I was recently a guest of Melanie Alberts, host of "Psychic Playdate" podcast, who interviewed me on the topic of Co-Creative Dreamwork. She's a gifted interviewer, perhaps because she's a psychic, too! It was a fun interview. Melanie is an enthusiastic proponent of the FiveStar Method, having experienced a FSM dream sharing group firsthand.
Thursday, November 19, 2020
DreamStar Certification Program Relaunch Coming Soon
I am also working on launching a podcast in the next week, using the Buzzsprout platform. An ambient composer, Damien Duque (City of Dawn) has composed three original tracks for the podcast, and I have a brand new Blue Yeti mic for the podcast. I look forward to hosting a variety of dream experts and authors in the near future!
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Reddit AMA
Hi all, I just did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) appearance in the Dream community. You can view the conversation here.
Here's what Jason LeBord, the moderator and dream author and expert said of the event:
"It ended up being a successful event and we appreciate you engaging with the community and sharing what you know. Your approach to understanding dreams is the most accessible I know of, and that makes it especially valuable for a community like Reddit Dreams. They need what you offer. We can talk all day about theory and psychology and in the end it doesn't really help people understand their dreams, or help them understand themselves better through their dreams. I will take what I've learned from you going forward, and I hope you will consider dropping by again."
New Paper on Analyzing Dream Metaphors
Hi friends,
I recently published a paper in the International Journal of Dream Research titled, "The Construction and Analysis of Metaphors from the Standpoint of Co-Creative Dream Theory." It can be downloaded here.
This was a paper that was long in coming! I hope you find it meaningful!
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Fly Tying and the Mind of God
This essay may seem more appropriate for my fly fishing blog, but after writing it, I felt it captured something "in between" angling and the spiritual journey. More and more, it seems that everything I do is related to a singular purpose. Anyway, I think you'll understand why I posted it:
I have flyfished now for 56 years, beginning on a small artesian pond in the Texas brush country. I started tying flies in my teens, and have always found flytying to satisfy my creative impulses. When I started fly fishing the Blue Ridge, I tied my own patterns, hoping that they would succeed. And they did, with the tiny brook trout that populated the streams in the upper elevations of Shenandoah National Park. They had survived over the millennia by being willing to seize the moment. But when I had the opportunity to flyfish Henry's Fork of the Snake River, I struck out entirely with my motley collection of homespun flies. The fish wouldn't touch them. For the first time in my life, I did what most flyfishers do as a matter of course when fishing new waters: I visited a fly shop and purchased a dozen flies, most of which were variations on a single bluewing olive hatch. That day, I learned that no matter how inventive you are, you must still muster the humility to look at what's going on around you.
When I began to flyfish my home waters of the Lower Laguna in my early 20s, I was able to unleash my creativity, mainly because the fish didn't care. I created poppers from deer hair, discovered that they would sink after a few casts, and began experimenting with various ways to keep them afloat. I ended up discovering closed cell foam, and married foam with spun deer hair to create the earliest iterations of the VIP popper, the subject of the second article I wrote for Fly Tyer. It's been one of my top three flies ever since, mainly because the fish don't care much about how the fly looks, as long as it doesn't misbehave. Many anglers, who have tied the VIP, agree.
In fisheries such as the LLM, a fly is successful mainly because of how it performs; that is, its castability in wind, how it lands on the water, its sink rate, how it performs in seagrass-filled water, and its hookup rate. But in a cold water fishery populated with wild, spawning populations of trout, these variables don't matter as much. Instead, the fly is usually effective if it imitates a naturally occurring insect that the fish are keying on at that particular moment. Tying flies to match the hatch takes considerable discipline and "imitativeness," as opposed to inventiveness. Of course, there are non-imitative flies that are successful, too, such as the Wulff patterns, and Western attractors such as the Stimulator. Attractor patterns are, by definition, invented by anglers who are willing to think outside the box of imitative fly tying, and conceive of a synthesis of qualities that may not occur in Nature. In a sense, the inventive tyer taps into an archetype that has no literal physical expression, at least as yet, but somehow appeals to the fish's sense of propriety, or provokes its indignation. We really don't know what a fish thinks when it sees what is clearly divorced from all recognizable life forms.
