According to shamanic and Taoist thought, the collective dream is also called the material universe and the source of this dream is the Tao, spirit or creator of all things. The Tao is not however attached to these dreams. You could say that the Tao, or creator, gave birth to the dreamers and then began watching with interest what they would dream. The dreamers of course are all the bits and pieces of the physical plane. Each bit and piece has the power to dream at different levels of sophistication. Obviously a rock dream is not quite as elaborate as the dream of a butterfly, and the dream of a butterfly is eclipsed in complexity by the dream of a dog. The most sophisticated dreamers are sentient beings like human beings. They are capable of dreaming up incredible things. Unfortunately, because of a combination of their amnesia, creativity, free will, and ego orientation, their dreams sometimes turn into nightmares. Then the Tao itself endures a bit of a nightmare because it is witnessing all the dreams of all its dreamers all the time. Luckily the Tao is big enough to have other fabulous dreams that make up for the nightmares people make up of death, destruction, violence, control, and fear.

In the act of creation, the Tao lovingly decided on a noninterference policy. That is, it created the dreamers and agreed it would abide by whatever dreams they created. Knowing of course that in the end, all dreamers would wake up and recognize the basic foundation of love to be found in the source of the universe. Many people curse the Tao for this, believing that it was cruel of the Tao to create this policy: just another bad idea. yet, if you think it through, the Tao could not have done it any other way without restricting free will. If you lacked this freedom to create any kind of dream you thought of, you would complain that the game was fixed and you would try to rebel. Nothing less than total freedom to dream and discover is the loving way of the Tao.

When sentient beings gather together in great numbers their collective dreams becomes very strong. For a period of time on the planet the dreams were about survival and then came a time where the dreams focused on order, laws, control, and collective living. Then came grand dreams of ambition and power and material gain. These three levels of dreaming, corresponding with the first three soul ages, include basic amnesia or unconsciousness. These dreams harbor the beliefs that everyone is totally separate, in competition, and that the creative force of the universe either does not exist or exists as some kind of angry punitive external force. Today these powerful, centuries old dreams are all entwined and carry great momentum for humankind, inclusive of older souls struggling to wake up from the drug-like stupor of the mass dream.

The collective dream has developed a kind of personal ego, an identity of its own based on what it has become—a long story. This planetary collective dream has become a great power and gobbles up everything in its path. It feeds on the personal dreams of all the people on the planet. What it considers the best food of all is drama, especially drama that is intensely emotion-filled, particularly trauma with much anger, fear, jealousy, envy, and violence. Not only does the collective dream feast on these things, it requires them to maintain its remembered identity. So the collective dream keeps trying to incite more incidents of trauma so it can have more food just like a raging forest fire that hungrily demands more trees for fuel. The dream then reinforces itself every second with more of the same.

Most people's dreams are sucked into this vortex and without realizing it they become contributors to a vast nightmare lifetime after lifetime. Sometimes they dream pleasant things like loving relationships and satisfying work or creating great beauty but these things are not as enticing to the historical collective dream as the more intense traumas. So sooner or later each person tends to be driven into the great karmic dream to contribute to it, be enslaved to it and be victimized by it. Human beings have become like sheep or cows filing into the slaughterhouse of the dream. The results are not pretty.

Now it is important to realize that this grand collective karmic dream is not evil, just unpleasant. Being a dream it has no substance, just momentum. To experience the truth of this, try to prove that you or anything existed one second ago. There is no evidence to that effect. The only thing that you can actually prove is that you are aware in this instant. Everything else is just a memory. All fossils and memorabilia exist only now, even though they appear to relate to a past story. So the dream is not real but appears to be real—has no historical substance but only pretends to have solidity. Its power comes from the momentum it has been given and the fuel it is now receiving in this instant by all the dreamers who think they have no option other than to have this ongoing nightmarish dream.

