My session, titled Active Dreaming to Heal Our Relations with the Departed and Meet Our Soul Families. WAY OF THE DREAMER RADIO SHOW with Robert Moss. Robert Moss, born in Melbourne in 1946, is an Australian historian, journalist and author and the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism.
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If you haven’t read a book by Robert Moss yet, you’re in for a treat. His latest title, Active Dreaming: journeying beyond self-limitation to a life of wild freedom, is a welcome distillation of his approach to dreamwork. At once useful, playful and threaded with captivating storytelling, Active Dreaming is a guide for rediscovering your innate ability to live your dreams like they really mattered.
Because, as Moss might say, they may be the only thing that does.
Robert Moss’s definition of Active Dreaming: “You are going to learn an approach to life that I call Active Dreaming. This approach includes paying attention to night dreams, but it is not only, or even essentially, about what happens at night. Active Dreaming is more than just another book about lucid dreaming or dream interpretation. Moss has taken the Aboriginal practices of his native Australia and developed a living practice wherein one treats the world, whether waking or sleeping, like an lucid dream. Text adapted from Active Dreaming: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. Published by New World Library. Photo: Path of lights at Mosswood Hollow, near Duvall WA, where I lead many dream retreats and trainings. This is another wonderful, absolutely all-embracing and inspiring book by Robert Moss. This author has amazing abilities as regards conscious dreaming, as he calls lucid dreaming, active dreaming (which I cant at present find that he provides a definition for), soul journeying and so forth.
The Stories of Our Lives
“You are going to learn an approach to life that I call Active Dreaming. This approach includes paying attention to night dreams, but it is not only, or even essentially, about what happens at night. It is a method for conscious living. When you become an active dreamer, you’ll notice that the world speaks to you in a different way.” (p. xii)
This different way, Moss suggests, begins with noticing that we live our lives as characters in a great cosmic story, but we often do not recognize the roles we play. By becoming an active dreamer, we become a chooser of our stories, rather than a victim of the limitations others have imposed on us.
“We learn to recognize that, whatever situation we are in, we always have a choice. We choose to stop running from the monster in our dreams—who may turn out to be our own power hunting us—when we brave up and turn around to confront it.” (p. xiii)
From Conscious to Lucid
Interestingly, for the first time in any of his books, Moss adopts the phrase lucid dreaming. For years, he rejected this phrase because of the pop-cultural associations of lucidity with controlling your dreams, a practice that Moss finds distasteful and unbalanced.
“It is utterly misguided to seek to put the control freak that is the ego in charge of something immeasurably wiser and deeper than itself.” (p.4)
Moss credits Robert Waggoner’s mature discussion of lucidity in Lucid Dreaming: gateway to the inner self as a cultural turning point away from the control model of lucid dreaming.
He also nods to my own influence, suggesting, “I am going to borrow a phrase employed by one of my friends in the lucid dreaming fraternity, who refers to my ‘shamanic lucid dreaming adventures.’” (p. 50) (See my article here that Moss is referring to; as well as this blog post).
I am honored to be a small part of this cultural milieu that is ushering in a more holistic—and appropriate—recognition of self-awareness in dreaming as more than an enactment of a schema or a rational conquest of a primitive world, but rather an ability that comes with a wide range of cultural and transpersonal possibilities.
Parsing Shamanic dreaming
Bear shaman, by American painter George Catlin (1796-1872)
Moss defines shamanic carefully. As an ex-history professor, he knows the term has been used and abused.
“I am using the adjective here [shamanic] to describe a method for shifting consciousness in order to enter non-ordinary reality for purposes that include the care and recovery of the soul.” (p. 51)
Moss doesn’t ever claim he is a shaman per se, although he sometimes refers to himself as shamanic practitioner in interviews and the press.
He walks a tightrope, steering away from cultural appropriation while managing to not prematurely chop off our own (Western) access to shamanic waters either.
