Hi Reader!

Have you ever wondered what really makes a big dream truly big? Is it completely subjective? After all, all cultures that pay attention to dreams make a cut between what’s a Big dream and what’s an ordinary dream.

But the cut is not always the same. Different cultures play with different ideas and elevate them or stomp them out, depending on the culture and their particular stressors.

Here in the west, Carl Jung is really the one who mainstreamed this idea that there’s a big dream that comes from beyond that shows us something in its fullness.

Jung didn’t work in a vacuum, though. Even though he did not publicly acknowledge many popular Spiritualist ideas floating around at the time that addressed big dreams, he was no doubt influenced by them. By his own reckoning, he had a realization after visiting with a traditional people in Kenya, the Elgoni. Jung found that these are people who use a lot of dreaming in their everyday life.

They were hunter-gatherer people, but living under colonial rule at that time. So, under really intense power dynamics, the Elongi were making divisions between little dreams that have to do with sort of problems and relationships and then the big dreams that they would take to the shamanic dream specialists, the healers. These dream healers would also have dreams for people. They would dream for each other. And so dreaming was communal.

More than communal, big dreams can be collective: we can dream not just for ourselves but part of a larger whole.

Read the rest of the article here on the Dream Studies blog.

Harvest Dreaming - Free Talk next Tuesday

When: Tuesday, November 26th, 10AM Pacific/ 1PM Eastern / 6PM London

Here we go -- it's harvest festival time. Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving next week, and Canadians and Europeans aren't far behind with their own yearly festivals and gatherings. Here comes family drama, work disruption, sleep anxieties, and probably too much cheese.

Which is why it's the perfect time for Harvest Dreaming.

Join me for a free one hour talk on how the joys, sorrows and disruptions of the end-of-year holidays can be alchemized into powerful dreams and insights.

You can RSVP for this free talk here. Once you register, you'll get access to the zoom link.

Have you considered joining the Dream Portal?

We still have 15% off coupons remaining!

Do you have folks to sit with when you have an anxiety dream or a nightmare?

Do you know how to set up your bedroom so that you feel safe and protected, even when (especially when) you're asleep?

Do you know how to spin out-of-control feelings into mindful intentions for lucid dreams that can provide practical solutions and healing support?

That’s what we are doing in the Dream Portal.

In the Dream Portal, we have created a safe place for dreamers to inspire each other to new heights with their dream practices. It’s like Facebook for dreamers (but without the ads scrapping your content), combined with powerful on-demand courses and live events that will transform your world.

If you are committed to transforming your dreamlife, and are tired of hacking it alone, I'd love for you to learn more!

Here's what one of our long time members says:

I have several scholarship seats too, just let me know in the application if you need financial assistance at this time and/or have a historically marginalized identity.

The Dream Portal is a welcoming, interfaith community that practices radical inclusivity and provides moderated forums. All are welcome.

Learn more about the Dream Portal here. And don't forget: if you use the following coupon code, you can get 15% off (recurring!): NEWSLETTER

Healing with lucid dreaming - blacklisted??

Well, TED is up to it again, censoring their own TEDx talks on YouTube. We've seen this before -- for example Russell Targ's talk on the history of psychic dream and remote viewing in the US government.
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Lucid dream educator and researcher Charlie Morley gave a TEDx talk recently in Klagenfurt on the research he is conducting with IONS. They had some pretty amazing results with healing trauma and dampening PTSD symptoms with lucid dreaming protocols. The video cannot be found on YouTube through search and was slapped with a "pseudoscience" label but is still watchable by direct link -- so if you're interested in this topic make sure to click through and watch it, give it a like and share with your friends.

You can click to watch here or the video below.

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That's all for today -- except to say I have officially sunsetted my account on X and can be found microblogging (lol no one says microblogging anymore and no one writes lol anymore either come to think of it) on BlueSky as @dreamstudies ​

Sleep well and dream strong,

Ryan Hurd