreams, a built-in alarm, multiple users support with passwords, a private dream feature which hides specified dreams from unwanted eyes, and more. Clear dreaming is also geared towards lucid dreaming. Several information fields pertain to lucid dreaming and you can also record dream signs. In the future I hope to make Clear Dreaming compatible with the Lucidity Institute's Nova Dreamer(tm) (a lucid dream induction aid). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< W E B S I T E & O N L I N E U P D A T E S <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< Do you know of interesting new websites you'd like to share with others? Or do you have updates to existing pages? Help spread the word by using the Electric Dreams DREAM-LINK page www.dreamgate.com/dream/resources/online97.htm. This is really a public projects board and requires that everyone keep up his or her own link URLs and information. Make a point to send changes to the links page to us. >>> Dream Readers http://www.dreamsdreamsdreams.com Dream Readers was created as a way of collecting dreams for our research. It gradually evolved into a complete resource for individuals interested in understanding dreams. We provide interpretation, a library that grows regularly, training and much more. >>> Precognitive Stock Market Dreams (PSMD) http://www.webspawner.com/users/stockdreams/index.html The purpose of the PSMD Group is to allow individuals to become co-creators in the general area of prosperity and abundance. The group operates as a private association of individual participants and is not affiliated with or sponsored by any other organization. The PSMD Group exchanges individual messages including dreams, vision, meditations, etc., that have already been interpreted to other group participants via electronic E-mail. This facilitates the prompt distribution on a worldwide basis so that immediate action may be taken by the recipients based on their own personal judgment and specific financial needs. The PSMD Group strongly promotes personal growth in which the concept of blaming others is replaced by total self responsibility. Individual participants, therefore, assume full legal responsibility without recourse of any kind for all financial decisions made based on the information and general comments circulated by other group participants <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< D R E A M C A L E N D A R March 2002 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< 8 Mar in Litchfield, CT Weekend Retreat, "Creative Dream Explorations" - come and learn to understand this secret language of the night with creative ways to work with your dreams. Contact Nancy Weston M.A. 203-744-6823, InnerKid2@aol.com or Isobel McGrath B.Sc, CHt 203-790-1503, UKHypnosis@aol.com, 9 Mar in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, IN Discover the guiding wisdom of dreams with Betty A. Hollin. 9:00 am to 1:00 p.m. Cost $25. For brochure and registration form contact Barry Donaghue at 812-535-4531 ext. 140 or E-mail bdonaghu@spsmw.org 23 Mar in Cathedral City, CA www.e-dreamdesigns.com/desertdreams.htm Come to ASD's Desert Dreams regional meeting Saturday, March 23, 2002, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. This wonderful regional activity will be held in Cathedral City, California (next to Palm Springs, approximately 100 miles east of Los Angeles). Help us spread the word! Forward the Desert Dreams website to people you know. end news --------------------------------------------------- o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o An Excerpt From the Lucid Dream Exchange By Lucy Gillis o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o This month's LDE excerpt features more of Kacper's experiments with lucid dream induction. He tries two methods, a staring technique and a visualization technique. When I contacted him to ask for his permission to submit his article to Electric Dreams he said yes but also ". . . I began to doubt if the techniques I described can really give long-term benefits as they do not always work that good." I feel that sharing experiences is what Electric Dreams and LDE is all about. Whether our experiments are successful or not, they are contributing to our knowledge of dreaming. Besides, what may not work for one person my work wonders for another! Kacper also wanted me to note that "I also found that the gazing technique I thought to be my own trance-inducing method is called tratak in Yoga (what a surprise!) and that it is described in "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephan LaBerge and Howard Rheingold." Thanks Kacper, for sharing your experiments with us! MEDITATION AND LUCID DREAM INDUCTION By Kacper The purpose of this short article is to describe several meditation techniques and the outcome of my experiments with inducing lucid dreams with these techniques. Let's first discuss the techniques I have found effective in inducing a meditative state (I'm omitting binaural beats here since I have discussed them in a previous article). [Editor's Note: See LDE 20] 1. Meditation Techniques a. Staring Technique: It is extremely easy, as it doesn't require breathing exercises nor excessive concentration. Simply choose one point and fix a gaze on it. It can be done while standing or sitting. It may be more effective when used along with shifting awareness to body and imagining warmth or energies flowing through the body. If successful, the practitioner will enter a meditative trance within at least 10 minutes. The state induced with this technique is characterized by relaxation, both muscular and mental, and mild difficulty with breaking this state. The consciousness of the practitioner can be partially disconnected from the external world (touch sense can be weakened). The difficulty in breaking the trance is not something to be afraid of - the difficulty itself is mild and is a sign of good progress. The after-effect of exercise is usually mental refreshment and better mood. b. Visualization Method: It differs from the visualization technique I have described previously in some features. First of all, this one is about visualizing whole places, and the best is to focus on the places you know - like the mall you are shopping in, familiar streets, your home, etc. That's all. When you realize that your breathing has calmed (it should slow down spontaneously) you can stop visualization. By this time you should be in a deep trance. The trance can be broken by simply opening your eyes or moving your muscles. Like the previous exercise, this one brings mental refreshment. 2. Experiments and Results a. Staring technique before going to sleep: Practiced before going to sleep, the staring technique can enhance your dreaming and clear your mind for the evening. I have found it effective in inducing WILDS: Lucid dream induced by this method: After doing mediation and some sleep, I awoke in the middle of the night. I got up to go to the bathroom and went back to bed, not hurrying to go back to sleep. I shut my eyes and could see vivid mental imagery, yet still not formed scenes nor dreams. I laid for some time with eyes open enjoying alert relaxation, then shut my eyes and tried to relax more. I have entered the dream-inducing state (hypnagogical sounds, flashes of light, etc.) and focused on maintaining and deepening this state. Then it broke. I opened my eyes to see a cupboard standing on the edge of my bed (!). Then it dissolved, as it was only a hypnagogic hallucination superimposed on the real perception. I shut my eyes again and could enter the hypnogogic state by concentration. Then I materialized somewhere in town, but the "world" around me was unstable. I passed two humanoidal creatures, went into some basement pub and spinned around, but to no avail - I woke. Then I shut my eyes again. This time I entered a vivid picture of a road running through the woods. I took a walk through the wooded terrain to some unknown town accompanied by some group of people. My lucidity was a bit weak in this one. b. Staring technique in the early morning: I've observed no side-effects, and in addition it was more difficult to focus than in the evening. Lucid dream induced by this method: After doing meditation in the early morning I got back to sleep. After some time I entered a WILD, but lucidity was very bad. I recall being blind and then (after gaining sight) watching TV. From that state I woke into a false awakening. I went to my window to see that outside, instead of the ordinary street I usually see when I look out, there were beautiful buildings - they looked like towers, like some fairy-tale buildings. They had white walls. They seemed to be moving. My first thought was that in some way I had been transported to another world. Then they faded into the sky. I became fully lucid. I remember something about merging with another guy that looked like me. Then I flew out the window and landed on the street, which looked completely different than the one in the real world. I decided not to go to the mall on the left, but to go straight. To my right, on the road, there was a traffic jam. I remember there were jeeps among other cars. I started rubbing my hands as my grip on the reality of the dream weakened. Then I crossed the street and was standing before some library. I went inside. There was a sheet of paper with an arrow pointing in the direction of where Wordsworth's "Ode" was stored. That made me curious. Why did they put this pointer? I went downstairs, where the arrow was pointing, and