This is not a tightrope of postmodern political correctness, but one drawn through his own lifetime of experience in procuring natural and “altered” states of consciousness, including not only sleeping dreams, but also those visions that happen at the boundary between sleep and wakefulness, as well as those accessed through sonic driving with the drum.
Moss walks the walk, and his mission is to wake up the slumbering West to this aspect of reality, so we can start taking responsibility for our actions on this planet.
Stories Bearing Fruit
Admittedly, his stories sometimes have a fanciful air to them, and can strain credulity. I notice my inner skeptic constantly at war with my intuitive self when I read Moss.
This confusion of reason may be purposeful; it’s a function of good storytelling, allowing for deeper processes to emerge from the fractured Western ego.
After reading his book, I dreamed I was in a workshop with Moss:
Outside a house, I found a bearskin hanging on a rack. I presented it to Robert inside a long wooden house, and he told me it was mine. He motioned to put it down. I laid the skin down on the ground and laid on top of it and began to dream a new dream…
The dream goes on, and is followed two days later by another powerful dream that awakened something old in me that has been slumbering a long time.
Soon afterwards, Moss wrote a blog post about shamanic dreaming, reminding us, “Built into the language of the Earth’s oldest people, is the understanding that the heart of the shaman’s power lies in his or her ability to dream. In our everyday modern lives, we stand at the edge of such power, when we dream and remember to do something with our dreams.”
The image used at the top of this blog post? A historic painting of a shaman wearing a bearskin.
I felt the shivers crawl up my back, recognizing the image from my dream.
This is the kind of thing that regular happens around Robert Moss; his influence is immediate, authentically reawakening our own innate dreaming abilities.
So if you’re the skeptical type who, like me, nonetheless finds yourself circling shamanic dreaming like a moth around a flame, I encourage you to look precisely where the discomfort arises.
Here, as Moss suggests, we may find our own forgotten abilities, and claims to our own untapped power.
Moss’s book goes farther and deeper than I have room to suggest here today. But I guarantee the book will delight, challenge and instruct you how to hone your dreaming abilities, awake and asleep, and in between worlds.
Find Active Dreaming on Amazon.
Cover image “Bear” by Daliborlev (CC).
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Practical Magic for Living the “Life of Your Dreams”
Active Dreaming is a way of being fully of this world while maintaining constant contact with another world, the world-behind-the-world, where the deeper logic and purpose of our lives are to be found. Active Dreaming offers three core areas of practice: talking and walking our dreams to bring energy and guidance from the...more
Active Dreaming is a way of being fully of this world while maintaining constant contact with another world, the world-behind-the-world, where the deeper logic and purpose of our lives are to be found. Active Dreaming offers three core areas of practice: talking and walking our dreams to bring energy and guidance from the...more
Published April 1st 2011 by New World Library (first published March 11th 2011)
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May 17, 2016Heidi The Reader rated it liked it Shelves: shamanism, out-of-body-experiences, non-fiction
Active Dreaming is more than just another book about lucid dreaming or dream interpretation. Moss has taken the Aboriginal practices of his native Australia and developed a living practice wherein one treats the world, whether waking or sleeping, like an lucid dream. Through drumming circles, sharing and self interpretation of dreams, choosing your names and how you define yourself, practicing mindful creativity, noticing synchronicities, journaling, storytelling, creative visualization (and mor...more
Jul 26, 2012Felicity rated it it was amazing
The perfect book at the right moment! It really helped me to practice 'dreaming' my life actively. It teaches you how to see your reality and transform it. Great book!
Mar 04, 2014Alex Lee rated it liked it
The our minds are very complex places, and there's many ways to approach understanding yourself, and gaining a better balance. This book may work for some people. Moss approaches things through a varied and complex list of techniques, other worldliness, demons, angels, animals, you name it, he's got it in there. And all through the tapestry of dreaming. I think he's an interesting man. I've heard him speak through a pod-cast and I must say that he's very convincing. It's kind of amazing that he...more
I got to the chapter about chakras and I just gave up. I am fascinated by dreams & lucid dreams, & have explored both. I even believe some of the flakier things Robert Moss says. But as I read his book, I started to realize Robert Moss embraces every single flake of the flakey new age movement. He takes all of it seriously. I can't. And so, midway through the book, I bailed.