A new dream is possible but requires enough dreamers to wake up from their collective nightmare and choose to transform the dream. A few very old souls, transcendental souls, and the occasional infinite souls have managed to wake up from the collective dream and to some extent they have managed to wake others up enough to sway the dream a little. Yet even the great spiritual leaders could not change the fundamentally painful direction of the dream the planet was dreaming. They each realized that it would not be possible to change the entire dream until there were enough mature human beings on the planet willing to wake up enough to change it. They had to settle for presenting the option of an alternative and giving pointers about how to wake up. Mostly these teachers have not been heeded because few human beings were mature enough to know what they were talking about. A few took these guide's lead and used their help to wake up from their own personal contribution to the nightmare at large. Most, however, simply incorporated what the teachers said into the ongoing dream without waking up at all, similar to the way a person might incorporate the sound of a passing siren into their dream.

Now for the first time, the possibility of humankind waking up from the mass dream exists on a collective level. The possibility exists of establishing a new dream; a dream that allows the dreamers to wake up within their dream just as on occasion you discover you are dreaming and begin to take conscious control of your dream. How can this be done?

For each person there is no hope of changing the collective dream by themselves. Not even Jesus and his historical equals did that. What they did was to swing the dream toward more satisfaction, joy and freedom and less pain, but they had to allow each person to come to the ultimate realizations in their own time. Each person has the capacity to awake from their personal dreaming as the great spiritual teachers did, and no longer contribute to the painful mass dream. To do this deprives the mass dream from feeding just like depriving a forest fire of fuel. There are tried and true methodologies for awakening from the personal dream developed by masters along the way. There are five requirements for waking up.

I. The first requirement for awakening is to realize as actively and as often as possible that the so-called consensual reality is actually a big dream following the specific laws of dreaming. The law of dreaming is: Dreaming requires a mind that is fueled by energy and directed by intent. Intent is a product of light, an information resource that is constantly emanating from the Tao.

II. The second requirement for awakening involves realizing that your own personal story line is also a dream that is based on the four laws of dreaming.

III. The third requirement for awakening is recalling all memories that carry fuel for the big dream. This means using the powers of self-observation to review your life story, not relive it however. In shamanic traditions this is called making a personal inventory of your life in great detail, starting with the moment of birth and making a brief notational record of every possible memory of every incident in life. This is not the same as psychotherapy or analysis where the patient is encouraged to emote hotly or wetly over past incidents. This only serves to reinforce the dream, not starve it.

IV. The fourth requirement for awakening is to engage methods to erase each item on the inventory, no small task. There are a variety of methods to accomplish this. An ancient one is attending to each incident using certain postures and breathing techniques to release it consciously. We will say more about this shortly.

V. The fifth requirement for awakening is to track and pay close attention to current beliefs, actions, choices, and speech that carries fuel for the big dream. In shamanic terms this is called tracking or stalking. This is no simple task either and in fact requires ruthless discipline. The collective dream is opposed to this kind of activity and will use its power to distract you as often as possible. Practicing release to the collective dream makes you stronger and stronger until one day you can awake from it.

Incidentally, awakening from the dream does not mean withdrawing from participating in life. It means living freely and making choices that are independent from coercion by guilt, shame, judgement, or fear. In other words this means living without the influence of dragons, obstacles or chief features.

Let us return to the third and fourth requirements and discuss several methods of erasing personal history via the inventory. Making a proper inventory is a big part of the success of becoming free, however there is no one best method for creating an inventory. Creating an inventory of life's experiences mainly requires an organizing system that works effectively for you. You might choose to categorize experiences in early life according to grades in school, addresses lived at, mother's or father's various marriages or any other category. You might make sub-categories including memories with various emotional content like sad memories, fearful memories, angry memories, and even glad or funny memories. Nothing should be left out. You might have subsections for relatives, friends, schools, clubs, camping trips, work, lovers, and so on. The main thing is that the inventory is all-inclusive and organized. This kind of inventory can take many days to outline. What you will find by doing it is that just starting the process will uncover more memories than you can imagine. Creating the inventory is like priming the pump.