found myself in a kind of underground corridor. I still rubbed my hands. Before me, at the end of the corridor there was what seemed to be an office - with desk, computer, and so on. The sunlight was coming through the window in the office (while the corridor seemed to be lying under the ground). Then I lost the dream and woke up. c. Visualization Technique: I did not achieve anything significant with this method. Practiced during daytime, it produced vivid auditory hallucinations when falling to sleep. Practiced in the evening and in the early morning it did not produce any interesting results. Maybe I simply haven't any luck with this one. From my experimentation it seems that the staring technique is best for inducing lucid dreams. Maybe practicing it before bedtime and then in the early morning is most effective, I don't know. Meditation will surely speed up your progress because it acts on the pineal gland, as scientific experimentation proves (urinaty levels of melatonine are higher in people practicing meditation, furthermore the meditation can raise the level of melatonine from 7 to 1000%, as pointed out by Ranjie Singh - for more details see www.erowid.org/spirit/meditation/meditation_media1.shtml). Some other good meditation techniques can be found at Ballabene Astral Pages (mailbox.univie.ac.at/~a8424mae/english/engindex.htm ). Happy experimentation! Kacper ************************************ The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly newsletter featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles, poetry, and book reviews. To subscribe to The Lucid Dream Exchange send a blank email to: TheLucidDreamExchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or join through the Yahoo Groups website at http://www.groups.yahoo.com/ The LDE can be found under Sciences>Social Sciences>Psychology>Sleep and Dreams. o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Maslow's Map A New System of Dream Classification Chapter 3: Taking the Temperature of Your Dreams (c)1999 Linda Lane Magallón o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o (Psychologist Abraham Maslow created a scale of needs to describe the human condition, from basic existence to optimum potential. The scale can be used to take the temperature your dreams.) Chapter 3: Taking the Temperature of Your Dreams Stephen Foster dreamed of Jeannie with the light brown hair, Byron of things that are, and Poe of dreams that no mortal ever dreamed before. Earl Nightingale Once upon a time there were three neighbors. Each had a tree in the backyard. • The first neighbor had rich soil. His tree produced a bounty of fruit. • The second neighbor had poorer soil. Her tree produced branches and leaves. • The third neighbor had very poor soil. Her tree grew short and misshapen. Then one day the third neighbor chanced to drop some fertilizer at the base of her tree. The rains came and went. The tree grew leaves, blossomed and bore sweet fruit. Next year, the neighbor fertilized her tree on purpose. She also turned up some of the soil, cleared a space for the tree to grow and watered the tree. Lo, the tree bore leaves, flowers and sweet fruit once again. So the third neighbor went to tell her neighbors of her good fortune. The first neighbor could not understand why the third neighbor had to do so much hard work. He pointed to his tree in the backyard. "See?" he said. "I do not labor, yet my tree bears fruit." He did not realize that his house had been built in a comparatively fertile valley in the first place. The second neighbor did not conceive why the third neighbor would want to do so much hard work. She pointed to her leafy tree in the backyard. "My tree is just fine as it is," she said. She could not comprehend the joy of eating sweet, juicy fruit. She had never had a taste. The third neighbor went home to contemplate. She wondered what might happen if her neighbors bothered to clear the ground, to feed and water their own dream trees. Levels of the Dream Tree What sorts of branches, leaves, fruits and flowers are growing on your own dream tree? Here's some typical dreams for each level on Maslow's Map. Human development tends to move from basic to growth needs. So, in terms of his scale, I'll be working from the bottom up. BASIC NEEDS 1. Physiological - Foundational existence • Elimination (bathroom dream) • Suffocation and paralysis • Mutilation and dismemberment • Starvation and sickness 2. Safety and Security - Anxiety and threat • Chase, entrapment and escape • Physical attack • Geographically lost • Natural disaster • Sensing something scary 3. Love & Belongingness - Relationship troubles • Loss of a pet or a family member • Being rejected • Nudity in public • Hiding from people • Arguments 4. Self Esteem - Poor self respect • Taking or forgetting an exam • Arriving late, missing transport • Misplacing your purse or wallet GROWTH NEEDS 5. Growth and Development • Discovering a treasure • Playing with color • Friendship with an animal 6. Self-Actualization • A great performance • Singing your heart out • Driving your car masterfully 7. Peak Experience • Floating in bliss • Amazed by insight • Becoming aware Each sample dream theme has been placed in a likely classification. It's a place to begin consideration, not a rigid rule. For instance, "nude in public" is at the third step, the level of love and belongingness. There, you might be nervous about the reactions of strangers, fearing exposure to other people's judgment and scrutiny. However, "nude in public" might relate to another basic need: 1. Shivering in the snow (physiological) 2. Vulnerable to attack (safety and security) 4. Embarrassed (self esteem) But if your "nude in public" experience is positive, it might be at the growth level: 5. Posing for an art class (beauty) 6. Dancing before an appreciative audience (self-fulfillment) 7. Intermingled ecstasy (peak experience) Placement really depends on your waking concerns and desires backed by the action or reaction of your dreaming self. Thanks to your flexible dream psyche, there can be more than one theme within a single dream. If a chase scene (safety and security) converts to a game of hide and seek with your pursuer, you are moving up the scale (to love and belongingness, at least). Themes may also shift levels with each new dream of the night. Average and Normal Dreams What's the temperature of your latest dream? What would you guess is your average temperature for the year? By the way, if you keep a dream journal, you won't have to guess! Are there times when you are more likely to have one particular type of dream than others? Why is that? Nobody has taken a Gallop poll of American dreams, nor of any other country that I'm aware. It would be interesting to uncover the average temperature of dreams in your own culture and compare it with others. When I look at Abraham Maslow's schema, I'd say that we usually dream at the level of basic needs. Then, there's the question of whether the average dream is a healthy one. For Maslow, "normal" did not mean normative, or behaving like the cultural majority. "Normal" meant having the full package of desirable or healthy traits including self-knowledge and the right to question the rules or ethics of society. His list of emotional illnesses included prejudice, chronic boredom, lack of zest and loss of purpose. "There is a character difference between the man who feels safe and the one who lives his life out as if he were a spy in enemy territory," he said.(1) Maslow theorized that emotionally healthy people see the world more accurately than their anxiety-ridden peers. With this new definition, Maslow challenged a fundamental premise of modern psychology: that we can devise accurate theories about human nature just by paying attention to the mentally ill or to the statistically average. He argued that both Freudians and Behaviorists had for too long side-stepped the higher aspects and achievements of humanity by studying "mainly crippled people and desperate rats." He also differentiated between psychotherapy, which makes sick people well, and psychogogy, which makes well people better. Since dreamwork has been mainly associated with psychotherapy, it is best suited to resolve basic level problems. Basic Needs Dreamwork Dreamwork means work. There is something about your dream that is missing, misunderstood or a mystery. Dreamwork requires repair, attention, adjustment or analysis. The significance must be found, the meaning gleaned, the content altered in order to return your troubled psyche to harmony. In basic level dreams, your dream psyche has to do a lot of struggling and coping. Or a lot of mundane activity. Symbol interpretation techniques can unlock your dream when it is not a literal description of the situation. You might decipher symbols to uncover the hidden stimuli for your dreams. Behavior modification methods can help you 1) recover from nightmare 2) resolve conflicts and concerns 3) take responsibility and intervene when there are problems 4) distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate defenses 5) separate real and pseudo-threats 6) clean up the toxic spills in your psychological environment As a behaviorist, Maslow was successful in producing a marked increase in self-esteem of a very shy and retiring woman. At his advice, she practiced asserting herself in twenty specific but non-crucial situations, like insisting that her grocer should order a certain product for her and disregarding his objections. After 3 months there were definite