{"id":4550,"date":"2012-04-19T10:43:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T14:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4550"},"modified":"2012-04-10T11:07:17","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T15:07:17","slug":"your-departure-lounge-for-adventures-in-other-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/04\/your-departure-lounge-for-adventures-in-other-worlds.html","title":{"rendered":"Your departure gate for adventures beyond the body"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Heidi Weathermon, "Anamnesis"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Your departure gate for lucid dreaming and adventures beyond the body is open to you any time you are ready to fly. It is the twilight zone of hypnagogia, the half-dream state on the cusp between waking and sleep and between sleep and waking.<\/p>\n

Spend more time in the twilight zone, \u00a0and you’ll notice a marked increase in both your creativity and your psychic awareness. Going with the flow of spontaneous imagery in the twilight zone puts you into the stream of the creative process. It is no accident that highly creative people \u2014 from Einstein to a romance writer and a powerboat designer I met on plane trips \u2014 are very much at home in the twilight zone.<\/p>\n

In the language of the sleep scientists, the twilight zone is the realm of hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences. Hypnagogic<\/em> literally means \u201cleading toward sleep\u201d; hypnopompic<\/em> means \u201cleading away from sleep.\u201d But these terms do not take us to the heart of the matter. You may enter the twilight zone before and after sleep, but you may also enter it wide awake, with no intention of sleeping. It is not the relationship to sleep that defines the twilight zone; it is its character as a border county In this borderland, you will find the gates to other worlds opening smoothly and fluidly \u2014 if you let them and are prepared for what may follow.<\/p>\n

When I allow myself to drift through this frontier region with no fixed agenda, I have the sense of leaning through a window or a doorway in space. Sometimes this feels like hanging out of the open hatch of an airplane. I have come to recognize this as the opening of a dreamgate. Depending on circumstances and intention, I can step forward into the next dimension or haul myself back into physical focus.<\/p>\n

From this departure lobby, the great explorers of the imaginal realm have used many gates and flight paths. This is why the twilight state has such vital significance in dream yoga, in shamanic training, in the Western Mystery traditions, in the \u201cscience if mirrors\u201d of the medieval Persian philosophers, and in other schools of active spirituality.<\/p>\n

According to Tantric teachings, it is by learning to prolong this \u201cintermediate state\u201d and to operate with full awareness within it that you achieve dream mastery and, beyond this, the highest level of consciousness attainable for an embodied human. The Spandakarika<\/em> of Vasagupta, which dates from the tenth century, recommends the use of breathing exercises to focus and maintain awareness as you move from waking into the twilight state. The dreamer is urged to place himself \u201cat the junction between inhaled and exhaled breaths, at the very point where he enters into contact with energy in the pure state.\u201d This is the entry into conscious dreaming, whose gifts (according to Tantric text) could be immense: \u201cThe Lord of necessity grants him during dreams the ends he pursues, providing that he is profoundly contemplative and places himself at the junction between waking and sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Greco-Roman world, the twilight zone was a place of rendezvous with divine messengers and even the gods themselves. Iamblichus, the author of an important book on the Mysteries, urged the need to pay special attention to \u201cgod-sent dreams\u201d in the intermediate state, especially after waking: \u201cThey come when sleep is leaving us, or we are just waking. We may hear a certain voice that tells us concisely what needs to be done.”<\/p>\n

One of my students observes that shamans may operate as hypnagogic \u00a0physicians, “brushing healing strokes” into the energy body of someone in need of help; and that we may be able to perform this service for ourselves. \u00a0The twilight zone may be your springboard for anamnesis, for remembering knowledge that belonged to you on the level of soul and spirit before you entered into your present life journey.<\/p>\n

There is no ceiling on possibility here.. But first and last, experiment in the twilight zone is wonderful fun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adapted from Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death<\/a><\/em> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n

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

Your departure gate for lucid dreaming and adventures beyond the body is open to you any time you are ready to fly. It is the twilight zone of hypnagogia, the half-dream state on the cusp between waking and sleep and between sleep and waking. 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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\/4550","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=4550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4553,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions\/4553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}