{"id":3197,"date":"2011-09-05T11:43:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T15:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2011-09-05T12:17:39","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T16:17:39","slug":"reading-the-cracks-as-opposed-to-being-cracked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/09\/reading-the-cracks-as-opposed-to-being-cracked.html","title":{"rendered":"Reading the cracks as opposed to being cracked"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Cracks into art: TakeBreak wall decal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My most recent post on coincidence has sparked lively discussion. One reader asks an important question: “I have seen people go hospital crazy, reading all kinds of signs in coincidences that just plain weren’t true. They see whatever they desire, or fear, wherever they look. How do you guard against these mistakes and get the most accurate information from the universe?”<\/p>\n

This helps us understand why some in the psychiatric community are troubled by talk of meaningful coincidence. \u00a0Determined not to be overawed by Jung\u2019s learned borrowings from Greek, a Swiss psychiatrst called Klaus Conrad made up the word \u201capophenia\u201d to describe a psychotic condition he defined as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.”<\/p>\n

Conrad\u2019s Greek was not as good as Jung\u2019s. The word he wanted is apophrenia<\/em>, which means \u201caway from the mind.\u201d But he left out the \u201cr\u201d in the Greek stem (phren<\/em>),\u00a0<\/strong>so his coinage \u2014 meant to categorize a kind of nonsense \u2014 is itself nonsense. The mislabeled condition (mentioned in the title of a rock song and in William Gibson\u2019s novel Pattern Recognition<\/em>) is a disorder of compulsive pattern recognition that produces paranoid fantasies.<\/p>\n

There are people who find meaning and inspiration in the cracks on a wall, and people who are simply cracked. The difference between them may be as extreme as that between Leonardo da Vinci (who urged his apprentices to study cracks in the walls) and the nut portrayed by Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When we navigate by coincidence, we move effortlessly into creative flow. When we project our delusions onto the world around us, we put ourselves in a place of blockage and pain. It is the release or constriction of creative flow that will tell us whether we are on the right track. Let\u2019s note that the release may involve a necessary redirection of flow<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For much more on this subject, please read Part 2 of The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination<\/a><\/em> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My most recent post on coincidence has sparked lively discussion. One reader asks an important question: “I have seen people go hospital crazy, reading all kinds of signs in coincidences that just plain weren’t true. They see whatever they desire, or fear, wherever they look. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3204,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions\/3204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}