differences. Unlike her former attire, she wore form-fitting clothes and appeared in public in a swim suit. He husband reported improvement in her previously inhibited sexual behavior, too. And the content of her dreams changed. Many dreams certainly feel like a confused and chaotic mishmash. That's why we wake and ask ourselves, "What the #$% was that?" and go running for the dream dictionary. Or we launch a dreamwork method to unravel the knot in our stomachs and puzzlement in our minds. These sorts of therapeutic techniques occur after the dream has already happened, which is why I call it "end of the stream" work. However, if you become lucid, you can do dreamwork while the dream stream is still in motion. And to prevent the mishmash from happening in the first place, you can take preventative measures at the source of stream, before you sleep. Dreamwork can provide meaning for your current waking life or explain your childhood. Using dreamwork methods, you can find cultural influence in your dreams and link them to the myths and lore of the past. Basic level dreams are current-past in orientation and can describe how you got to where you are and who you are now. But they also tend to support maintenance of the status quo. Dreamwork For Change Seen from the Wide Band view, it might be argued that a truly effective therapy won't just respond to the dream at hand. Instead, it will result in a permanent shift in the average needs level of your dreams. A dream life that consists mostly of relationship troubles might be replaced by dreams that reflect concerns about your chosen profession. Or vice versa, depending on whichever area requires growth. Some dreams do respond to what I call "lite dreamwork." This sort of dreamwork advises: just become lucid, just hug your kid, just stand up to your dream enemies or just affirm your good intent and the big, bad monster goes away. Maslow was of the opinion that deeply entrenched personality traits require effort to change. He knew that simple behavioral techniques don't work well, for instance, on fear that is sharply ingrained. There is a tendency of the well-organized syndrome to resist change or to maintain itself. Even if changes occur, it can reestablish itself. For myself, one nightmare that kept returning alerted me to a false sense of duty that had been programmed, imprinted, etched into my personality from childhood. Lite dreamwork would only repress it. Surface affirmations were a joke. It wouldn't go away for good until I'd unearthed its roots, pulled the weed and replaced it with a new plant. Interpretive therapy, conflict resolution therapy, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy - all were involved in the eventual resolution. In such cases, lite dreamwork can actually enable you to deny or avoid the source of your troubles. I've found that some dream approaches detour me down false paths, because they address the wrong level of my current needs. They focus me on one level when it's really another that needs my immediate attention. Nowadays I determine the needs level of my dream first, before I decide which dreamwork, dream trek or dreamplay techniques are appropriate. Dreamplay To resolve problems and find meaning in life is admirable. But all dreamwork and no dreamplay makes you a "Type A" dreamworkaholic. To be a healthy dreamer, take a break. Set aside your practical expectations and serious needs every once in a while. Play with your dreams, instead. There are some activities that apply to your entire hero's journey. You'll always need to recall your dreams, of whatever kind, but you can make a game of it. Any old dream record will track the path you take, but a creative journal is an ongoing art project. And there are a variety of descriptive tools to use besides writing or speaking the dream, such as sketching, costume and dance. Dreamplay involves creative movement. There is something hidden, unexpressed or unexplored. The treasure is waiting to be found, the potential unlocked, the creativity celebrated. Your approach to a dream may vary, depending on whether it is a growth level dream or one that describes the basic needs. If you specialize in survival living, you may wind up painting your nightmares, fashioning anxieties out of paper maché and expressing your fears in poetry. But never exploring creativity at the growth level. That's why dreamplay is a great vacation from dreamwork. But it doesn't necessarily move you up the scale. Growth Needs Dream Trek An egg can't be explained without including what it can become. An ordinary dream can't be explained without including its extraordinary potentials. The irony of healing and recovery is that it's near-on impossible to attain an optimum state of health if you don't really know what that state is. If you've never experienced them first hand, you might not know that dreams can be humorous, fantastic, inspirational and wonder-filled on a fairly consistent basis. So many dreams fit the "Basic Needs" niche that the most popular dreamwork theories presume that's the only kind of dreaming we do. But true dream health is more than just filling the belly, shedding light on our angst, recovering from conflict or healing the soul. It's about developing human potential. It's about learning. It's about achieving emotional maturity. "Growth Needs" dreams journey into the future. The symbols and themes in growth level dreams nurture new life. They don't play out old story lines. They are the seeds for emerging tales and legends. They are myth-making in progress. So, to slice and dice these dreams according to those theories of dreams whose foundations are at the basic needs level, constricts them. It is not fruitful to pin old meanings on a growth level dream. Such analysis squeezes the juice out of their innovative expression. Free association doesn't work well because it relies on current understanding and past programming. Growth level dreams not only produce new links, they create new visions as well. Fortunately, growth level dream tend to be more coherent, so they are more readily understandable. Thus there is less need to interpret them using traditional means. Furthermore, growth level dreams can be so real and intense that their significance is in the experience, the being and doing *while* you dream. You don't have to do dreamwork afterwards to "complete" them. Entering the growth phase does provide greater awareness of what's necessary to be a positive person, though. It sends you back to the basic level so that you can clean up your act. So you can clear your dream environment and experience still more of those growth-level dreams. But just cleaning out the pollutants from the stream doesn't do the whole job. Yes, it allows the dream fish to breathe easier. But you must add nourishment to feed them, to strengthen them, to help them grow. Enrichment activities like incubation, induction and in-dream creativity modify the quality of your dreams and lead to greater dream understanding. On your dream trek, you might 1) Get rid of false notions of your self: learn who you are and who you are not. 2) Learn to do well what you want to do, what you can do. 3) Learn the discipline of the master dream artist and refine self-expression. 4) Choose to risk curiosity for the sake of progress and exploration. 5) Make ideals come true (dream up a better world). Whereas dreamwork judges, defines and transforms, the dream trek celebrates, inspires and encourages. One is the road to recovery, the other the road to discovery. (1) Maslow, A. H. Motivation and Personality. (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 66. http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/flying/dreams.html o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o The Self, Lucid Dreaming and Postmodern Identity Raymond L.M. Lee o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o Available online at: http://www.dreamgate.com/pomo Abstract: Who are we in dreams? This question problematizes self-identity in a state of mind usually construed as unreal. What happens when we awake in dreams and are able to manipulate our identities in surreal conditions? The phenomenon of lucid dreaming allows such manipulation to occur, freeing the individual to explore various possibilities of selfhood without the burden of conformity to waking roles. It parallels the postmodern perspective on the decentered nature of the self. The postmodern self subsists on fractal identities that in lucid dreaming form the basis of personal creativity. Lucid dreaming converges with postmodernism to suggest an alternative method for transcending the conventions of everyday life. Keywords: Lucid dreaming, self-identity, postmodernism, fractalization Introduction Once regarded as an esoteric phenomenon by psychologists, lucid dreaming is no longer confined to the sleep laboratory but popularized as an art of creative imagination. Lucid dreaming, sometimes referred to as paradoxical dreaming, is the spontaneous realization by the dreamer that he or she is dreaming. It is often described as an exhilarating experience that reveals the inherent freedom of mind. Charles McCreery (1973: 114), a researcher of psychic phenomena, commented that "[r]ealization that one is dreaming brings a wonderful sense of freedom - freedom to try anything in the extended range of experience." Being awake in his or her dream, the lucid dreamer attains a level of consciousness that surpasses the limitations of ordinary waking experiences. Oliver Fox (1962: 33), an explorer