I am walking down a long hallway. I have a bow and arrow in my hands that I am aiming down the hall. I know I need to shoot but the hallway gets dark and I can't see and I'm concerned.

An ethereal woman appears and whispers in my ear, "Do you know why?"

Suddenly the scene shifts and I am in an opening in the woods. There is another me, another self standing about 20 feet away from me. He also has a bow and arrow, and it is pointing at me. I realize he is my old self, and I am going to need to kill him even though I don't want to.

THIS DREAM COMES ALIVE before my eyes as I sit in the ballroom of the Wyndham O'Hare hotel in Chicago. I am watching an Emmy-nominated segment of the DREAMTIME PBS series produced by two friends and surrounded by like-minded people who are helping to expand my sense of community.

My husband Daniel, 14-year-old son Hezekiah and I are attending the 26th annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), and it is a blend of head knowledge and heart wisdom that nurtures the whole Self. Daniel and I are both presenting and Hezekiah is filming greats and novices in the field of dreams for a film he is producing. This comes on the heals of completing his first feature film on "Why the Dalai Lama Matters to You". We'll come back to that in a moment.

I am grateful for pioneers like Jean Campbell, Patricia Garfield, Rita Dwyer, and Robert Waggoner who graciously make time to tell Kie the first dream they remember.

Stanley Krippner offers Kie his first interview, in his penthouse studio, following his program on "Everyone who Dreams Partakes of Shamanism". This is our first time meeting Stan and I will forever remember him as a kind-hearted Yoda willing to mentor brilliance in a young man. As I watch them together, handsome archetypes of budding youth and the ageless sage, my heart opens for all the right reasons.

Kie is learning life skills that will enrich his life and that of others. By the third day, he has become quite a celebrity himself. When we ask for interviews, people say, "Ah, you're the young man who is making a movie," or "Yes, I've heard of you!" He is learning humility while courting his own greatness in the connections he is making here.

When he meets with novelist, historian, dream archeologist and enthralling presenter Robert Moss, Kie tells him the dream he had two days after the completion of the Dalai Lama movie. This is Kie's dream:

I am with a group of people in a very large city 20-30 years in the future. I am older, rich, and accomplished. I can tell because of how other people respond to me. We are in a large building in one of the big cities.

I have been chosen to be with others who are to choose the next Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has died and a new one needs to be chosen.

Most of them think the Dalai Lama should be an adult, someone who understands more about the responsibilities and can be easily swayed. I think the Dalai Lama needs to be a child who is open. There is fighting about this.

I leave and go outside to the woods. I talk with Mom to get perspective. I keep walking and end up in a rundown part of town. There are people chasing me who want to kill me because they don't like what I'm saying. I escape into a bookstore where there are lots of people.

I go back to the building. It's like a Parliament of the World's Religions where people from all faiths gather to share, learn, talk together. There are flags. I go to the Tibetan part and am able to describe my thoughts more clearly. The people end up agreeing the Dalai Lama should be a child.

Robert gives Kie feedback encouraging him to realize it may be a metaphor for what lies ahead in others lives as well as his own.

This is my first time meeting Robert Moss and I am completely taken by him. Born in Melbourne, Australia, of Scottish descent, and living in America for many years, he is a global keeper of stories. And what a story teller he is! (Any opportunity to see, hear, or read him will richly reward you.)

The Iroquois believe the dreamworld is the real world, and this world is the shadow, the illusion, he says. He tells how Greek physician Galen spoke of the soul traveling at night into the small spaces in the body, then reporting back to the mind in the morning. He mentions author Graham Greene's dream journal covering the last 25 years of his life is housed at the University of Texas in Austin, but good luck in reading his writing! Get the picture? This is what it is like to spend time with a master storyteller who has spent his life well.

He tells a great story of dream realities that led to his book Dreaming True. He knew he wanted to write on dreaming about the future, yet it wasn't taking form. A woman came up to him after a lecture, a wonderful woman who was receiving her crone wisdom. She thanked him for his lecture on dreaming true, praising him.

