The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination (28 page)

The Three Only Things are extraordinary resources for seeing the field, and give us fabulous ways to play it. When someone you meet on the road asks you what this is all about, you could simply say, “It's about playing better games.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
he first person I want to thank is Georgia Hughes, the editorial director of New World Library.

The story of what happened when I decided to call her — for the first time ever — to talk about my ideas for this book is a fabulous example of a further rule for living by coincidence:
Notice what's showing through your slip
.

I had just done a radio show on the theme of “The Three Only Things.” The show went very well, and I had a strong urge to reach out to someone in publishing immediately and propose a book on this subject. When I picked up the phone, I intended to call a senior editor at a major New York publishing house with whom I had worked before. On a sudden instinct, I looked up the number for an editor with a smaller house on the West Coast.

Up to this point, I had communicated with Georgia Hughes only by letter and email. First contact was made when she approached me for an endorsement of a fine book on Celtic tradition, Frank Mac Eowen's
The Mist-Filled Path
. Later I emailed Georgia to advocate Wanda Burch's beautiful book
She Who Dreams
. I did recall a dream from many years before in which it seemed that a woman named “Georgia” — who appeared in an American Indian setting but was not herself Native American — was playing a very important and positive role in my publishing life.

I found the number for New World Library. A robot voice guided me through the in-house directory, which eventually revealed Georgia's extension. I punched it in, expecting to get voicemail. After all, she was the editorial director of the house, and such people tend to be very busy and not often — if ever — available to first-time callers.

Georgia answered her own phone and greeted me warmly when I said my name. She spoke to me as if we were old friends, referring to a recent phone conversation.

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, puzzled. “We've never spoken on the phone, though we did trade some pleasant emails.”

“Of course we've talked on the phone. You told me about your vacation.”

“Do you know who this is?”

“Absolutely! You're Robert Moss. You're the author we are publishing.”

“That is amazing. I'm calling to discuss a book you may want to publish, but in my reality you haven't even heard about it yet.”

There was a short pause on the phone, then Georgia realized she had confused me with another author, Richard Moss.

I refused to hear her apology. “There are Freudian slips and then there are cosmic slips, and I
love
what this slip may be telling us. I'm calling to explore whether you might want to publish a book that involves coincidence — including how we can get guidance from slips and apparent screwups. And you start our conversation by telling me you know
absolutely
who I am and that I am the author you are publishing. What could be cooler than that?”

We had a lively conversation about dreams and coincidence for half an hour, at the end of which time I promised to send Georgia a formal proposal the next day. I stayed up all night to pull it together. The time is always Now. Could
you
resist going with a slip like that?

Countless people — friends, seminar participants, readers of my books, friendly strangers met on planes and in other liminal places — have contributed personal experiences and insights for this book, far more people than I can begin to acknowledge as individuals. So I simply offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have shared your lives and your dreams and adventures on the road with me.

I am especially grateful to the members of my advanced circles who have been meeting with me for more than fifteen years in the Northeast — especially in our retreats in the New York Adirondacks — and for several years in the Pacific Northwest, in gatherings where we push the envelope, test-fly new techniques, and play the most wonderful games. Members of my “Dreaming beyond Divination” master class, hosted by Karen Silverstein, helped me to focus some of our methods of navigating by coincidence. Members of “The Practice of Imagination” seminar in the Seattle area helped to deepen our processes for “building a home in the imagination” and opening a space for imaginal healing. Members of my advanced classes in upstate New York, hosted by Carol Davis, and in western Connecticut, hosted by Irene D'Alessio and Donna Katsuranis, have tested and experimented with
everything
, and continue to amaze and delight me with fresh discoveries.

Thank you to all the wonderfully generous volunteer coordinators who have helped bring my work to audiences all over the map, and to the graduates of the School of Active Dreaming who are now bringing our core techniques into environments ranging from inner-city programs for at-risk kids to corporate branding conferences. Thanks to Adelita Chirino and Jim Cookman, who kept after me until I agreed to bring the core techniques of Active Dreaming to the small screen in
The Way of the Dreamer
DVD series. Thanks to Linda Mackenzie, who persuaded me to launch a radio show devoted to dreaming and the Three Only Things. Thanks to Merryn Jose, who introduced me to the mysteries of podcasting and shared her own marvelous experiences of living by intuition. Thanks to all my friends in the International Association for the Study of Dreams, who have kept me alive to the fact that the ways of approaching dreams are almost as diverse as the dreams themselves; and especially to Rita Dwyer, who is at the beating heart of the American dream work community; and to Bob Hoss, who, on a beach on the “wild side” of Oahu, shared with me an amazing experience of coincidence that continues to guide my work.

Special thanks to George “Jamie” Jamison, who helped me to get clearer focus on how to bring through the gifts of the Three Only Things for everyone who needs them; to Iain Edgar, for discussion of the role of dreaming in the jihadist movement; to Kym Chaffin, keen student of dreaming in pop culture; to Roni Mecattaf, who was a generous host in France and a key player in the riff of dreams and coincidence that brought me to the Joan of Arc tree; to my fabulous friends Wanda Easter Burch and Elizabeth Dimarco, who have shared many amazing adventures in living the Three Only Things with me, and have helped to grow the work; and to my wife, Marcia, who has generously helped to maintain and protect the creative “cave” into which I am known to vanish for weeks.

NOTES

PART ONE: ONLY A DREAM

p. 23 “
God created the dream to show the way
”: Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature
, vol. III,
The Late Period
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980): 211.

CHAPTER 1: DREAMING IS WAKING UP

p. 27
the root cellar of the English word
dream: Edward C. Ehrensperger, “Dream Words in Old and Middle English,”
PMLA
46, no. 1 (March 1931): 80–89.