of paranormal phenomena, expressed his feelings about his lucid dreaming experience in the following words: "Never had I felt so absolutely well, so clear-brained, so divinely powerful, so inexpressibly free! The sensation was exquisite beyond words; but it lasted only a few moments, and I awoke." These descriptions of lucid dreaming suggest that self-realization of dreaming is a deconstructive experience. Moments into lucid dreaming, the dreamer realizes the possibility of going beyond ascribed roles in waking life. By experimenting with a variety of new roles in the dream state, the lucid dreamer is actually engaged in deconstructive action that challenges the apparent stability of self-identity in waking life. The lucid dreamer does not lose all sense of the self as conceived in waking life, but he or she is able to act in different ways to undermine the prescribed meanings constituting the reality of the self in waking consciousness. In other words, all social rules for self-identity can be tested and broken in lucid dreaming without the dreamer incurring the consequences of the waking world. For example, when a person walks through walls or flies into the sky in lucid dreaming, there is no one in the dream environment to accuse him or her of being mad. Lucid dreaming is, indeed, a profound test of self-reality, utilizing the surreal nature of dreaming to question and manipulate the complexities of selfhood. In waking life, these complexities can be analyzed and tested but under circumstances where social rules seem to be hegemonic. For instance, the breaching experiments carried out by the ethnomethodologist, Harold Garfinkel (1967), suggest that disruption of accepted norms is a risky method of self-deconstruction. On the other hand, the manipulation of the dream environment by the lucid dreamer occurs in a surreal context where social rules of the waking world do not apply. Hence, deconstruction of the self in a surreal environment exposes the transparency of social rules for creating self-reality. The sense of freedom experienced by lucid dreamers comes from the realization of self-transparency in a world where fluidity is reality. If lucid dreaming offers a path-breaking approach to the recreation of the self, how come it has only caught the popular imagination in recent years? Lucid dreaming was largely the preserve of psychologists interested in paranormal phenomena (Green, 1968; Tart, 1972; Parker, 1975). Only in recent years did lucid dreaming gain publicity as a non-ordinary experience attainable by individuals who seek it. Many books and manuals outlining theories and techniques of lucid dreaming are widely available (LaBerge, 1985; Harary and Weintraub, 1989; LaBerge and Rhinegold, 1990; Green and McCreery, 1994; Moss, 1996; Devereaux and Devereaux, 1998). This sudden outburst of interest in a recondite phenomenon normally studied by parapsychologists suggests some important changes in contemporary conceptualizations of self and society. There is a sense of newfound freedom associated with being conscious in dreams. Self-mutability in conscious dreaming represents a type of autonomy unattainable in waking life. Since social norms are only enacted and validated by individuals who are awake, rebellion against these norms by lucid dreamers implies that society can be dissolved in dreaming for the reinvention of the self. The argument of this paper is lucid dreaming represents a concerted effort in transcending social norms and boundaries through the reflexive power of being conscious in dreams. Self-reflexivity in lucid dreaming challenges the conceptualization of the modern self as an integrated product of normative socialization. The modern self is a distinct outcome of Cartesian dualism tempered by the institutionalization of world-mastery. By treating the modern self as a unified essence of subjective experiences, the meaning of world-mastery has come to connote the objectified control of manifest reality. The work of Talcott Parsons (see Rocher, 1974) exemplifies this approach to the modern self as the bearer of values and norms that regulate social goals and actions. When values and norms are properly internalized in the self, social action is effectively directed to the external environment. In this model of the modern self, the maintenance of values and norms is essential to the successful manipulation of the external environment. Yet in lucid dreaming, the model of the modern self is completely reversed. The surreal nature of dreams makes destabilization a constant factor. The lucid dreamer cannot always depend on internalized norms for effective movement in a rapidly changing dreamscape. On the contrary, the lucid dreamer must repeatedly reinvent himself or herself in order to navigate the surrealism of dreaming. The lack of correspondence between internalized norms and environmental events in dreaming implies that lucid dreaming is necessarily anti-normative. The lucid dreamer may act against ascribed roles to actualize discrepant selves in the vicissitudes of dreaming. If such experiences constitute a new meaning of freedom, they not only reject the model of the modern self but also suggest the emergence of a postmodern model of fractal identities. The idea of fractal identities will become clearer after we examine the fate of the self at the end of modernity. Crisis of the Modern Self Modernity placed the self at the epicenter of meanings. Indeed, the modern self could not exist without a subjective presence that outweighed the objects of its surroundings. By possessing this presence, the modern self came to be treated as something distinct with the power to control its own thoughts and influence its relationships with external objects. Unlike the pre-modern self whose sense of being was measured in terms of a greater power than itself, the modern self thought and acted without being necessarily beholden to a greater power. In short, the modern self looked upon its own dominion as empirical and that of the greater power as abstract. Scholars such as Charles Taylor (1989) and Anthony Giddens (1991) treated the modern self as a reflexive entity. The notion of the self as a separate individual became possible because reflexivity activated a sense of autonomy for the re-imagination of roles. Individuals were no longer dependent on what others said they were, but could reflect on their own actions to redefine their roles publicly and privately. For Taylor, self-exploration was considered vital for reflecting on the meaning of the self. By exploring one's self, each individual was allegedly able to draw out latent characteristics that made him or her unique. Self-exploration was thought to provide an expressive outlet for charting the hidden dimensions of individual existence. It could change a person's self-definitions and relationships with others. Reflexivity provided the condition for the modern self to delve into its own being and pursue what it thought befitted its desires and aspirations. Freedom was the ability to perform self-analysis in order to actualize personal visions of new beginnings, new hopes and new identities. The modern explosion of knowledge in all fields of human endeavor could be traced to the reflexive nature of self-inquiry and self-examination. By treating knowledge as inseparable from the dynamics of self-exploration, each new discovery reflexively led to other viewpoints that expanded the horizon of empirical understanding. Self-exploration was therefore vital for the development of world-mastery. The self not only came to know itself but also the objects of its contemplation. Yet, the sense of confidence established by self-exploration failed to take root as the source of certitude for self-understanding. Reflexivity generated an impermanence of knowledge, thereby undermining the stability of self-identity. Each act of self-exploration enhanced self-awareness, but at the same time activated the forces of change in the self. Giddens (1991:28) made this point succinctly when he said, "The chronic entry of knowledge into the circumstances of action [the self] analyses or describes creates a set of uncertainties to add to the circular and fallible character of post-traditional claims to knowledge." Since the reflexivity of the modern self is by nature elliptical, the uncertainty produced by new knowledge cannot but exert a tremendous pressure on the self to perpetually reexamine its own construction. The question of authenticity has become central to the meaning of the modern self. Can we be true to our own selves when reflexive knowledge is constantly transforming our sense of being? The crisis of the modern self constitutes a statement of doubt about ontology. The transformability of the self in an age of excess increases skepticism of self-identity as an inviolable whole. If reflexivity leads to a continual reevaluation of the self, then self-identity is susceptible to fragmentation and unlimited innovation. Kenneth Gergen (1991:49) emphasized that "technologies of social saturation are central to the contemporary erasure of the self." Only partial identities are possible in a situation where people are continually exposed to new information, knowledge and experiences. Partial identities imply the interpenetration of roles which may not be integrally related. Juxtaposition of identities and roles that are not necessarily integrated reflects an emerging social context saturated with novelty and inundated by information. This is a context that has been described as postmodern (Lyotard, 1984; Foster, 1985). According to Løvlie (1992: 119), the postmodernist "does not go for identity but for the manifold and equivocal." The strategy implied in this statement pertains to the de-socialization of the subject. In other words, the postmodern self is released from the fixed relationship between nominal identity and social roles. Freedom is found not in the pursuit of authenticity but in the interplay of multiple roles that signify the openness of all meanings. The self is no longer defined as a consistent conglomeration of attitudes and perceptions strung together by the power of reason. Neither is behavior necessarily considered an outcome of clear intentions. The postmodern self rejects the policing action of social institutions and pre-existing social scripts. The identity of the postmodern self does not have a center. Sarup (1996: 25-26) described such an identity as "a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings blend and clash...