In the last post we learned a bit about the fascinating life and work of Robert Moss. In this post, we’ll learn more about Robert and about his latest book—of poetry!
In your book Dreamgates you describe several workshops in which there is an apparent connection between the star Sirius and the Ancient Egyptians. Can you describe how you best understand the possibility of this connection?
Many people, including clients of mine, report that during dream time they encounter loved ones that have passed on. What suggestion, technique, or ritual have you found helpful for those who wish to connect with intention to a deceased loved one through dreams?
“Contact with the deceased, especially in dreams, is natural and easy if we are open to it. It’s a very common experience. Our dead may still be around, because they have not yet moved on and that can be problematic if they don’t understand that they are dead (in the sense of not having physical bodies any more). Or they may come calling, for all the reasons we might call on each other in regular life, and then some. And in dreams we go traveling, and may find ourselves in realms where the dead are at home. These experiences have been the source of the enduring and near-universal human belief that consciousness survives physical death, and of countless geographies of the afterlife.
If you dream of the deceased and want a longer or clearer communication, learn to go back inside the dream and do that consciously, through the technique of dream reentry that I teach as a core practice of Active Dreaming. If you don’t have a dream, make a simple ritual. Light a candle, put out objects that remind you of the deceased and perhaps a little food and drink they would enjoy. Then initiate conversation on the assumption that they may be around, and record whatever comes into your mind that may be a response. Or write a letter to the deceased, as the Egyptians were fond of doing.”
Similarly, what do you find is the best way to invoke protection for entering the dream world? What tools to you use to discern between those who are true guides and those who are from the lower astral who may be “disguised” as guides.
“Nothing works better than a lively connection with the animal guardians! In my books and workshops, I offer many techniques for opening and maintaining a strong working connection with the animal spirits. They are seeking us in our dreams. Such dreams often require us to brave up and stop running away from the bear or the tiger, face them, and go from there. This may be accomplished through conscious dream reentry.
We need to grow discernment in relation to who and what we encounter on the roads of dreaming. Just as in regular life, we want to check the reliability of our sources! We must trust our feelings, and check our energy levels after encounters on the inner planes. We must never engage with any entity that speaks to us in the language of dominance or submission.”
You also use the term “timefolding” in your works. Can you describe to readers what “timefolding” is and why it is important, useful, or profound?
“As dreamers, we are time travelers. With or without intention, we travel to the past and the future as well as parallel worlds. This can become conscious practice, and we can learn to fold time in the sense of being present, mind to mind, with other personalities in other times, sharing gifts and insights with each other. Our ability to travel into the future is essential to our survival and well-being. We not only bring back memories of future events for which we—and sometimes whole communities—can then prepare. We visit possible futures, and our ability to read our memories of the possible future and then take appropriate action can determine whether we can escape a future event we don’t like, or manifest one that we want.”
“I have written poems all of my life. The 19-year-old romantic in me, who lived for love and poetry, was eager for me to bring a collection of my poems to the world, though none of his are in the present collection, which gathers poems I have written over the past 20 years. My poems stream straight from my dreaming. Some of them are born of profound experiences of soul recovery healing, of traveling to a land of Lost Boys and Girls to bring back a part of someone that was lost through pain or abuse or trauma and needed to be in a safe place in another reality for half a lifetime. Some of my poems reflect my deep acquaintance with the animal powers, especially Bear and Fox, Tiger and Raven, and Hawk.
I agree with the Inuit when they saw that we need to produce ‘fresh words’ to entertain the spirits. This is what I have done with my poems. Some of them are ‘wing songs’ that help the soul to fly free. Some are offerings to the powers of the deeper world, and therefore instruments of real magic, which is the art of bringing gifts from a deeper world into this one.”
In Here Everything is Dreaming, I particularly love the poems “I Dreamed I Woke Up” and “Soul Is.” Can you tell a bit about each of these and what inspired these works?
“Are we asleep in regular life and awake in the dream world? Sometimes it feels like that, and I play with the fluctuations in our sense of reality in ‘I Dreamed I Woke Up.’ When I close my eyes, I often have the sense of waking in another landscape, among people who may have been waiting for me. Then there is that phenomenon of ‘false awakening.’ Within a dream, you sleep and wake up, to find later that you were in another level of the dream, not yet back in the body in the bed. Such experiences mark transits from outer to inner courtyards of dreaming, and when we learn to recognize what is going on, this deepens our practice of conscious dreaming.
‘Soul Is’ was inspired by a lovely, triste young woman in one of my workshops who said, when I asked people to say what the word ‘soul’ means to them, ‘Soul is something that is always trying to leave.’ That ache of longing for a home somewhere else moved all of us.
Upon composing the questions for this interview, I had a series of synchronicities related to the Hebrew letter “Aleph.” You mention the Borges story “The Aleph” in your book Dreamgates. Can you describe how you perceive the fifth dimension and how the symbolism of this letter relates to expanding vision and consciousness?
“That is a marvelous story, and you know I love Borges. One of the stories in the second part of Here, Everything Is Dreaming—‘The Other, Again,’—is partly inspired by Borges as well as my personal experiences of close-up encounters with younger and older possible selves within this lifetime. I’ll leave Borges to comment on the Aleph. I’m less interested in talking about perceptions of the fifth dimension that in perceiving from that dimension. I practice operating in multiple states of consciousness. When I am drumming for a group adventure in shamanic dreaming, for example, I am in control of my body. I am also scanning the psychic environment, warding the group. At the same time, I am engaged in a personal journey in consciousness that may take me deep into another reality. Simultaneously, I may be looking in on the journeys of people in the group. When I am really on, I feel I can see the whole scene, physical and psychic, in 360-degree vision, as if it is all enclosed in a bubble and my awareness is at every point on the surface of that bubble as well as at the center. That begins to evoke what perceiving from the fifth dimension may be like.”
Is there anything else that you would like readers to know?
“May your best dreams come true—and may you remember them!”
Robert Moss teaches dreaming workshops around the world. Please feel free to visit him at his website. You can view his current schedule there. He may be in a city near you soon!
Thanks so much for reading! Be sure to check back soon for the next post—the first entry on Everything is Connected that will feature visual art!
Copyright © 2013 Kelly Lydick