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Robert Moss
WAY OF THE DREAMER
mossdreams.com

DREAMS . . . AND HOW TO WEAVE THEM
By Jennifer Bain

So you want a better job, a better relationship or just garden-variety happiness. Or perhaps you need to heal or come to a key understanding.

Robert Moss believes that to get these things we must become "conscious dream journeyers."

It's not enough to learn a few key symbols and use them to analyze your dreams. Moss says the key is to keep dream journals - for years - to really catch messages.

A dream explorer, workshop leader and author, his Dreaming True: How To Dream Your Future And Change Your Life For The Better (Pocket, 351 pages) urges us to harness our dreams to make wise choices.

He frames his book on the story of Harriet Tubman, a 19th-century African American whose dreams helped her escort 300 slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad via safe houses, river crossings and helpers that had been revealed to her while she slept.

Dreams are a magic mirror to the spiritual realm, Moss philosophizes. They can be - among other things - rehearsals for the future, rife with missed messages, telepathic or clairvoyant. Catching dreams is fun, enthuses Moss.

"Think of it as going on a blind date with a friend you can trust with your soul."

A nice idea, indeed.

There's plenty of wise advice here on things such as how to explore your dreams the moment you wake up by trusting your feelings, doing a "reality check" and jotting down one line.

Moss likens a dream journal to a bank vault with a time-release lock. Only when you've studied your personal dream symbols, and analyzed dreams over time (for recurring themes, serial dreams and installments), will some meanings become clear.

After exploring seven levels of dreaming, Moss insists that readers pinpoint their heart's desire, step into it (visually speaking), hold it and then - within a week - commit to a specific action that will bring them closer to realizing it.

This kind of personal-growth book appeals because it's accessible to all. Even if you never figure out what your dreams mean, the act of remembering and pondering them is bound to flex your creative muscles.

Copyright 2000 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.