[and] not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each observer in each period." A fragmented self seems to have emerged from the crisis of the modern self. Are we all made up of bits and pieces of this and that? Is identity nothing more than an illusion of socialization or a fiction of ontology? It is difficult to imagine a self without an integrated identity, a "subject in process" that is "constructed in and through language" (Sarup, 1996: 47). Yet, this is what self and identity mean in postmodernism, a movement that disparages closure and completion. Because of linguistic relativity, the self cannot maintain a solid identity but must defer to the arbitrariness of all conversational interactions. Hence, the self appears fragmented as a consequence of the fluidity of speech. However, reflexivity does allow some degree of rational control over the construction of identity. The self is not totally at the mercy of the arbitrariness of speech. Individuals can still exercise choice in self-presentation, although choice is defined by a 'multiphrenic condition' (Gergen, 1991: 49) that empowers all types of innovation. In this situation where reflexivity intermeshes with innovation, it is more appropriate to address changes in the self as a fractalization of identity. The idea of fractalization originates from Jean Baudrillard (1993: 5-6) who treats postmodern culture as the 'radiation of values' or the 'pure contiguity of values'. Thus, fractalization of identity reflects patterns of value permutations that display the mixing of all reference points. For instance, the advent of global culture has produced a unique situation in which tradition becomes a basis for experimentation. One can syncretize elements of tradition and modernity to produce unique patterns of identity that do not necessarily add up to a conventional role package. In the example given by Cohen and Kennedy (2000: 346), young British man fascinated by traditional Chinese martial arts and Jackie Chan movies transforms himself into a Cantonese pop singer. His new identity is not perceived as a conflict of values but a fractalization of disparate cultural elements. The above example concerns the intricacies of fractal identity in waking life. Voluntariness of such identity in waking life is taken for granted, since the individual is consciously aware of mixing values and their effects. However, in dreaming the fluidity of dream events and the lack of conscious control over these events exemplify the involuntary nature of identity formation in dreams. Thus, fractal identities in dreams have a different status than those in waking life because the dreaming individual simply cannot exercise conscious control in refashioning his or her identity. The blending of values in dream identities take on an uncanny appearance as they have no direct correspondence with the waking self. The dreaming individual does not normally reflect on the fractalization of identity to ask what are its consequences. Instead, fractal identities proliferate in dreams as part of the surrealism of dreaming. What happens when an individual becomes conscious in dreaming and treats fractalization as a means of transcending the norms of waking life? The surrealism of dreaming provides a highly unpredictable context in which identities have no anchors and rapidly take on fictional appearances. All the assumptions underlying the integrity of the modern self dissolve into a pool of changing images. The lucid dreamer quickly discovers an ability to manipulate and transform identities without worrying about infraction of social rules. In short, lucid dreaming promotes fractalization without fear of repercussions from the waking world. What are the implications of lucid dreaming for the development of postmodern self-identity? To answer this question, we need to examine the meaning and effects of lucid dreaming in everyday life. The Self in Lucid Dreaming As a pioneer in the analysis of dreams, Freud (1954) addressed dreaming as the fief of the unconscious self. Repressed desires and unfulfilled wishes constitute the stuff of dreams in Freudian understanding of how the self submits to the irrational forces of the sleep process. It was unthinkable that such an understanding of dreaming would take seriously the notion of a conscious self actively manipulating its identity in the dream state. Freudian analysis of dreams would become paradoxical if a dreamer awoke in his or her dreams to transform unconscious desires into conscious goals. Lucid dreaming contradicts the notion of soporific surrender. It challenges the Freudian belief that the dream world is a symbolic representation of our fears and fantasies, which we project but cannot control. In lucid dreaming, the dreamer learns and trains to recognize and exert control over objects in the dream environment. By awakening in the dream state, the self not only becomes conscious of dreaming as a peculiar reality, but also comes to the realization that waking and dreaming are continuous. Stephen LaBerge, a leading researcher of lucid dreaming, tells of his early experience with the Tibetan lama, Tarthang Tulku, who expressed the view that all perceptual encounters are dreamlike in nature. In fact, LaBerge teaches his readers to reduce the distinction between waking and dreaming events in order to prepare for the onset of lucid dreaming (LaBerge and Rhinegold, 1990). Similarly, Harary and Weintraub (1989: 17-18) teach their readers to imagine themselves waking up in dreams and entering a dream world as they awake. This approach to the meaning of the self in dreaming is radically different from that which takes phenomenological and neurobiological differences to distinguish between waking and non-waking consciousness. Owen Flanagan's (2000: 58) reminder that "whatever else dreaming is like it is not like being awake" exemplifies the general need of most people to seek self-authenticity in waking consciousness. The commitment to maintain the divide between waking and dreaming elevates the self in waking life above that in dreams. Yet, as Flanagan (ibid.) seems to suggest, it is not necessary to denigrate the dreaming self because "dreams are sometimes self-expressive and can yield knowledge," thereby providing each individual with a means to recognize the self in waking life. In other words, dreams as the 'spandrels of sleep' or the natural side-effects of sleep (Flanagan, ibid.) can be viewed as a loyal servant of the waking self, reifying it through a screen of apparently bizarre and irrational images. In waking life, then, there is a natural tendency to assert self-identity as if it were a special preserve of one's sanity. Treating dreams as 'background noise' or 'spandrels of sleep' may provide a sense of relief after the individual awakes to find his or her self to be relatively intact, particularly in cases of nightmares where self-recovery occurs in the waking state. Becoming aware of dreaming while in the dream state poses a peculiar question of whether the waking self becomes dominant in dreaming or the dreaming self becomes more reflexive. In either case, self-realization of dreaming tends to weaken the rigid distinction between waking and dreaming because it is the same self-consciousness that now operates in both states of mind. Lucid dreaming, therefore, provides a bridge between the two states that are conventionally defined as waking and dreaming. The self may become more pliant as it engages in lucid dreaming since it is able to negotiate the dream world as if it were awake, or to act in waking life as if it were dreaming. This breakdown of the boundary between waking and dreaming through lucid dreaming yields a new approach to the meaning of the self as a source of critical identity and knowledge. In lucid dreaming, the sense of guardedness for maintaining self-boundaries is relaxed in order for the self to experience other possibilities of being. Consequently, these experiences could introduce creative moments in waking life because the self no longer sees the necessity to confine innovative ideas in dreaming to the dream world. For example, Evans (1983: 226) asked whether s scientist could use his or her lucid dream experiences to uncover new knowledge. An important outcome of collapsing the boundary between waking and dreaming is the realization of the constructed nature of the self and the phenomenal world. This realization can occur by lucidly confronting the ephemeral nature of the dream world. Upon waking, the lucid dreamer may come to treat the waking