Sleeping, Awareness, Dreams
Dreaming Yourself Into Being and Dream Fragments are my final volumes in a quadrilogy of books on sleep, awareness, and dreams. The first book is The Path to Sleep, the second is Becoming Lucid. Both deal with sleep, dreams, and altered states, while these books specifically focuses on understanding, participating in, and benefiting from their dreams.
Why We Dream
What Dreams Are
What Dreams Do
How Dreams Work
How Our Minds Work
How to Remember Dreams
Becoming Involved in Your Dreams
Dark Dreams
Building Light into Dreams
Using Daydreams
Starting the Process of Transformation
Dreaming Yourself Into Being includes 6 hypnosis inductions leading into the fundamental symbols of earth, air, fire, water, wood, and body.
Dreams remind you that you’re still exploring the conflicts and opportunities in life. In waking life you’re too busy dealing with situations to go off on tangents, but you can in your dreams, to try on new feelings and attitudes.
Dreams are workshops that confront confusion, engage emotions, and build different views of reality. In your dreams you can afford to feel as weak, indulge your fears, and assemble a stronger self. They don’t give you instructions, they unearth your feelings.
Mental health is not a rational process but it does involve your rational mind. You must feel before you think, and imagine before you see. Dreams are your most powerful tool for growth and understanding.
In this Kickstarter campaign I’m offering the book Dreaming Yourself Into Being, and a shorter book of excerpts, Dream Fragments—both at cost and in various forms: digital, print, and audio. To sponsor the campaign, preorder the book, or register for group or private sessions in dreamwork training, go to:
As part of the campaign I’m offering my online course on therapeutic dreamwork. Sign up on the Kickstarter page. The 6-session, zoom-based class is described here:
Questions and Answers About Dreams
Q: What is the best way to have and remember many dreams?
A: You remember dreams when you awake while having them. This means either you are awoken before a dream fades, or the dream awakens you at a propitious moment. Both things happen, but you’ll make it happen more by having more periods of sleep during the day, and allowing yourself to wake up naturally from them. That way, you’ll emerge from sleep in sync with your dream cycle.
Q: I would like to have more good dreams, even great dreams. How can I have dreams that are inspiring and uplifting?
A: Dreams will always express the nature of your soul or spirit, and the unresolved issues we carry below our awareness. These are issues that run in our families, cultures, and personal histories. Improving your dreams follows from improving your life. You do this work in your life, and your dreams respond to it. If your waking life was your homework, then your dreams are the grade you get. They are guiding, not giving you answers, but insisting on questions.
Q: I find my dreams are crazy and nonsensical. What is the point of trying to understand them?
A: Dreams don’t present sense, they present the nonsense that bothers us, the things that make us unsure, suspicious, depressed, and worried. These are all the things we avoid unless we have to, and when we have to consider these things we are rarely prepared. They remind us of what is standing in the way of our comfort, control, security, and satisfaction. Until you understand these obstacles you cannot be effective in either resolving or avoiding them. The purpose of dreams is to organize, recognize, address, and resolve those things in your waking life.
Q: I don’t like many of my dreams. Do I have to work with dreams I don’t like?
A: Your dreams reflect dissatisfaction in waking life. They present these issues in emotional ways not easily dismissed. You choice in waking life is to deal with problems or avoid them. Dreams address problems.
Q: If I can’t remember my dreams, how can I begin with dream work?
A: Most people don’t remember their dreams until they try. Trying to simply means having the intention to remember. Dreams start to appear when you look for them. If you want to engage with your dreams, then they will arise in memory. But dream work requires some practice and changes to your sleep habits and rhythms.
Q: What can I expect to get out of dream work?
A: The goal of dream work is to find purpose and satisfaction. Your dreams don’t accept excuses or half satisfactions because those are not enough. Your dreams reflect on what you’ve done to fulfill yourself.
You can usually convince yourself to think one thing or another, but the final appraisal comes up in your dreams. As such, dreams are often too hot to handle, but to deny them entirely risks anxiety and depression. It a question of taking responsibility for how you feel.
Dreams create as landscapes the difficult situations you need to address. These are not threats, they are opportunities to journey through them. In them, you meet all aspects of yourself, good and bad. They offer a form of liberation and new direction.