CHAPTER 2: THE NINE POWERS OF DREAMING

p. 38
a dream that saved the life of Octavian
: Suetonius,
The Twelve Caesars
, trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1958): 99.

p. 39
a young noble woman named Lucrecia de León
: Richard L. Kagan,
Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-century Spain
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). The Spanish text of Lucrecia's dreams is in Maria Zambrano, Edison Simons, and Juan Blazquez,
Sueños y procesos de Lucrecia de León
(Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1987).

p. 55
Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) was an extraordinary scientist
: C. A. Meier, ed.,
Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters 1932–1958
, trans. David Roscoe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

p. 57
Johannes Trithemius, a medieval abbot of Sponheim, is now regarded
: Benjamin Woolley,
The Queen's Sorcerer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser toQueen Elizabeth I
(New York: Henry Holt, 2001): 76–80.

p. 58
J.W. Dunne became celebrated in the 1920s for his
An Experiment with Time: J.W. Dunne,
An Experiment with Time
, 3rd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1934): 110–112.

p. 59
Arthur Stilwell was one of the great financiers and railroad barons
: This story is drawn from two books by Arthur Stilwell,
The Light That Never Failed
and
Live and Grow Young
, published by New York Youth Publishing Company in 1921. The Port Arthur, Texas, website is
www.portarthur.net.

p. 61
architect Frank Gehry does something like this in dreams
: Susan Mansfield, “Maggie and Me,”
Scotsman
, November 3, 2006.

p. 62
Dream Music
: “Rock Dreams,”
Rolling Stone
, December 9, 2004; Roger Ziegler, “Dreaming Rocks,”
www.mossdreams.com.

p. 63
Arnold Steinhardt, the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet
: Arnold Steinhardt,
Violin Dreams
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

p. 64
Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz said that a writer
: Obituary of Naguib Mahfouz,
New York Times
, August 30, 2006.

p. 64
Stephen King recalls that the idea for
Misery
(like the ideas for many of his novels)
:
SFX Magazine
45, December 1998.

p. 65
Robert Louis Stevenson described the central role of dreaming
: Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Chapter on Dreams” in
Across the Plains
(London: Chattus & Windus, 1892).

p. 70
“Hidden within the grown-up heart,” as Rilke sings
: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Imaginary Career” (
Imaginärer Lebensrauf
) in
Uncollected Poems: Bilingual Edition
, trans. Edward Snow (New York: North Point Press, 1996). Stephen Mitchell's translation renders
Atemholen
as “longing,” while Edward Snow prefers the more literal “breathing towards,” which carries a sense of spiritual reach.

p. 71
a very illuminating story about this in an Icelandic saga
: The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, in the fourteenth-century Icelandic
Flateyjarbok
. I am indebted to Valgerður Hjördis Bjarnadóttir, a gifted Icelandic dreamer and scholar who is helping to revive the ancient dreamways, for bringing this wonderful story to my attention, and for the translation on which this summary is based.

p. 78
the great Persian philosopher and visionary traveler Suhrawardi
: The quote by Shabahuddin Yahya Suhrawardi is in Henry Corbin,
Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth
, trans. Nancy Pearson (Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Press, 1989): 118–19.

p. 79
In a stirring phrase, Synesius of Cyrene
—
a fourth-century bishop
: Synesius,
De insomniis
[Concerning Dreams], in Augustine Fitzgerald, trans. and ed.,
The Essays and Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene
, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930).

CHAPTER 3: EVERYDAY DREAM GAMES

p. 82
In one Mesopotamian text, the dream guide is described as “one who lies at a person's head”
: O. R. Gurney, “The Babylonians and Hittites” in Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker, eds.,
Oracles and Divination
(Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1981): 158.

CHAPTER 4: DREAMS ARE A SECRET ENGINE OF HISTORY

p. 90
she reported on one of her dreams, and this inspired Churchill's decision to give up flying
: Mary Soames, ed.,
Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Mariner Books, 2001): 91.

p. 94
Ibn Sirin, the eighth-century author
: Leah Kinberg, “Interaction between this World and the Afterworld in Early Islamic Tradition,”
Oriens
29 (1986): 296.

p. 94
traced its origins to the dreams of Osman (1258–1326), the founder of the dynasty
: Lord Kinross,
The Ottoman Centuries
(New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1977): 23–24.

p. 95
Mullah Omar called the BBC correspondent in Peshawar to discuss a dream
: Iain R. Edgar, “The Dream Will Tell: Militant Muslim Dreaming in the Context of Traditional and Contemporary Islamic Dream Theory and Practice,”
Dreaming
14, no. 1 (March 2004): 21–29.

p. 96
Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), sultan of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of Islam
: “Registre des songes tenu à la cour ottomane,” excerpted in Raymond de Becker,
The Understanding of Dreams
, trans. Michael Heron (New York: Bell Publishing, 1968): 76–78.

p. 98
records a conversation between Osama bin Laden and an extremist Saudi cleric
: Transcript of a videotape released by U.S. State Department/Department of Defense, December 12, 2001. Available online, inter alia, at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/binladentext_121301.html.

p. 98
according to the movement's own propaganda videos
: These video descriptions are taken from al-Qaeda videos titled: “Biography of Abu Bakr al-Qasimi” and “Biography of Abu Uthman al-Yemeni,” Global Terror Alert (April 2006),
www.globalterroralert.com.

p. 99
the daily practice of al-Qaeda leaders prior to 9/11 was to share dreams after dawn prayers
: Lawrence Wright,
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006): 356.