It is the early morning hours of December 16th and John is sleeping. He dreams of "walking though a corridor like a causeway at a large airport". His dream report continues:
"The man ahead of me sets up a stepladder to several switch boxes. I ask, "You going to work that live?" He replies "Yeah, just like you did yesterday". I flash to earlier in the dream and remember doing just that: replacing a breaker box in the switch. Then I remember a fragment of a conversation with a girl who stopped to talk". (JE)
750 miles to the south, I am dreaming, too, but I'm aware of the fact. I decide to take advantage of my lucidity to try and contact the other members of my dream group:
"I walk down a corridor until I come to a window. Behind it is a room filled with electronic equipment. I ask the young man sitting there if he will broadcast the names of people so that they will meet me here. He indicates assent and flips some switches". (LM)
John and I have never met in person; just through written correspondence. We are members of the Lucidity Project of the Seth Dream Network. Each month we and the other members of our international group dream to a preselected target goal.
We don't often have parallel dreams. But we do have the opportunity to work on advanced dream skills: attaining lucidity, incubating dreams on the goal; experimenting within the lucid state.
The themes that emerge reflect the process of group dreaming. On the first dream date, we worried over the idea of dreaming with other people. The dreams contained phrases like "problems of infringement of privacy"; "they need privacy", "she needs help"; "fear of the known and unknown".
But in later months we seemed to be reassuring each other:
".....he finally says, "Maybe I went too far this time". But I tell him "No..". (EM)
"I didn't sound too crazy, did I?" "Not too bad", she says. (DR)
At the end of the eighth month we finally said, in effect, "enough's enough!" and all sent in dreams that reflected a new, bolder stance. Fear and pain were handled quickly or dispensed with altogether. Three of us shed clothing. Sexual dream symbols included an adult bookstore, a toilet paper mask, and the act of childbearing.
As we stretch our mind muscles, we tend to remember dreams more frequently and of greater variety. Throughout the project all types of dreams have been reported: nightmare and anxiety, mental dreams without images; flying and high dreams; precognitive and out-of-body experiences. Serendipity has played its part, too.
In February I attended a meeting of another dreamworker's group. That group decided to try a telepathy experiment and I was chosen as the "sender". I went home to concentrate on a magazine photo from my dream journal. Two days later John had the following lucid dream:
"I have on a parachute harness which is connected to a balloon by heavy piano wire. Away I go into the sky. Incredibly weird! The balloon is so far above me it is almost out of sight. I am hanging in the sky seemingly without any support. Very lonely. Surface details are lost to be replaced with others like rivers, lakes, and snowy mountains. Strange feelings of dissociation from the surface. Confidence, but still lost in the sky". (JE)
What was the target picture? A skydiver! John had picked up the photo, and he wasn't even trying. True, there had been a time lag of two days. But time is wily in the dream state, mixing past, present and future with abandon. This makes it very difficult to utilize linear criteria to examine results.
Instead I must often use an approach that more closely approximates that of a dream artist. In August the target goal was a dream journey to a swimming hole. I took portions of our dreams and wove then together:
"I come across rooms that had been empty and now had peoples' belongings in them". (PS)
"I'm somehow amused that I'm dreaming of an empty room, so I start to decorate the place". (RW)
"I meet 4 other persons who decide to "set the place up (decorate) for the owner...The activity involves hanging large sheets of paper up around the place". (MSE)
"I was working on a large 4 panel oil painting of a large body of water surrounded by beautiful trees and plants...I attended a meeting with several people". (KL)
"I am coming down a wide trail on a hill... There are bushy trees in places. I meet several people". (BW)
"I end up in the University....among several other people". (JE) "I wandered through a school...Saw through an internal window a class watching slides". (PS)
"...watching a movie on TV. A friendly, handsome man is explaining the art of creating reality... Telepathically, he says to me..". (LR)
"(JS) and I (are) underwater in an ocean-like expanse of water". (ME) "I'm swimming with the leader out in the Atlantic Ocean. He is ...telepathing to me". (LM)
"(ME) closes his eyes and holds his nose and dives in backwards... I feel that he will come back up...I somehow knew he would". (JS)
"We saw things swimming in the ocean-perhaps turtles". (DM)
"I consider taking one perfect red rose bud to the swimming hole". (SR)
The tales we tell form a special tapestry of inner group dynamics. We continue to learn about ourselves and each other through the unique, open medium of dreams.
Linda Magallón is a teacher, writer and researcher of lucid and group dreams. She is an Executive Board member of the Association for the Study of Dreams and Coordinator of the Seth Dream Network. For further information on the Lucidity Project, write to Linda c/o Seth Dream Network, 1083 Harvest Meadow Court, San Jose, Ca 95136
Editor's Comments
Note the interesting sequence of how Linda develops her "dream painting". The initial background is an empty room that gradually gets decorated. People then start arriving and begin to observe slides or movies. Outdoor imagery becomes more prominent and the telepathic interaction begins when people start joining in an ocean setting and swimming together, which was the targeted goal: to meet at the swimming hole. The painting deserves the perfect red rose bud to commemorate it!
