{"id":4746,"date":"2012-05-15T11:53:27","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T15:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4746"},"modified":"2012-05-15T11:57:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T15:57:25","slug":"compassionate-dreaming-living-inside-somebody-elses-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/05\/compassionate-dreaming-living-inside-somebody-elses-skin.html","title":{"rendered":"Compassionate dreaming: living inside somebody else’s skin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Frederick Buechner once said, \u201cCompassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it\u2019s like to live inside somebody else\u2019s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dreaming can be a school for this kind of compassion, because in certain dreams we seem to find ourselves living inside somebody else’s skin. A woman I’ll call Norma shared a remarkable experience of this kind with me, in which she dreamed herself inside the body and situation of someone of a different race and a different gender.<\/p>\n

As she entered the dream, she found herself flying around inside what she thought was a cell, inspecting its molecular structure.<\/p>\n

“When I expand to fill a whole body, I find my legs are different. They seem longer. I reach down and examine the long, muscular calves of this body I am in. My skin is black.<\/p>\n

“The shock of realizing I am in a black man’s body makes me conscious I am dreaming. Now lucid, I stay with the dream, eager to explore what is going on. I am fascinated by discovering what it feels like to have your genitals outside<\/em> your body.<\/p>\n

“Now I’m walking down the street, in this black man’s body. The city could be New Orleans. I smell delicious food aromas wafting from a restaurant. I want to go inside and eat. Two white men at the door tell me with jeering contempt, “Sure you can come in, boy. You can eat watermelon.’<\/p>\n

“I walk away. I feel boiling anger rising inside me. An inner presence tells me, Leave before you succumb to his rage<\/em>. I pull out of the dream.”<\/p>\n

I asked Norma how she felt about this dream adventure inside a black man’s body. “I felt exhilarated,” she told me without hesitation. “I felt sad about the racism that black man had to contend with, yet grateful that I could share a part of his life.”<\/p>\n

We find ourselves in the situations, the perspectives and even the skins of other people in dreams for many reasons. One of them is that dreaming in this way can expand our humanity. As Norma told me, “If only all of us could have this experience of being inside other people’s skins, we could get rid of a lot of our prejudices and social problems.”<\/p>\n

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

Frederick Buechner once said, \u201cCompassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it\u2019s like to live inside somebody else\u2019s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.\u201d Dreaming can be a school for this kind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,7,12],"tags":[1315,1314,1317,1313,1316,219,131],"class_list":["post-4746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-dreaming","category-lucid-dreaming","category-meaning-of-dreams","tag-body-swapping-in-dreams","tag-compassion","tag-gender-change-in-dreams","tag-inside-somebody-elses-skin","tag-race-in-dreams","tag-social-dreaming","tag-transpersonal-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nCompassionate dreaming: living inside somebody else's skin - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/05\/compassionate-dreaming-living-inside-somebody-elses-skin.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Compassionate dreaming: living inside somebody else's skin - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frederick Buechner once said, \u201cCompassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it\u2019s like to live inside somebody else\u2019s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.\u201d Dreaming can be a school for this kind…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/05\/compassionate-dreaming-living-inside-somebody-elses-skin.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-15T15:53:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-05-15T15:57:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2012\/05\/ethnicity1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Compassionate dreaming: living inside somebody else's skin - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/05\/compassionate-dreaming-living-inside-somebody-elses-skin.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Compassionate dreaming: living inside somebody else's skin - Dream Gates","og_description":"Frederick Buechner once said, \u201cCompassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it\u2019s like to live inside somebody else\u2019s skin. 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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\/4746","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=4746"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4753,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746\/revisions\/4753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}