{"id":4899,"date":"2012-06-28T12:01:27","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2012-06-28T12:01:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:01:27","slug":"are-you-following-a-life-script-or-creating-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/06\/are-you-following-a-life-script-or-creating-one.html","title":{"rendered":"Are you following a life script, or creating one?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>They are building a stage in front of the lake house in the park. A theater under construction is a pretty good metaphor for life. My mind turns to those lines from As You Like It<\/em>\u00a0we all know:<\/p>\n

All the world’s a stage,<\/em>
\nAnd all the men and women are merely players \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet something deep in me balks at the second line. Is it our fate to be “merely players” in a pre-scripted drama? I think not. I think we can choose to become playwrights as well as players.<\/p>\n

So long as we spend our lives trying to follow a script we did not make for ourselves, we will forever find ourselves flubbing our lines and missing our cues. The way life works, so long as we are unconscious of these things, is that we are pushed on stage only to find that the scene we rehearsed for has been changed.<\/p>\n

We learn about this in dreams, and theater from dreams is a grand education on how we can choose to script our own life stories. Again and again, in my dreams, I find myself on stage sets where a drama is about to unfold, or resume. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I have the sense of a curtain going up in another reality and there, on stage, is a whole cast of characters who are waiting for me to join them. Some of these dramas seem to have been running for longer than The Lion King<\/em> on Broadway; sometimes the players are of a different time and place, and the stage sets may turn out to be real cities and landscapes. Often my dream self becomes aware that I have choice; I may enter a role in an ongoing drama, or remain an observer, or act as playwright and director and change the plot.<\/p>\n

Dream theater is my favorite entertainment. In my workshops, we will take a dream and have every element in it – from gods to garbage cans – personified by a member of the circle, chosen by the dreamer. As scriptwriter and director, and eventually lead actor, the dreamer will exercise the power to change the story and carry it onward. This can be profoundly healing, as well as wildly entertaining, and it plays back into ordinary life by sowing a deep sense that we are not bound by any prepared script.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related playshops: The Temple of Shamanic Dream Healing<\/strong><\/a>, Duvall WA, July 16-20
\nHealing through the Imagination<\/strong><\/a>, Chicago IL, September 8-9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They are building a stage in front of the lake house in the park. A theater under construction is a pretty good metaphor for life. My mind turns to those lines from As You Like It\u00a0we all know: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women are merely players \u00a0 Yet something…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,25,3,26,27],"tags":[1376,112,1377,67],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-living","category-imagination","category-life-direction","category-self-help","tag-all-the-worlds-a-stage","tag-dream-theater","tag-life-scripts","tag-robert-moss-workshops"],"yoast_head":"\nAre you following a life script, or creating one? - 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\/06\/are-you-following-a-life-script-or-creating-one.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are you following a life script, or creating one? - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"They are building a stage in front of the lake house in the park. 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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\/4899","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=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4903,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/4903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}