Moss' descriptions of how to dream while awake, how to enter sleep so you dream lucidly immediately, and other pra...more
Moss' descriptions of how to dream while awake, how to enter sleep so you dream lucidly immediately, and other pra...more
Feb 11, 2012Julie rated it it was amazing
This is a fresh, innovative way to tap into your sixth sense and a great new way of integrating dream travel with your conscious awareness. Anyone who wants to learn how to become more in tune with their inner selves or soul desires needs to read this book. Not only are you shown how to travel into your chakra centres and map them, you are also given the bonus of increasing your psychic awareness thus enriching your waking life.
Aside from all that, I gave this book only 4 stars just because ther...more
Aside from all that, I gave this book only 4 stars just because ther...more
Robert Moss Books
I can always tell when I’m getting stressed out. I sleep but never seem refreshed in the morning. The funny thing is that during those periods, I tend not to remember my dreams. After reading Active Dreaming, I think there might be a connection here.
Active Dreaming looks at the importance of dreams. In our modern world, dreaming is something that is often overlooked and undervalued. Yes, we understand that we must have REM sleep cycles to stay healthy but tend to dismiss our dreams during those...more
Jan 18, 2012Miz Lizzie rated it it was amazingActive Dreaming looks at the importance of dreams. In our modern world, dreaming is something that is often overlooked and undervalued. Yes, we understand that we must have REM sleep cycles to stay healthy but tend to dismiss our dreams during those...more
Shelves: dreams, healing, manifestation, metaphysics, non-fiction, storytelling
Robert Moss, a modern-day dream shaman, shares more of his techniques for working with night-time dreams, coincidences, and waking visions, active imagination, and journeying, to wake up our inner purpose and true identity. His workshops are the best way to experience this material but the book provides a good review and an adequate substitution (if you actually do the exercises). I particularly resonated with the correlation of our dreams and the stories we live our lives by and the work that c...more
Personally it was way too 'new-agey' for me. I'm sure if I was a different person I'd think the book was great. So if you think it's something you like you probably will. I just thought it'd be more about lucid dreaming and using dreams to better your life. Not visions, energy lines, animal spirits, etc.
Oct 22, 2017Bethany T rated it it was amazing
A book to return to time and again as skills advance.
Active Dreaming Robert Moss Pdf Pdf
Jan 24, 2016Luc Therrien rated it it was amazing
Sometimes in life, one has to put down a book frequently and I find that it reduces the impact of a book. I had the leisure to read this book in a short period of time and boy, did I enjoy it! It's the third one that I read by Robert Moss and perhaps the one that I prefer. It inspires me to create a dream community. It will become a textbook for me. I highly recommend it!
Bravo!
Bravo!
For anyone interested in deepening their relationship with their dreams, and using dream experience as life guides, Robert Moss is a wonderful teacher. In a class by himself, beyond dream analysis or interpretation , he is a learned guide and also very entertaining. This, and all his books: highly recommended.
I love the concept of Active dreaming. Dreaming does not need to be a passive series of events. Learn to honor your dreams and give them something in return. All sorts of delightful, insightful moments begin to open up new worlds of possibilities.
Dreams is one of my favorite subjects, and they way Robert Moss teaches his techniques to work with them is really appealing to me.
Dec 21, 2016Mandi rated it did not like it
Zero Stars. NEW AGE GARBAGE. I PRAY YOU FIND JESUS <3
Estelle Cubbin rated it really liked it
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012
MuzWot MuzWot rated it really liked it
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Jan 10, 2018
Cortina Robinson rated it it was amazing
May 25, 2018
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Active Dreaming Robert Moss
Bill Langeman rated it really liked it
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016
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