Inventiveness comes at the beginning and the end of an angler's learning curve. When I fished the Jackson River in western Virginia, I learned that attractor patterns were, by and large, ineffective on that tailwater fishery. I learned one day from fly fishing guru Harry Steeves, who happened to be fly fishing below Gathright Dam one morning, that I had to know precisely the size and shape of a particular midge pupae in order to hook the largest trout I'd every enticed the following day. But while fishing in the same spot one day not long after this humbling lesson, it suddenly occurred to me--don't ask why--that a particular synthesis of two popular dry fly patterns would prove successful, even though the pattern did not match any natural insect on that difficult fishery. I went to my hotel and tied the pattern that night, and it became the "Jackson River Special." My buddy Bill May and I caught a lot of trout the next day on that pattern, and it continued to be my most effective fly for that fishery.
The difference between the novice fly tier and the seasoned one had to do with several things, including: the countless days of immersion on my Virginia home waters, the humility to learn from masters such as Harry Steeves, and the willingness to listen to what Nature was whispering to me. When you embrace all of those ingredients, then you become eligible on the far end of the learning curve to innovate effectively. Houston Smith, who wrote Forgotten Truth, and was known for his books on comparative religions, came up with a concept that resolved the conflict over Darwinian evolution and Creationism. Pointing to events in nature that cannot be reduced to the forces of natural selection--such as nonadaptive coloration among birds--he coined the term, "the descent of the archetype" to explain the playful creativity of the divine expressing itself in the world.
I believe that inventiveness at the fly tying vise can be, at the pinnacle of one's learning process, a moment of an archetype's descent into expression. It can be the fly tying equivalent of a Coppery Tailed Trogan or a Painted Bunting, both of which make no sense in a world governed in large part by survival of the fittest. It can mirror a pattern in the mind of God, which exists only as a creative expression capable of arousing an answering response in the mind of fish. Flies such as Bud Rowland's Numero Uno, and perhaps my own VIP Popper, look strange and idiosyncratic, but are endowed with something beyond the rational, imitative mind. When the VIP made the cover of Guide Flies several years ago, I was admittedly embarrassed to have the VIP pictured beside Harry Murray's Mr. Rapidan, a fly that has become immortalized as a Blue Ridge classic. I have always realized how odd the humble fly looks, but how effective it can be. In one sense, it wasn't my creation as much as a gift of momentary inspiration informed by years of failure and yearning. It was the utterance of another realm finding a fertile place in my imagination.
The other day, Ryan said, "I want to invent a new fly." As a relatively old man, I thought, as all fathers do, "Learn more first." But then I remembered the endless winter nights of inventiveness at the tying vise as a young man. So I said nothing, knowing that Ryan's creativity would, in time, merge with prodigious on-the-water experience to spawn original creations, the broad shape of which had been known for all eternity in one mind alone.
I have flyfished now for 56 years, beginning on a small artesian pond in the Texas brush country. I started tying flies in my teens, and have always found flytying to satisfy my creative impulses. When I started fly fishing the Blue Ridge, I tied my own patterns, hoping that they would succeed. And they did, with the tiny brook trout that populated the streams in the upper elevations of Shenandoah National Park. They had survived over the millennia by being willing to seize the moment. But when I had the opportunity to flyfish Henry's Fork of the Snake River, I struck out entirely with my motley collection of homespun flies. The fish wouldn't touch them. For the first time in my life, I did what most flyfishers do as a matter of course when fishing new waters: I visited a fly shop and purchased a dozen flies, most of which were variations on a single bluewing olive hatch. That day, I learned that no matter how inventive you are, you must still muster the humility to look at what's going on around you.