As we mentioned above there are many methods to erase the items on the inventory. Erasing the item does not mean that you will lose the memory. It means that you will unload it of fuel to contribute to the mass dream. In short, the memory will become more neutral. If this makes you nervous you can see in your uneasiness your attachment to the memories, especially the so-called good ones. You don't need good memories as much as you need a good now.

The methods below may be done using a variety of postures and positions. You may wish to sit in a chair in a darkened room with your eyes open or you may wish to lie on your back with your knees up and your arms crossed over your chest. You can also do it standing with arms uncrossed or sitting on your behind with arms wrapped around your knees. An ancient Taoist method is to take a meditation stance: stand with legs shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, spine straight, arms stretched out front pointing to the ground about eight feet in front with palms down, eyes lowered.

Duplicating: One method to erase the content of a memory is to create an exact duplicate of it in your mind and then place this duplicate onto the original memory. You throw a duplicate at it and the energy wrapped up in it vanishes. This is not easy to explain but hopefully you will get the idea by trying it. It is based on the ancient understanding that whenever you put something exactly where it is already, it disappears. This is why spiritual seekers strive for unconditional acceptance of what is.

Loving it: Another method is to bring up each item in the inventory and open your heart at the same time, experiencing love for it, seeing it as just another face of love. This can be coupled with an intake and outtake of breath for each item. Practice makes this possible even with the more traumatic items.

180 degree head movements: With each item you begin by facing forward and breathing in while turning the head 90 degrees to the left. Then while contemplating the item sweeping the head 180 degrees to the left while breathing out. Then bringing the head straight forward and beginning the next item. This is an ancient Toltec shamanic technique explained by Carlos Castaneda as taught him by his teacher Don Juan in the popular book series.

REM eye movements: This technique is a relatively modern one that uses the methodology of EMDR. You contemplate each item while moving the eyes in a sweeping motion from right to left to right many times, about one sweep per second, until the image has lost its intensity. This method is best used with an EMDR practitioner, especially for the more traumatic memories although you can give it a try on your own. If you are seriously depressed then you should not try this technique on your own.

Now let us comment some more on requirement number five, tracking your personal dream. Tracking your dream involves paying attention to the words that leave your mouth. Anything you say has power to create, so you want to notice what you are habitually saying. Do you want to say that? If not, either stop what you are saying or purposely say something that you would rather create. The things to watch for are habitual stories of victimization, judgements of self or others and comments that reflect a negative outlook on life. A good rule to follow is to ask yourself, "Would I say what I am saying about someone if they were in my presence to hear it?"

Tracking your choices and actions are equally important. A choice may include what you don't do as well as what you choose to actively do. If you are not calling someone on the phone out of fear or anger then you are making a clear choice to take that action. Since all choices and actions are powerful and contribute to the dream, you must ask yourself if that is what you want to create.

Becoming a tracker or stalker is not about hypervigilance, a device the inner critic uses to beat you up on a regular basis. Nor is tracking about being ultra serious, a good-goody saint or being someone that can't have any fun any more. These are distortions of tracking and only lead to false personality problems that contribute to the nightmare. When done properly, tracking is as interesting as tracking an animal in the forest. It reveals constant vistas, awareness and insights. Th results are positive and strong, not dreary or anxiety riven.

Eventually you will become deeply aware that anything you say or anything you do has tremendous power to create. When you take full responsibility for that, you will have awakened from your personal dream and no longer be contributing to the collective nightmare. Then you can begin to lead a life of power and service, the kind of life you were designed to live as a human being.

The good news is that although these disciplines are rigorous, there is an increasing collective discontent with the status quo. The big dream is suddenly losing its luster and people are even more bored with it. As more and more people seek to wake up, the process of awakening for each individual becomes easier. Eventually, when a critical mass is reached, many will wake up spontaneously because they will be carried along with the momentum of the new dream, the dream of awakening.

Don't be lazy and wait for this to happen because it could take some time yet and in the meantime you could be enjoying happiness instead of several more lifetimes of pain and enslavement.