OUR MIDWEEK MEDITATION. DREAMING

 Since the soul’s arrival in the world,

it is by means of dreams that it joyfully greets and gazes

upon that which is most beautiful and most divine. 

Plutarch, Amatorius

I’ve always been a dreamer – in every sense of the word.

My vivid colourful night dreams only matched by my overly imaginative, wonderfully time-wasting daydreams.

It’s always surprised me when people have told me that they don’t dream, because, in fact, night-time dreaming is an entirely involuntary activity that occurs during certain stages of sleep, and whether you remember your dreams or not, or like it or not, you dream!

I can still recall vivid flying dreams as a child, and I loved those dreams – the sensation of flying over well-known landscapes was so vividly real, even if the dream element did add in the odd surprise, like landing in the vicar’s wife’s hat at a (dream) fete in the field below our cottage.

But the dreams that have stayed with me all my life are those with horses.

They’ve appeared to me in every possible way, my four-legged friends, and I still dream of them, those I know, those I’ve known, and those I’ve never met, almost every night.

If you are a dream believer, then there’s a new book out by author and shamanic dream teacher Robert Moss, Dreaming the Soul Back Home, which is designed as a guide for working with dreams with the intention of bringing more soul into your life.

Moss, an Australian who has lived in New York for many years, is a Shamanic dream teacher, whose own life underwent a complete metamorphosis, due to dreaming.

After surviving three childhood near-death experiences, Moss, who was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, Canberra Grammar School and the ANU, became a journalist with The Economist, reporting from countries around the world for over a decade. He was a regular commentator on international affairs for the BBC and a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London for many years.

These days his life is very different.

He is the creator of Active Dreaming, a synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism that he teaches all over the world – and it all came about because of a dream after he’d left his fast-paced city life for a farm in the upper Hudson Valley.

“I started dreaming in a language I didn’t know,” he recalls. “I had no idea what it was, but after I’d talked to different people I realised it was an archaic form of the Mohawk language.”

Moss came to believe that the dream had put him in touch with an ancient healer – and that he was being called to a different life, his life of the soul.