Written by a popular leader of dream workshops and seminars, Conscious Dreaming details a unique nine-step approach to dreams, especially precognitive and clairvoyant ones, that uses contemporary dreamwork methods and techniques developed from shamanic cultures around the world.
Robert Moss is the pioneer of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of shamanism and modern dreamwork. 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 and a lively online dream school. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His eight books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates and Active Dreaming: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom.
Moss describes himself as "a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture." He identifies the great watershed in his adult life as a sequence of visionary events that unfolded in 1987-1988, after he decided to leave the world of big cities and the fast-track life of a popular novelist (already the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Moscow Rules) and put down roots on a farm in the upper Hudson Valley of New York. Moss started dreaming in a language he did not know that proved to be an archaic form of the Mohawk language. Helped by native speakers to interpret his dreams, Moss came to believe that they had put him in touch with an ancient healer - a woman of power - and that they were calling him to a different life.
Out of these experiences he wrote a series of historical novels (The Firekeeper, Fire Along the Sky, The Interpreter) and developed the practice he calls Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of contemporary dreamwork and shamanic methods of journeying and healing. A central premise of Moss's approach is that dreaming isn't just what happens during sleep; dreaming is waking up to sources of guidance, healing and creativity beyond the reach of the everyday mind.He introduced his method to an international audience as an invited presenter at the conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams at the University of Leiden in 1994.
Core techniques of Active Dreaming include
The "lightning dreamwork" process, designed to facilitate quick dream-sharing that results in helpful action; the use of the "if it were my dream" protocol encourages the understanding that the dreamer is always the final authority on his or her dream
Dream reentry: the practice of making a conscious journey back inside a dream in order to clarify information, dialogue with a dream character, or move beyond nightmare terrors into healing and resolution
Tracking and group dreaming: conscious dream travel on an agreed itinerary by two or more partners, often supported by shamanic drumming
Navigating by synchronicity: reading coincidence and "symbolic pop-ups" in ordinary life as "everyday oracles".