world as if it too is a theater of manipulable images. LaBerge and Rhinegold (1990: 287-88) explained that "the dream state and waking state both use the same perceptual process to arrive at mental representations or models of the world. These models, whether of the dream or physical world, are only models. As such they are illusions, not the things they are representing..." The implication is that dream lucidity can have a jolting effect on our conventional understanding of the world. If we can reinvent ourselves in lucid dreaming, then our experiences of the waking world can be construed as being more open to deconstruction. In other words, lucid dreaming challenges the formidability of waking reality. Can we say that the self in the waking state is more real than that in dreams? Lucid dreaming offers a new experience for probing the organization and presentation of the self. By being lucidly aware of the deconstructive nature of dreaming, we may become more attentive to the way we constitute ourselves in waking life. Alternatively, if we adopt a deconstructive approach to waking life, then we may begin to explore our personal dream identities in ways that we have not done before. Postmodernism, Fractalization and Dreaming The deconstructive agenda of postmodernism addresses the fragility of social reality. In particular, it is the social reality constituted by waking consciousness that has become the focus of postmodern critique. The apparent concreteness of social reality is placed under microscopic inquiry by postmodern critics who want to demonstrate the arbitrariness and impermanence of all social constructions (see Sarup. 1993). The thrust of this critique opens up new areas of inquiry concerning the meaning of waking consciousness and its relationship to various levels of non-waking consciousness, including dreaming. Postmodernism not only unravels our fundamental assumptions of social reality, but also suggests the equivalence between waking and non-waking realities. Postmodern deconstruction is a line of inquiry that makes possible our realization of the fleeting nature of all phenomena in the waking world. As such, postmodernism disprivileges waking consciousness. Under postmodern gaze, the social constructions of the waking world can be made equivalent to the fleeting dreamscapes of the sleeping mind. What we conventionally perceive as the robust structures of waking reality become reversed in postmodern thinking as the illusory metanarratives of the modern world. In modernity, metanarratives provide the parameters of action in everyday life, giving the impression that our consciousness is based on a logical set of rules for defining sound behavior. When these rules are exposed as the precarious constructs of linguistic conventions, as demonstrated by postmodern critics, metanarratives can be reduced to the peculiar workings and reworkings of conversational life, thereby revealing the surreal nature of waking reality. In general, the surrealism of waking life is hidden by our commonsense view of the world. It is a view that is supported by an unquestioned consensus on the unproblematic nature of waking reality. The postmodern emphasis on ironies and contingencies (Rorty, 1989; Lemert, 1992) turns this consensus on its head, disclosing the surreal moments of waking reality. On the other hand, the surrealism of dreaming directly impinges on the rationality of individuals because the metanarratives of modern waking life cannot be consciously maintained in sleep to provide a buffer against random perceptual associations. In other words, dreams lack the consensus that defines the routines of modern waking life. In sleep, the ironies and contingencies of dreaming penetrate the modern metanarratives that prioritize waking life. Individuals navigate their dreamscapes not by accessing the familiar metanarratives of waking life, but by an uncanny immersion in ironies and contingencies that are ignored or made irrelevant in waking consciousness. It is as though postmodern deconstruction occupies the foreground in dreaming. Thus, the surrealism of dreaming converges with postmodern deconstruction to suggest a new experience of de-differentiation between waking and dreaming. This new experience is exemplified by lucid dreaming that redefines the meaning of dream consciousness as a special state of awareness. The approach advocated by lucid dreaming experts for de-differentiating between waking and dreaming focuses on maintaining a sense of alertness while falling asleep. This technique allows the individual to develop skills in being aware of entering a dream state without losing consciousness. By using hypnagogic imageries in the initial stages of sleep, individuals can train to directly experience lucid dreaming without any lapse of consciousness. Hypnagogic imageries emerge as random and vivid mental pictures as the individual hovers between waking and sleeping. It is a state of 'half-dreaming' where the individual experiences a series of seemingly disconnected images that lead directly into dreams (Harary and Weintraub, 1989: 55; LaBerge and Rhinegold, 1990: 96). Hypnagogic imageries can be compared to an aspect of postmodern deconstruction that highlights the relative positioning of all signifiers. According to Jacques Derrida (1976), all signifiers are not necessarily prearranged in ways to determine fixed orders of meaning. On the contrary, there is an endless play of differences (différance) that results in a perpetual change of forms and meanings. The purpose of postmodern deconstruction is to challenge all social structures and interpretations as stable, permanent and ineluctable. It paves the way for approaching the world as uncompromisingly open and decentered. Thus, the experience of perceiving rapidly changing images in a hypnagogic state is analogous to a deconstructive view of the world. The kaleidoscope of images perceived in the hypnagogic state represents a free play of signifiers that eventually shades into dreaming. Dreamers who are able to maintain awareness while falling asleep develop a special sensitivity to witnessing the 'breakdown' of the waking world into a random display of images. Lucid dreaming is, therefore, an enhanced consciousness of différance. To wake up in dreams suggests the possibility of transforming all signifiers and pushing one's self-identity to the limits. The game of 'trading places' recommended by Harary and Weintraub (1989: 61-62) provides the lucid dreamer with the opportunity to experiment with the mutability of self-identity. They claimed that it is within the power of each dreamer to consciously shift perspectives with any dream character. Being in a lucid state, the dreamer is said to be in an ideal position to assume the viewpoint of various dream characters and to transform himself or herself into a completely different person. There is a schizophrenic quality to such an experience because the dreamer comes to take on multiple personalities that would be perceived in waking life as a threat to the integrity of the self. But in lucid dreaming, such schizophrenic experiences are considered a means for training the mind to redefine the ability to assume different personalities as a game of deconstruction rather than a threat to self-integrity. By relinquishing the idea of the self as given, the lucid dreamer is able to take fractalization in dreaming as the normative condition of consciousness to engage in the play of differences ad infinitum. Without the constraints of waking life, fractalization in dreaming empowers lucid dreamers to relativize themselves in a manner that would not be considered disastrous to their sense of well being. The lucid dreamer becomes a 'dream chameleon' and may come to realize that fractal identities in waking life are kept at bay by the illusion of a social order that disparages différance. The freedom of lucid dreaming described by Charles McCreery and Oliver Fox refers precisely to the potential of dreamers to consciously transcend all fixed identities of waking life. It is a freedom to reinvent ourselves without being held accountable to the metanarratives of waking reality. If postmodernism is a critique of these metanarratives, then it is also a movement of consciousness transformation that bridges the fragility of waking reality with the surrealism of lucid dreaming. The metanarratives that we have internalized as the parameters for defining our self-identities are challenged by postmodernism as the untenable constructs of everyday life. Once these constructs are demonstrated to be nothing more than an unrecognized play of differences, it is but a short step to the realization that they are dreamlike in nature. In other words, the surrealism of everyday life is veiled by our commitment to the metanarratives of social order and structure. Postmodernism cuts through this veil to activate a lucidity that parallels the self-realization of dreaming. Conclusion The crisis of the modern self produced a deep skepticism of the subject. It spawned postmodern critiques that challenged the belief in the integrated reality of selfhood. Postmodernists opted for the notion of a decentered self whose sense of being was predicated on the endless play of signifiers. Deconstruction became the primary strategy for disengaging the subject from the hegemony of metanarratives. Freedom was defined by the ability to cut through the illusion of fixed identities. This freedom is also experienced by lucid dreamers who can consciously switch and combine identities