I help folks play with their dreams (the sleeping kind) for self-knowledge, healing and spiritual growth. With a background in consciousness studies and archaeology, my expertise is in dreams at the intersections of culture, cosmos and ecology. Let's court the mysteries together!
Invite André Breton into your dreams. Or watch me as I do anyways
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Hi Reader! How’s your dream life? Lately, I’ve been noticing how simple habits are critical to my dreaming. For example, if I start the week off recording my dreams Monday morning, then I’m much more likely to do the same on Tuesday too. By Thursday, I'm enjoying a full back-and-forth conversation between waking life and my intuitive self, and by Saturday, a big lucid dream when I sleep in. So much of this creative flow depends on how my Monday morning goes. One disruption in routine, like the kids on spring break, or a broken dishwasher rack (making me do more dishes by hand rather than sipping my tea with journal at my side), and falls apart. I lose focus. And then weeks can go by before I initiate the attempt again. It’s not really fair how hard it is to establish healthy patterns and how easy it is to break them. This is the part of the essay where I should tell you about a new solution to this ancient problem but honestly I dunno. Try again next Monday? That’s my best advice. I promise, there’s still time to cultivate a better relationship with your imaginal life. If it’s been a shit week, try again next week. We have our whole lives to dream, and life comes first. Dreams get it. If something really important needs to come through the intuitive mind to your generally dissociated and in denial waking self, well, that’s what nightmares are for. You’re welcome. Seriously, get yourself a dream journal. Elsewhere Dream Journal - coming soonOn this note, I’m happy to report that my creative collaboration with Elsewhere.to is bearing fruit – we should have our new smart dream journal in hand by June. Each journal comes with credits for scanning your handwritten dreams and drawings into the Elsewhere app. From there, you can discover the hidden patterns in your dreams thanks to their powerful AI analysis tool. It’s a bit too early for preorders – I’m still mucking about in the back end of my website—but stay tuned as we will start taking orders for our first printing soon. Meanwhile, if you're interested in more about what digitization can do for your dreams -- and the ethics of dream interpretation in the age of AI -- check out my colleague Kelly Bulkeley's article here. Dream Portal Podcast -- also coming soon (still)It's true, I'm slow these days. It comes with the package of chronic illness (long covid, going on 18 months now). But when I launch, the podcast will be on all your favorite platforms. This is an old-school audio podcast, meant for dreamifying your commute, your laundry folding and dishwashing, and whenever you want to tune into the leading researchers and freshest voices of the modern dreamwork and consciousness studies world. Access to the full video version of this podcast, by the way, is a member benefit of the Foundational Level of the Dream Portal community, where we also have live dreamwork sessions, a private dream forum (secure from the information-gathering of Palantir and its corporate tentacles), and of course several of my video courses for you to take at your own pace. If you need a serious (yet playful) lift to your creative and soulful dreamlife, become a member today. Learn more about the benefits of the Dream Portal Invite André Breton into your dreamsSo this requires a bit of a back story. Dave Green, author of the just released lucid dreaming art book Doodles in the Dark, invited me last summer to join him and a group of other advanced lucid dreamers to incubate a dream about the surrealist poet André Breton. Our collective mission -- to find Andre in the dream, and ask him for the next line to our collective poem. I did so and wow that was intense. Here's a portion of the dream I had (read only if you want to have weird dreams tonight because you're about to go deep into my psyche sorry not sorry): André is inside a large old fashioned television set – a big wooden box set up on stool legs. I am laying on the floor, turned towards him. I ask him something like, “Why is it so hard to make art when living itself takes so much energy?” It takes a great amount of effort to ask this question and I feel very emotional and vulnerable saying it.
André responds, “Do you really believe this?”
“I’m afraid.. I do,” I say.
“Are you afraid of making art?” he asks me.
“No,” I say, “I’m afraid of the opposite….” He nods his head with a slight smile. Then I remember about the line and I say, “What is the next line in the poem?” Oddly my voice comes out sounding like a little child. I am small now, and feel like a little girl.
I am looking up at the television set – it is taller than me now. André is wearing a felt hat (something like a bowler hat but with a more angular top, but not quite a fedora) and he looks confused, and says, “Poem? What poem?”
“Surely you know about the poem,” I say, but I can’t remember much else myself.
Then he bursts in song, and as he sings he holds out a scroll that unfurls. This is all on the TV. The scroll is covered with words that at first I think are captions to the song, but they are totally different. I listen to the words as he sings in a playful way, like a line out of a Roald Dahl song (he does look like a Willy Wonka character in this hat) or the Sound of music.
André sings: “Industry and fashion dance in culture— Orange blossoms dance in the sky.”
After he says the lines I repeat them— meanwhile the words are still shifting and changing on the scroll. I wake up.
TLDR - if you want to join this surreal lucid experiment, check out more about the Infinite Andre Project Want more support in your dream life?It’s a great time to join my online community, the Dream Portal, where we share dreams, encourage lucidity, and experiment together to power up our imaginal lives. My next members-only training starts soon. Starting April 28th, I’ll be leading a weekly focus on improving dream recall. As this is the most important prerequisite for all the advanced dream practices (such as dream incubation, lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, summoning surrealist poets, etc), it’s time to get back to basics. If you want to go deeper into the power of your own creative, intuitive dreamlife, membership is transformative. Folks regularly report increases their dream recall, having more impactful lucid dreams, and feeling supported by other dreamers who get it. You can join the Dream Portal for less than $16/month if you use this coupon in the cart: NEWSLETTER Learn more about the benefits of the Dream Portal. May you sleep well and dream strong! Ryan D. Hurd, founder of the Dream Portal |
Dream Studies Newsletter
I help folks play with their dreams (the sleeping kind) for self-knowledge, healing and spiritual growth. With a background in consciousness studies and archaeology, my expertise is in dreams at the intersections of culture, cosmos and ecology. Let's court the mysteries together!
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