Blog o’ Gnosis

A couple years ago, I wrote about how singing and especially songwriting was one of my personal indicator species—those activities which, by their presence in my daily routine, mean that I am functioning at my fullest. By their absence, I can measure the level of stress that I am under. When they return, it is [...]

One of my early memories is of being six years old, getting ready to go to school early one morning. My mother had turned on our small black and white TV, and on it I saw a long, solemn procession moving slowly down a street, with many people bearing a raised casket in the middle [...]

In between writing a major post for someone else’s blog and jump-starting a new website of my own, I have had precious little time for posting dream tidbits on this blog. Well, all that is going to change, starting right now.

The folks at the Lucidity Institute are running an experiment to test Tibetan Dream Yoga principles, and they are looking for participants, especially left-handed ones. From their website:

As a dreamworker, I estimate that roughly 75% of my clients have their questions answered satisfactorily using the tools of dream interpretation. Another 25% have concerns that are not completely resolved by looking at the content of their dreams. These folks are usually coping with some kind of sleep disturbance, and need to know how to get a good night’s sleep so that they can remember more of their dreams.

The field of sleep medicine is growing as more people experience insomnia, chronic nightmares, sleep apnea, and other issues that interfere with their dreaming and overall healthy functioning. With these folks in mind, I have been reading up on ways to cultivate restorative sleep. Among the many websites I have traversed, the National Sleep Foundation has lots of informative articles and links to sleep centers across the country.

There are also some interesting books on the subject that have come out recently. Among them is one which on the surface seems completely unrelated, even frivolous, yet it contains some really valuable information on the ins and outs of getting good quality sleep.

Every so often I read a description of a mundane event which suddenly transports the observer into a mythic moment. Having just received a particularly moving account from a friend, I’ve decided to highlight these “waking dreams” in a semi-regular series of posts. I doubt I will be posting one of these each week, but [...]

Writing is such a solitary pursuit. Or rather, it is solitary only in a sense. I need utter stillness around me, and writing within that stillness I find all the ways I am connected with everyone else.

I was at it the other day, although my thoughts were elsewhere. I had just received an email relaying the sad news that my cousin’s son had been killed in a car crash. Another 20-year-old coming to a tragic, untimely end; a handsome kid that had just met his West Coast cousins a year previously, at a family reunion.

News like that, laden with the otherworldliness of grief, takes several days to work through one’s system. I was noticing how, after a couple days, the torrent of feelings had become manageable, and this fresh loss had become another thin layer added to the transparency of sadness I seem to carry with me.

A friend of mine lives right down by Ocean Beach in San Francisco. From the picture windows in her third floor apartment you get a panoramic view of the wild surf that animates the City’s miles-long beachfront promenade. The place is simply stunning. To sit there for an afternoon meeting and have as a backdrop the crashing waves and rip currents, sailboarders and sandcastles while the sun makes the metal-gray water glisten like ivory, is just a sublime experience.

Every time I go there I remember and then forget to bring my camera. But this weekend I remembered and then put my camera into my bag before I forgot again. I wasn’t after a picture of the surf, because really that is too vast an expanse to translate well onto film, least of all my point-and-shoot camera. No, it was to capture this sight which greets the stray visitor who happens to tear her eyes away from the ocean and look east up the gently sloping hills of the City.

I ran across an interesting little article in the latest New Yorker this evening, about a Canadian woman named Sheila Heti who became interested in what people were dreaming about the presidential frontrunners. She has created a website, The Metaphysical Poll, explaining her Hillary in pineapplesproject and linking to archives of the dreams she has collected so far. From her website:

The question we’re asking here is: what role do Barack and Hillary and John play in the collective unconscious? What can that tell us about where they might lead us — and which one does more coke when we sleep?

Determined to start out this year on a lighter note than last year, I have decided to implement a new feature here at Blog o’ Gnosis. It’s my version of New Year’s Resolutions, which I mostly think are a bad idea but occasionally make anyway.

For instance, on New Year’s morning it came to me that I should swear less, as a magical act to take better care with the words that come out of my mouth. By lunch time, though, I had abandoned the whole idea. It would be too much of a set-up for disappointment, as most virtuous decisions are, when the moment of inspiration wears off and there you are, stuck on the road behind a really bad driver again. If you’re going to swear anyway, why add insult to injury by cursing yourself for it?

In late October of this year, The New York Times published a series of articles on sleep and dreaming which are worth checking out. Below are links to each of the four articles, along with highlights, anecdotes, and some commentary. If anyone spots other articles on dreams in the news, I’d love to hear about them.