in the dream state. They can transcend the normative expectations of waking life without being stigmatized as anti-normative. As an inner experience of différance, lucid dreaming provides profound insight into the constructed nature of waking reality. It is a special condition of awareness that reveals the fragility of waking reality as being equivalent to the surrealism of dreaming. Lucid dreaming is indeed a form of postmodenism. However, only a small proportion of the general population experiences lucid dreaming. An even smaller proportion is able to maintain a consistent pattern of lucid dreaming. This implies that most people have the potential to experience lucid dreaming, but only a few have gained lucidity in dreaming and possibly realized the equivalence between waking and dreaming. For this reason, the metanarratives of waking life remain intact and continue to constitute the basis for distinguishing dreaming from waking. Postmodern critics may question these metanarratives but they have yet to forge links with lucid dreaming as a method of de-differentiation. When postmodernism is recognized as a perspective that offers deconstruction as an entry into lucid dreaming, a new level of consciousness transformation becomes possible for bringing together social critique and dream creativity. At present, techniques of lucid dreaming and new technologies for inducing lucid dreaming (see LaBerge, 1993) are available to the public, making it possible for interested individuals to develop and practice lucidity in dreaming. The popularization of lucid dreaming suggests that as more people come to experience lucid dreaming, the meaning of waking and dreaming will undergo radical change. The realization that one can actually awake in dreams implies the possibility of treating waking life as dreamlike in nature. It is beyond the scope of this paper to speculate on how these developments will influence the future meaning of social and cultural reality, but suffice to say that the world will no longer be the same once we all awake in our dreams. References Baudrillard, Jean (1993). The Transparency of Evil. London: Verso. Cohen, Robin and Kennedy, Paul (2000). Global Sociology. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Derrida, Jacques (1976). Of Grammatology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Devereaux, Paul and Devereaux, Charla (1998). The Lucid Dreaming Kit. Vermont: Journey Edition. Evans, Christopher (1983). Landscapes of the Night. London: Gollancz. Flanagan, Owen (2000). Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Foster, Hal (1985). Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press. Fox, Oliver (1962). Astral Projection. New York: University Books. Freud, Sigmund (1954). The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Allen and Unwin. Garfinkel, Harold (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gergen, Kenneth (1991). The Saturated Self. New York: Basic Books. Giddens, Anthony (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Green, Celia (1968). Lucid Dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton. Green, Celia and McCreery, Charles (1994). Lucid Dreaming. London: Routledge. Harary, Keith and Weintraub, Pamela (1989). Lucid Dreams in 30 Days. New York: St. Martin's Press. LaBerge, Stephen (1985). Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books. La Berge, Stephen (1993). "Lucidity Research, Past and Future." Nightlight 5(3) [www.lucidity.com]. LaBerge, Stephen and Rhinegold, Howard (1990). Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books. Lemert, Charles (1992). "General Social Theory, Irony, Postmodernism," in S. Seidman and D. Wagner (eds.), Postmodernism and Social Theory, pp.17-46. Oxford: Blackwell. Løvlie, Lars (1992). "Postmodernism and Subjectivity," in S. Kvale (ed.), Psychology and Postmodernism, pp.119-134. London: Sage. Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984). The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McCreery, Charles (1973). Psychical Phenomena and the Physical World. London: Hamish Hamilton. Moss, Robert (1996). Conscious Dreaming. New York: Crown Publishing. Parker, Adrian (1975). States of Mind. London: Malaby Books. Rocher, Guy (1974). Talcott Parsons and American Sociology. London: Nelson. Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarup, Madan (1993). An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Sarup, Madan (1996). Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Tart, Charles T. (1972). Altered States of Consciousness. New York: Anchor Books. Taylor, Charles (1989). Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raymond L.M. Lee Department of Anthropology & Sociology University of Malaya e-mail: f2lmlee@umcsd.um.edu.my o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o In the Night Minds of Children Ann Sayre Wiseman o|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|o John 8 I'm a space man yelling HELP, there are aliens on my ship holding me hostage with their eyes. I am paralyzed. Molly 6 I dreamed my Dad took me and his new girl friend out in his boat. I fell overboard and he didn't even notice me drowning. I felt sad. Alia 6 1/2 A bat is chasing me I'm shouting help. I ran straight home. Bat followed me. I hid under my bed. While he was looking in a different room for me, I slipped out and ran to my friends house. When I looked out the window bat was there. He flew in. We screamed and that scared him. Robin 7 I woke in the night, thought it was morning, dressed, brushed my hair. Went down stairs. All along the rail of the stairs were ghosts 10,000 ghosts. They said "Wowee look at her underwear. Look at her hair style." I'm throwing up. I'm turning green. Nick 6 I am falling out of a plane. This is a bad plane. There was a fight, I lost and fell out. Geoff 7 This is me when the ghost is inside me and I'm bloody all over. Katie 5 I'm in a haunted house with a Vampire who will eat me up, drink my blood, and put goo on my legs so I can't walk. Jared 7 The King sends the dragon monster to pull my head off and eat my eye balls. If I don't cooperate he will throw me to the alligators. The King is so strong he cracks the hill. Alexis 6 Skeleton chased me into a deep hole. I was so scared I fell right off my bed. Terri 7 my sister and I are in San Francisco. Lightening has burned every single door and window. A storm came with icy needles. We are screaming. Mom is holding a metal pole which isn't a good idea. Metal is a conductor of lightening it could kill her her. * * * * * * * * * * This was just one morning's visit in an ordinary classroom, long before the September 11th disaster. Imagine what nightmares are now in the minds of children following such an unbelievable act as the World Trade Center Attack. Dreams are the silent unspoken dilemmas of our ordinary healthy, happy seeming children. These dreams can also be helpers and seen as a metaphor for the kind of fears or life challenges that our children face, without acknowledgment, council, or help. We say they are ONLY dreams but in fact they can offer us an opportunity to learn from our fears. Seeing the dream on paper offers the child a way to remove the fear from the mind and anchor it on the paper. Working with dreams helps to teach negotiation skills, self defense and creative self empowerment. (Something I never learned in school, did you? A kind of lifemanship my parents didn't demonstrate very well, did yours?) Skills I only began to appreciate and implement when I started training in the Expressive Therapies, in Assertiveness Training Workshops, in Co-Counseling, EST and Psychodrama. Why do we wait until 40 for permission or courage to say NO, to confront the antagonist and stand our ground without guilt or apology?. To defend ones right to be alive, to feel worthy of existence etc. Why not teach these skills beginning in first grade? The answer is complex. People who don't have these skills can't teach them. And that is many of us who slide through life avoiding issues, giving in, or taking the consequences. I decided to see how kids would grasp the, encouragement and permission to empower themselves by changing the dynamics, by renegotiating a fairer solution, by redefining the bad situation which the night mind delivered in a dream or nightmare. We started with paper and markers, putting the dilemma out of the head onto the paper. That already felt better, the dreamer was more in charge. And once the dream was made visible, together we could talk and John could discover more information. "John, What needs to happen for you to help the paralyzed spaceman part of yourself who is being held hostage by eyes of the aliens, yelling HELP in your picture?" " I don't know. He can't move" "Can he talk?" "Yea I guess so if they speak English" "Close your eyes and listen, see what he is saying to the Alien" " He said Why are you holding me hostage what did I do?" "Close your eyes again and listen. What does the Alien say?" "He says that's my job." "Ask him does he like this job" "He says he has to do it and he likes scaring people because he feels powerful" "John, ask the spaceman if he is still paralyzed now he can talk to the Alien" "No, it helps when we talk he can move a little." Any small shift in the dynamics that empowers the Dreamer, changes the victim position and opens the way for negotiation and eventually a win-win solution. John said "If you scare me and hold me paralyzed with your eyes, neither one of us can fly the ship". That revelation made John laugh. He said