Hi Reader

Happy Halloween! The veil is thin, wafer thin.

Seems like a good time to ask if you have ever slipped into the world between worlds, and had an out of body experience (OBE)?

I mean where you shed your perceptual body either directly from waking, from sleep paralysis or in the middle of a lucid dream, and entered into a new uncanny place, or an ephemeral version of your current scene seen from above?

These experiences are timeless, and cross-cultural.

Talking to a friend recently who also experiences quite a lot of OBEs from a lucid state, he told me he regularly has an unseen companion in these spaces. A figure who puts a hand on his unseen shoulder and guides him, or holds his hand. Sometimes, the companion is visible as a figure of light who brings feelings of intimacy and warmth.

This took me by surprise because my OBE experiences are usually quite empty of other presences. I tend to drift about for a while, and eventually emerge into a new kind of lucid dream.

Except there was this one time... now that I think about it... about a year ago, when I went out of body and found myself getting pulled into a gigantic multicolored vortex. At the edge of the spiraling lights was a gigantic man wearing a tall top hat and a large handlebar moustache. He looked like a Cosmic Ringmaster. He grinned knowingly as I drifted past him into the vortex and I got swallowed into a new reality. It was slightly unsettling but not frightening.

If you have had an out of body experience and then came into contact with some kind of entity (seen or unseen), researchers Samantha Treasure and Ben Gandy are looking to hear from your first hand experiences!

They have created a questionnaire to catalogue these sorts of events. Here’s what they say:

“If you’ve ever had an out-of-body experience in which you encountered an entity (whether seen, heard or felt, human or other-than-human, positive or negative), please consider contributing to the science of this experience by taking the survey.”

You’re in good hands with this research: Samantha and Sam Gandy teamed up with Dr Marina Weiler (University of Virginia), Dr Alex de Foe (Monash University), Dr David Luke (University of Greenwich) and Dr Julie Exline (University of Virginia) to co-develop this new Entity Encounter Survey and begin mapping these phenomena across disciplines.

Here’s the link to the survey. It can be anonymous too.

Social Justice Dreaming

Are you searching for an intentional alternative to the settler colonial holiday of Thanksgiving and the consumerism of Christmas? Want to find new ways to celebrate the turning-inward time and build community while also learning how to connect intuitive skills with activism?

Katrina Dreamer is offering a new live six week course starting in November. Learn the essential intuitive skills that can assist your social justice work, including dreamwork, energy work and divination.
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We will review the dreaming and intuitive skills covered in previous sessions, and go deeper with them, including how to weave them together and practically apply them to activist practices. This is a safe, intentional and moderated space that centers the most marginalized. Specifically: This is a Anti-racist, anti-ableist, queer and trans affirming, covid/pandemic realist space.

What You’ll Learn:

• Intuitive practices for receiving information, expanding guidance, and deepening reflection, especially related to activism
• Connecting with dream and spirit guides
• Divination tools
• Nature and ancestral connection practices
• Basic energy work tools
• Case studies and practicums to apply this to your own justice work

Learn more here. Register before November 1^st and get an automatic 25% off. No one will be turned away by lack of funds.

Inner Sanctum members of the Dream Portal also get access to this course as part of membership.

Save the Date: Extraordinary Dreams Begins November 18th

Extraordinary Dreams is my annual training on working with the insights of big dreams.

This course is for you if you are struggling to connect with your sense of purpose or a more authentic relationship to the cosmos. Or you are looking for broader perspectives about how your dreams can connect to your spiritual practice and worldview.

This workshop is designed to help you remember the old ways. To remember that the dark is nourishing. Our evenings asleep send us through profound altered states of consciousness –most of which we forget. And then, every so often a powerful dream or vision rips through and leaves us shaken or in awe.

We will take a tour of extraordinary dreaming and the visions that come in night: from visitation dreams to seemingly prophetic encounters. Non dual visions. Aliens, angels and ancestors. Ultimately, this is a course about the Wyrd, an ancient word that our own “weird” comes from. The Wyrd conveys a cosmos that has a hidden life, and is composed of invisible threads that connects us all.

This course is included with membership at the Inner Sanctum level but will also be available for enrollment a la carte soon for the general public.

Register for the Dream Portal to get access as part of membership

For busy folks and beginners to dreamwork

Fall enrollment in the Dream Portal's Inner Sanctum includes all three of these courses listed above, plus additional live sessions with special guests and an all-access pass to the last two years of content.

But if you aren't ready to commit to a season of high level dream studies, you can still enroll at the Foundational level on a monthly basis. Get access to my most popular basic trainings on demand (Lucid Ignition, Sacred Rest, and Bad Dreams) as well as our rich community of dream enthusiasts and expert-led live dreamwork sessions.

Learn more about the affordable Foundational subscription plan here.

Your coupon for Saving 15%

As always, because you are subscribed to my newsletter, you can can save 15% off any membership plan (recurrently) by adding this coupon code into the cart: NEWSLETTER15

Stay dreamy,

Ryan D. Hurd, he who is building the dream education center he wish he had access when he was younger!