When I began to flyfish my home waters of the Lower Laguna in my early 20s, I was able to unleash my creativity, mainly because the fish didn't care. I created poppers from deer hair, discovered that they would sink after a few casts, and began experimenting with various ways to keep them afloat. I ended up discovering closed cell foam, and married foam with spun deer hair to create the earliest iterations of the VIP popper, the subject of the second article I wrote for Fly Tyer. It's been one of my top three flies ever since, mainly because the fish don't care much about how the fly looks, as long as it doesn't misbehave. Many anglers, who have tied the VIP, agree.
In fisheries such as the LLM, a fly is successful mainly because of how it performs; that is, its castability in wind, how it lands on the water, its sink rate, how it performs in seagrass-filled water, and its hookup rate. But in a cold water fishery populated with wild, spawning populations of trout, these variables don't matter as much. Instead, the fly is usually effective if it imitates a naturally occurring insect that the fish are keying on at that particular moment. Tying flies to match the hatch takes considerable discipline and "imitativeness," as opposed to inventiveness. Of course, there are non-imitative flies that are successful, too, such as the Wulff patterns, and Western attractors such as the Stimulator. Attractor patterns are, by definition, invented by anglers who are willing to think outside the box of imitative fly tying, and conceive of a synthesis of qualities that may not occur in Nature. In a sense, the inventive tyer taps into an archetype that has no literal physical expression, at least as yet, but somehow appeals to the fish's sense of propriety, or provokes its indignation. We really don't know what a fish thinks when it sees what is clearly divorced from all recognizable life forms.
Inventiveness comes at the beginning and the end of an angler's learning curve. When I fished the Jackson River in western Virginia, I learned that attractor patterns were, by and large, ineffective on that tailwater fishery. I learned one day from fly fishing guru Harry Steeves, who happened to be fly fishing below Gathright Dam one morning, that I had to know precisely the size and shape of a particular midge pupae in order to hook the largest trout I'd every enticed the following day. But while fishing in the same spot one day not long after this humbling lesson, it suddenly occurred to me--don't ask why--that a particular synthesis of two popular dry fly patterns would prove successful, even though the pattern did not match any natural insect on that difficult fishery. I went to my hotel and tied the pattern that night, and it became the "Jackson River Special." My buddy Bill May and I caught a lot of trout the next day on that pattern, and it continued to be my most effective fly for that fishery.
The difference between the novice fly tier and the seasoned one had to do with several things, including: the countless days of immersion on my Virginia home waters, the humility to learn from masters such as Harry Steeves, and the willingness to listen to what Nature was whispering to me. When you embrace all of those ingredients, then you become eligible on the far end of the learning curve to innovate effectively. Houston Smith, who wrote Forgotten Truth, and was known for his books on comparative religions, came up with a concept that resolved the conflict over Darwinian evolution and Creationism. Pointing to events in nature that cannot be reduced to the forces of natural selection--such as nonadaptive coloration among birds--he coined the term, "the descent of the archetype" to explain the playful creativity of the divine expressing itself in the world.
I believe that inventiveness at the fly tying vise can be, at the pinnacle of one's learning process, a moment of an archetype's descent into expression. It can be the fly tying equivalent of a Coppery Tailed Trogan or a Painted Bunting, both of which make no sense in a world governed in large part by survival of the fittest. It can mirror a pattern in the mind of God, which exists only as a creative expression capable of arousing an answering response in the mind of fish. Flies such as Bud Rowland's Numero Uno, and perhaps my own VIP Popper, look strange and idiosyncratic, but are endowed with something beyond the rational, imitative mind. When the VIP made the cover of Guide Flies several years ago, I was admittedly embarrassed to have the VIP pictured beside Harry Murray's Mr. Rapidan, a fly that has become immortalized as a Blue Ridge classic. I have always realized how odd the humble fly looks, but how effective it can be. In one sense, it wasn't my creation as much as a gift of momentary inspiration informed by years of failure and yearning. It was the utterance of another realm finding a fertile place in my imagination.
The other day, Ryan said, "I want to invent a new fly." As a relatively old man, I thought, as all fathers do, "Learn more first." But then I remembered the endless winter nights of inventiveness at the tying vise as a young man. So I said nothing, knowing that Ryan's creativity would, in time, merge with prodigious on-the-water experience to spawn original creations, the broad shape of which had been known for all eternity in one mind alone.