I guess we better find a way to get back to earth and that logic released him from the terror into a creative solution. The excitement of exercises like this spread far beyond the drawing of dreams, kids found they could use dialogue like this to handle situations in the classroom and at home. Betty said her art teacher gave the clay pot she made to another girl and instead of crying she worked out the dialogue on her drawing, until she found a way to convince the teacher that she had made an understandable mistake, and that helped the teacher listen to her side of the argument that explained the pot was really hers. Maggie dreamed her father didn't notice when she fell overboard and started to drown. When she looked at her drawing she realized that if drowning didn't get her fathers attention away from his new girl friend, she'd have to find a better way to reach him. She practiced the words and expressed the feelings she had been too scared and hurt to say in the dream. She drew the words she needed to say into her picture (Look at me I am here too) and gave the drawing to her father. Instead of being the victim there are ways to empower oneself. Any parent can help a child work with the dream drawing. All they need to ask is "WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN TO HELP THE CHILD IN THE PICTURE." And stay away from interpretation, let the child lead you. Bio: Ann Sayre Wiseman artist, writer, Author of 13 books on the Creative Process, including DREAMS AS METAPHOR THE POWER OF THE IMAGE; NIGHTMARE HELP, A guide for Adults from Children; MAKING THINGS Handbook of Creative Discoveries Spent 12 years teaching in The Expressive Therapies Program at Lesley College, Cambridge Ma. Workshop leader for The Association For The Study Of Dreams and The Cambridge Center For Adult Ed. And places Abroad. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< Where is the Global Dreaming News? Now at the beginning of Electric Dreams! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|||||||>>>>>>>>>>>|||||<<<<<<<<<<<< +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS ** DREAMS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ New Series begins with dream-flow@egroup.com Digest #1 09/29/2000 This issue includes volume # 379 - 398 Hello and welcome to the DREAM SECTION of Electric Dreams. This section is edited by Richard Wilkerson and the DreamEditor, a software creation of Harry Bosma, author of the Dream interpretation and journaling software "Alchera". (homepage: http://mythwell.com) Please note that we print these dreams as they come to us and that means we do not correct the spelling. Some dreamworkers find these spelling mistakes a great window on the dream and dreamer. The Electric Dreams DREAM SECTION includes dreams and comments from the DREAM FLOW, a project to circulate dreams in Cyberspace. Many mail lists participate, including dream-flow@lists.best.com dreamstream@topical.com DreamsRus@onelist.com The Dream Sack http//www.deeplistening.org/ione Usenet groups (too many to name, search DREAM) If you would like to send in single dreams for the flow, you can leave them at http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/temple If you have a mail list or would like to contribute dreams and comments on a regular basis, you can subscribe to the dream-flow by sending an E-mail to TO: dream-flow-subscribe@egroups.com You may get a note back to verify the subscription. Simply hit the return or reply key and send the note back. An Archive of dream-flow is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/dream-flow@egroups.com/ Pre-November 2000: http://www.mail-archive.com/dream-flow@lists.best.com/ Pre-November 1998 http://www.mail-archive.com/ed-core@lists.best.com/ Pre-April 1990 Use Electric Dreams Backissues http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/ed-backissues ------------------------- BEGIN --------------------------- ___________________________________________________________ 379- (only notes, start 380) [dream-flow] Digest Number 379 [dream-flow] Digest Number 380 ____________________________________________________________ There are 2 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. tentative new member From: "birchholly" Subject: THE MIRACLE OF TOILET PAPER > > Fresh from her shower, a woman stands in front of the mirror, complaining > to > her husband that her breasts are too small. Instead of characteristically > telling her it's not so, the husband uncharacteristically comes up with a > suggestion. > "If you want your breasts to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet > paper > and rub it between your breasts for a few seconds." > Willing to try anything, the wife fetches a piece of toilet paper, and > stands > in front of the mirror, rubbing it between her breasts. > "How long will this take?",she asks. > "They'll grow larger over a period of years", he replies. > The wife stops. "Why do you think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between > my > breasts every day will make my breasts grow over the years?" > "Worked for your ass , didn't it?" > He lived, and with a great deal of therapy, may even walk again.... ____________________________________________________________ [dream-flow] Digest Number 381 ____________________________________________________________ There are 10 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Psychic Death From: Anonymous 2. airplane explosions and crashes From: Anonymous 3. birds From: Anonymous 4. New Dream From: Anonymous 5. Violence in my sleep From: Anonymous 6. The Stage From: Anonymous 7. roller coaster dream From: Anonymous 8. Charlie's Death From: Anonymous 9. Re: Violence in my sleep From: mara flynn wrote: > dream_title: Violence in my sleep > > dream_date: 22&24/01/2002 > > dreamer_name: Stacy > > dream_text: On both occasions my baby daughter is > gone. On the first > occasion she is kidnapped by a ghost. We are in a > double stores thatch hut > and the ghost first tries to kill her by pulling > away the gaurg rail but I > catch her, then she is gone, taken by it. In the > second dream with the same > type surroundings, my husband and her are stabbed. > At first my husband is > dead but then he is'nt and only she is. My oldest > daughter is fine and I am > running around crying because my baby is dead. I > don't see her body, I just > know she has been stabbed and is dead. > > dream_comments: I am disturbed by the dreams as I > love my daughter very > much, especially the baby. Why is she always gone. > > > > ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ There is 1 message in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. scared From: Anonymous ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 00:01:13 -0800 From: Anonymous Subject: scared dream_title: scared dreamer_name: nat_mp dream_text: I'm in this place and i'm lost and i can't find anyone because i'm so scared i start to run around looking for someone i know, i start to call out but no one can hear me.i finally sit down and wait and cry,then something happens a shadow comes over me and i wake up. dream_comments: It happens everytime i'm going somewhere far I always talk in my sleep, or yell for some one like i'm talking to someone ____________________________________________________________ [dream-flow] Digest Number 383 ____________________________________________________________ There is 1 message in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: scared From: Heratheta ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 18:54:32 EST From: Heratheta Subject: Re: scared see www.dreamgate.com./dream/dubetz/ ____________________________________________________________ [dream-flow] Digest Number 384 ____________________________________________________________ There are 7 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. chasing demon From: Anonymous 2. What Time Is It From: Anonymous 3. scary From: Anonymous 4. What Time Is It From: Anonymous 5. family killings and protection? From: Anonymous 6. Re: family killings and protection? From: mara flynn wrote: dream_title: family killings and protection? dream_date: 1/31/2002 dreamer_name: dylirym dream_text: Last night I fell asleep on my couch in the living room. I was deeply disturbed and awakened at 3:30am with this approximate dream: Mt ENTIRE family was at a restaurant Sunday brunch. In the middle of the meal, I grabbed my knife, got up, and walked behind every one of them. I walked around the whole table carving the knife blade into each one as I walked by - fairly unnoticed by anyone else in the restaurant. I then continued on to the bathroom. My intentions in the dream were to kill. I spared my husband completely however. I entered the bathroom to rid myself of the "murder weapon" and could hear others dscussing the situation from inside my stall. Someone even tried to peer into my stall through the door crack to get a look at me. As I came out of the bathroom into the dining hall, it was apparent that some members of my family DID die. My mother and father did not, however, and suspected it was me. They offered to COVER for me and help create an alibi. My father was very adimate in offering to defend me. My husband was no where to be found. dream_comments: I have had some pretty strange dreams before..always in real settings, but never about me wanting to kill. This disturbs me very much and would like any thoughts on the matter. ______________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 05:22:28 -0800 (PST) From: mara flynn