A man who came to one of my first public dream classes told the group, “I am here because I think I have been missing the movies.”

His statement was right on. One morning, when I myself woke with no dream recall, I decided to stay in bed and let myself float back gently towards the dreamspace in order to bring back something from the night. I found myself entering a space that looked like a huge, ultra-modern video store. But it was no ordinary video store. While some of the sections were organized and titled like a neighborhood video rental joint – “Drama:, “Comedy”, “Foreign”, “SciFi”, “Adult” and so on – there were larger spaces, opening into multi-story showrooms and galleries, where the movies were classified in wholly different and intriguing ways.

Some rooms were devoted to interactive dreams with other dreamers, including some of our dream school teachers. Some were devoted to the dream experiences of personalities in other times to whom I seemed to be connected. A guide – an attractive woman in sky-blue outfit who resembled an airline attendant – escorted me to a whole other level of this Cosmic Video Store. I realized I could not only sit down and watch these dream movies. I could enter any one of them, as observer or protagonist. I could play scriptwriter, director and producer for some of them, reweaving scenarios that might play on various screens, even the screen of the physical world. Despite all the time I have spent at the dream “movies”, I came back awed by the plenitude of what is actually there.

“Missing the movies” is about more than missing out on the fun, drama and adventure of our dream lives. It’s about missing out on soul. It’s about missing out on the chance to be present at the creation of the events and situations that will manifest in our physical lives. It’s about losing connection with our star-home and our Higher Self.

Our dreams not only play out in the night; they play out all around us during the day (if we will only pay attention), offering us – once again – a chance to perform, to script, direct and define our experiences. The art of real magic is to live and act as conscious dreamers 24 hours a day.