{"id":4206,"date":"2012-02-07T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T14:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4206"},"modified":"2012-02-07T09:00:37","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T14:00:37","slug":"writers-dreaming-dreamers-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/02\/writers-dreaming-dreamers-writing.html","title":{"rendered":"Writers dreaming, dreamers writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Writing and dreaming are closely related as daily practice. <\/em>Writers who keep journals and record their dreams are giving themselves a warm-up, flexing the creative muscles that will work on the larger project. Writers who may not record their dreams with any regularity nonetheless rise from sleep with their heads full of words \u2013 as Dickens related in a letter to a certain Dr Stone \u2013 that are pressing to come out.<\/p>\n

A writer\u2019s dream may help to \u201cbreak up the great fountains of the deep\u201d (a phrase Mark Twain used repeatedly) releasing the power of long-buried memories, or bringing through ideas that have been growing in the preconscious or the deeper unconscious for years or decade. That is how Aslan came to C.S. Lewis, giving him the key to Narnia.<\/p>\n

As Lewis recalled<\/p>\n

The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. The picture had been in my head since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: \u2018Let\u2019s try to make a story about it.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

At first I had little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams about lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Yeats was inspired by a dream to write his play Cathleen ni Houlihan. As he wrote in 1908:<\/p>\n

One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision of a cottage where there was well-being and firelight and talk of a marriage, and\u00a0<\/em>into the midst of that cottage, there came an old woman in a long\u00a0cloak. She was Ireland herself, that Cathleen ni Houlihan for whom<\/em>\u00a0so many stories have been told and for whose sake so many have\u00a0gone to their death. I thought if I could write this out as a little play<\/em>\u00a0I could make others see my dream as I had seen it.<\/em><\/p>\n

In dreams and flow states that writers come into contact with inner helpers. Robert Louis Stevenson communed with his \u201cBrownies\u201d in states of reverie, and gave them the credit for doing better than half his literary work. Yeats spoke of the \u201cmingling of minds\u201d that can bring assistance, in a creative venture, from intelligences that seem to belong to other times or other dimensions .Milton described the source of his inspiration as<\/p>\n

….my celestial patroness, who deigns
\nHer nightly visitation unimplored,
\nAnd dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
\nEasy my unpremeditated prose [Paradise Lost <\/em>IX. 21-4]<\/p>\n

Milton spoke of \u201cbeing milked\u201d after his nights of inspiration, as \u2013 totally blind by the time he composed his most famous work \u2013 he dictated to a scribe.<\/p>\n

When they are truly \u201con\u201d, many writers experience the sense that they have entered a creative partnership with a larger power, a power the ancients used to call the genius or the eudaimon <\/em>(the good demon). Some writers develop the ability to enter a certain kind of imaginal space \u2013 call it the Dream Library \u2013 where such encounters are easy; we do this regularly in my own creative writing retreats.<\/p>\n

~<\/p>\n

I am leading a new 5-day adventure in “Writing as a State of Conscious Dreaming” at a beautiful private retreat center near Seattle form April 16-20; details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing and dreaming are closely related as daily practice. Writers who keep journals and record their dreams are giving themselves a warm-up, flexing the creative muscles that will work on the larger project. 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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\/4206","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=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4209,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}