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Paper Just Published in IJODR
I have authored a paper that might interest you was just published in the International Journal of Dream Research, 12, 1, (April, 2019), titled "Fading Light and Sluggish Flight: A Two-Dimensional Model of Consciousness in Lucid Dreams." You can download the paper from the IJODR site, at https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/issue/view/4397. Enjoy!
When You Are Ready
When I was about 22, I dreamt that I awoke to see a bright white light descending into our side yard, 20 feet outside the window. I was frightened, so I got up and ran from my room, but not before a dark form flew toward me. As it touched the ground, it became a beautiful blond woman dressed in a blue jumpsuit of the kind you might see in a science fiction movie. I asked her what she wanted. She said, “We have come for your brother. You are not ready yet.” Glad that they had not come for me, I went to inform my brother of their arrival. I found him kneeling tearfully in prayer. His head was shaved, and he wore a saffron-colored robe. He accompanied me to where the woman was waiting outside our bedroom window. She and her travel companions laid my brother down and slid his body through an opening in the luminous craft. Before they left, the woman told me that they had put something inside my wrist that would serve as a beacon to them. She said, “We will return when you are ready.”
Between that moment and this juncture in time I have been the recipient of countless experiences of spiritual ecstasy and religious encounter. I have written a book on lucid dreaming, a book on face-to-face encounters with Jesus, a book on visions of the Holy Mother, and a memoir on fly fishing as a spiritual journey that was inspired by luminous dreams. But throughout these important developmental stages, I have never forgotten the woman’s promise to return “when you are ready.”
One sign that I was nearing readiness for her return was an experience I had a decade ago aboard my fishing skiff, while spending the night alone on the Lower Laguna Madre, my home waters from childhood where I have flyfished since my 20s, and guided flyfishers for the past 18 years. I’d already spent several nights on the bay during the full moon, and I decided to do it one night while a tropical storm brewed over the open Gulf to the south of where I anchored.
I lay there for a while, savoring the view of a clear, starry sky above me, and golden thunder heads to the south lit up with lightning, until I began to drift off to sleep. Passing into the realm between waking and sleeping, I heard something that I had not experienced in months. It was a familiar interior sound — like ocean waves or a rushing wind — and it had often preceded the coming of the Light or the onset of an out-of-body experience. A well-known Tibetan treatise refers to this phenomenon as the “gift waves,” and says that it indicates the presence of a spiritual master who is assisting in the development of the recipient.
Regardless of its source, I have always considered it an auspicious event, so I surrendered to it without resistance or fear. A few minutes later, I lost consciousness briefly, but not before I felt myself rocking back and forth on the verge of leaving my body.
The next thing I remembered, I was sitting with a group of men in a wide, open work boat that was about 25 feet long. It was a very bright, cloudless day. I was fully conscious and acutely aware that I had somehow been transported from the Shoal Cat to another place. I wasn’t sure that the men could see me, so I remained still and just watched what was going on around me. Where was I? I wondered. I gathered somehow that the men were waiting to go to work inside a building that towered above us in the middle of an ocean. They all wore similar blue-and-white work clothes. I also observed several strange, otherworldly-looking boats passing by, each of which appeared to be exquisitely crafted and personally tailored to its owner’s tastes.
Then I realized with a start where I was: I was on another planet, and the sun above me was another star! Reeling from this insight, I was suddenly back on lying on the deck of my boat, looking up at the stars again and listening to the retreating sound of the gift waves.
It was another 15 years before the "portal" between this world and the stars opened up more completely. I have visited so many planets in faraway star systems, and have said goodbye to countless loving souls whom I will probably never see until I am no longer tethered to this world. There have been so many experiences that I only write down the most memorable ones, some of which are included in this blog. Someday soon, I hope to write about them in a book-long treatment on the subject. But suffice to say, I know that we're not alone in the universe, and that there are countless worlds and souls who will welcome you as a long-lost friend ... "when you are ready."
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