The only thing was. Moss had never given the lecture.

At least, not in the physical plane.

He thought about the encounter, realized that he did deliver the lecture that she attended in the dreamstate. A brilliant idea struck him. I'll write to her and have her send me her notes! These are included in his book Dreaming True.

Moss also teaches several ways to look at dreams. He drums as we seek guidance, and the guidance we find through the sharing of dreams is amazing. There's a high appreciation in this community for the power of sharing dreams. Mary, tender of the bookstore, tells me how healing it was for her to share her dream with Hezekiah. His presence, his innocence, brought forth from him what she didn't know was within her.

Moss shares a formula for quick action on dreams that I'd like to pass along. I think you will find it useful and quite fun when shared with those you learn. I'll use the dream that opened this narrative as an example.

FIRST: Tell your dream like a story. Give it a title.
The story you've already heard. The title: Split Personality Bows Out

SECOND: Three Questions

1. Feelings. Tell the feelings in the dream.
   Concern. Maybe fear, and relunctance.
    
2. Reality Check. What do you recognize from the dream in your life right now? Could the dream happen in your life?
   Any of the dream could happen except killing myself. Well, even that could happen. Which in itself is worth thinking about.
    
3. Question the dream. What do you want from the dream?
   Who is the girl and will I see her again?

THIRD: If it were my dream...
By telling someone else what you see in their dream, their ideas expand and their mind opens. It is a healing action.

If this were my dream, I would see the woman as my inner self, muse, urging me to change, to grow, to act on something I've been putting off.

FOURTH: Action plan...
What is something I can do in response? Synthesize it down to a phrase or bumper sticker slogan like "I can change with ease."

Try these steps with a friend or your family. It can be great fun, and I guarantee excitingly and reflective. Moss had a room full of 150 people or more engaged in groups of three-four practicing these steps and they work! I learned Moss only passes on what works, and that's about the greatest guarantee anyone can give you.

One more note. Moss also shared Google founder Larry Page's recent comments at his University of Michigan commencement address. From one of the richest men in the world, it's good advice. Here goes:

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and... I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work.

Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web - he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn't even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

Then send it to us a dreamschool.org and maybe it will appear here at PLW next month. Oh, and the IASD meets once a year and can be found online at www.asdreams.org. Check them out!

Until next month, follow your dreams!

© 2009, Dr. Barbara Condron

Dr. Barbara Condron has been studying the Mind and dreams for 50 years. The author of a dozen books including The Dreamer's Dictionary and Every Dream is about the Dreamer, she is project director for the GLOBAL LUCID DREAMING EXPERIMENTS based at the College of Metaphysics. To learn more about the teachings she shares in this column visit www.dreamschool.org. Hundreds of interpreted dreams are at your fingertips. While there, be sure to contribute a dream for the Q&A's Top Ten Dreams of the Week (be sure to note that you are a PLW subscriber) and check out the Dreamschool Program to become a Dreamologist. Sweet dreams til next month!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Since 1977, Dr. Barbara Condron has made guest appearances on radio and television shows and been interviewed by newspapers here and abroad. From WGN in Chicago to WGNO in New Orleans, from PBS Latenight in Detroit to BBC Radio in London, her expertise in her subjects and her ease as a public speaker have made her a media favorite especially on call-in shows. Her affection for using media to connect people was behind the National Dream Hotline®, the annual weekend of sharing dream research sponsored by the School of Metaphysics, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to developing spiritual potential. She served as International Coordinator for the hotline from its inception in 1989 to 2000.

In 1997, Barbara created www.dreamschool.org to share School of Metaphysics research and answer questions from dreamers online. Now she is pioneering global dream awareness through heading the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiment at the College of Metaphysics in the Midwestern U.S. The experiments seek to collect the largest body of experiential knowledge to date concerning specifically, lucid dreaming, and to analyze the data making it widely known. Her books include The Dreamer's Dictionary and Every Dream is about the Dreamer. She also created the documentary Ten Powers of Dreaming, a study of dreams that have changed the course of history.