Robert Moss: The Dream Archeologist
On that land, called by the Oak and the Hawk, I’m in that drifty liminal space between sleep and awake one night, and something calls me. I mean, I’m just having an adventure. I’m traveling outside my body like a hawk, and then something calls me. I’m in a cavern in the woods somewhere near Montreal, but there’s no modern development, and I’m with an ancient Wise Woman. She’s speaking to me in a beautiful language like lake water, wave lapping upon wave, and it’s a language I don’t understand. It was my first encounter with an ancient Wise Woman, Mother of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk people, and this had the effect on me of something that changed my life. It took me years to get it together. Still, it was my encounter with her, and being reminded by a wisdom carrier of an indigenous tradition, what dreaming is really about. It took me from a very successful career into a life which I found profoundly more rewarding, which is one of helping people to dream again, and find in dreaming things that will get you through the tough times. Something that will give you creative inspiration. Things that will put you in touch with your soul family and help you to maintain a soul family across space and time. Things that will remind you of the driving purpose of your life. Things that will enable you to visit your counterparts in other places and times.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: There is so much interest in time travel these days with programs and books like Outlander. And the First Nations of Australia, believe that this is the dream and what we call Dreamtime is the awake part. So, it’s not surprising, if that is true, that we can go to that awake part to find what we need to support us through this everyday life, which isn’t as easy to navigate as the dream life seems to be.
ROBERT MOSS: One fundamental thing to know about dreaming is that dream is not fundamentally about what happens during sleep. It’s about waking up. There’s an ordinary life. We’re often in the condition of sleepwalkers who’ve forgotten what it’s all about. We’re trying to get by. Trying to fit in with other people’s expectations. We’ve forgotten the larger picture.
The Aboriginal peoples of Australia say we live in the speaking land. By that, they mean everything is speaking. The Tree is speaking. The Iguana is speaking. The Mountain is speaking. The Rock is speaking. Everything is speaking in many voices if we would just listen. So, dreaming as a practice is not just about what you do with your eyes closed. It’s about what you do with your eyes open. Part of my practice, all of my life, has been to walk around this world looking for the dreamlike symbols that arise around me in the street, in the park, by the beach. If I’ve got a theme on my mind, I will receive the coincidence, the symbolic pop-up, as a message. And dreaming, again, might be what the Shaman does when the Shaman uses drumming, or when we use focused intent to go on a journey to a place of encounter with spiritual allies, to a place of healing. A place of adventure, of non-ordinary reality. I like to dream of the space that Tinkerbell recommended back in the Hollywood movie of Peter Pan. Peter is sad because his fairy friend is going away, and Tinkerbell gives some of the best advice on dreaming I’ve ever heard. She says to Peter: “Look for me in the place between sleep and awake. There I will love you, there you will find me. The place between sleep and awake.”
People are off their previous schedules, and it’s an excellent time to learn to do something in that space. Not to kick yourself because you’re awake at some funny hour. Nor to curse yourself for having insomnia, but see what images will rise and fall behind closed eyelids if you simply adopt a state of horizontal meditation. This is a kind of everyday dream yoga.
This is one of the ways to opening to what the deeper life has to offer. This is not just some sort of recreational sideline. I think it is, as our ancestors understood, absolutely central to our ability to thrive and survive and get in touch with the meaning of everything in our lives.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: In The Boy Who Died and Came Back, you write about nine keys to living consciously in the multi-dimensional universe, one of which is “to live well, we must practice death. What does that mean?
ROBERT MOSS: This is something of fundamental importance that we need to hear and understand right now. The Lakota have many ways of approaching the sacred. They say: “The path of the soul in dreams is the path of the soul after death.” In other words, we travel the realms beyond the physical. It’s excellent preparation for what lies ahead, and as a practice, a meditation practice which might be reinforced by a dream practice, the idea that your death is with you right now and that you should be prepared to answer some basic questions in the presence of death so that you can move on with minimal regrets. So, my practice from time to time is to say to myself: “What do I most regret not having done is this life, and what can I do to make up for that? What do I most regret having done? What was the mistake that I most regret? What can I do about that? Where have I heard other people? How can I make up for that?”
Being prepared for death to live well is also about adopting the practice of living and dying with minimal regrets. Identifying the regrets that you have and doing something about them and moving beyond them.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Another one is: “We have a Guide for our lives which is no stranger.”
ROBERT MOSS: I’m convinced that the most important spiritual guide we have is no stranger. It is the self, the higher self that is accessible to us now. I think of it sometimes as the double on the balcony. The self who is living on a terrace high above the world, who can see me, can watch me without judgment, with some sense of comedy, perhaps. If I can rise to his or her level of understanding and perception, this would be a wonderful thing.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Robert, you say: “When we rise to the perspective of the greater self, we’re able to make peace with different personality aspects, including our counterparts in other times and parallel realities.”
ROBERT MOSS: I’ve become convinced – not as a belief, but as a result of experience and observation – that my life and your life are connected to dramas and relationships that are operating in other lifetimes, as well as to aspects of ourselves that might go unacknowledged in our present life. We’re related to parallel selves who made different choices in this world. We’re connected to people in the past and the future and in parallel times who are not actually our present selves but members of a multi-dimensional family.
So, there’s an element of truth in reincarnation, but the bigger truth is that it’s all going on right now. So, if you’re connected to somebody who lived in Orkney 300 years after Christ, maybe her story is relevant to you right now. But the way to make some sense out of all this is to somehow manage to rise to the oversoul or the self on a higher level, which is like the connector between all these different experiences. This is a practice that can be learned. It’s a practice of meditation, of conscious streaming. It is fundamental, I think, to be able to get a perspective on the things that life is throwing at you and the way they relate to the challenges of other life experiences, including – I want to repeat this, definitely – including the experiences you are having in parallel lives in your parallel selves which might be more relevant to you right now than you understand.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Many says that if we can do that, we can bring back gifts, skills, and talents that our parallel selves have and use them in this reality.
ROBERT MOSS: Absolutely. I’m convinced that this is so.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Certainly, when we daydream, perhaps thinking about a particular holiday or a place we went to. If it’s wintertime, we can dream that we’re in the sunshine, and we can actually feel that warmth and bring it into the present. So, in a way, we are time traveling.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Robert Moss
