Here, Everything Is Dreaming

Poems and Stories

By Robert Moss

Subjects: Poetry, Fiction, Dreams
Series: Excelsior Editions
Imprint: Excelsior Editions
Paperback : 9781438447148, 178 pages, April 2013

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Table of contents

Part I. Selected Poems 1992–2012
Hunting Power
Chinaberry Gleam
A Flash of Blue
The Fire in the Wood
To the Deer of the Mountain
A Way of Creating
Rose Gate
Bear Giver
Scaffold Tree
The Return Journey
The Stand
Eldorado Kite
Praise for the Mother
Eyes of the Goddess
Birth of Apollo
Delivery Time
Bearing a Child from the Island of No Pain
Sun Stealer
White Wolf
Sunset Road
In Praise of Black Dogs
The Double on the Balcony
The Dragon’s Plan
Angel of the Rushing Waters
The Art of Heronry
Rabbit at the Tree Gate
Bear Sightings
Brushes with the Red Fox
Glory Falls: On Harriet Tubman
I Dreamed I Woke Up
Beginner’s Eyes, and After
Soul Is
A Crack in the House of God
If You Spill a Dragon
Moe’uhane: Island Dreaming
Lightning Paths
To the Blood Pool
Keepers of Time
Proteus
Becoming Caduceus
White Shadows
Night Calls
Kin to Lightning
Grail Knight
A Place to Write From (Red Ink)
Sanctuary
Wild Cherries
Anonwara: Turtle Dreaming
Because
Women Dream Dreams that would Terrify Men
Empathy Dreams
Part II. Tales from the Imaginal Realm
At the Gate of Story
Moon Tiger
The Xibalba Exchange
The Sign Language of the World
Love Tunnel
Unfinished Story
Flight to Deer Mountain
The Threefold Death of Silver Wolf
The Other, Again
The Journey to Absolute Knowledge
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Poems and stories that stream directly from dreams and shamanic adventures in the world-behind-the-world.

Description

Our earliest poets were shamans. Today as in the earliest times, true shamans are poets of consciousness who know the power of song and story to teach and to heal. They understand that the right words open pathways between the worlds and draw closer the gods and goddesses who wish to live through us.

Robert Moss brings this ancient bardic tradition to life in this collection of poems and stories that stream directly from dreams and shamanic adventures in the world-behind-the-world. You'll be carried into a reality where everything is alive and conscious, where tigers and bears can lend you their forms and raven and hawk can give you their sight, where the ancestors are talking, talking, and the gates to the Otherworld open from wherever you are.

You'll awaken, through these pages, to how shamans use poetic speech to call the soul back home, into the bodies of those who have lost vital energy through pain or trauma or heartbreak. You'll travel to the Island of No Pain where lost boys and girls are kept safe. And you'll learn to make the return journey, and sing the lost soul back into the body where it belongs.

Robert Moss is a novelist, poet, historian, and lifelong dream explorer. For many years he has taught and practiced Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanic techniques. His many books include Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life; Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death; The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination; and The Secret History of Dreaming. His novels include the three-volume Cycle of the Iroquois—The Firekeeper; Fire Along the Sky; and The Interpreter. He lives in upstate New York.

Reviews

"Each of these poems is a dream song and a leaping-off place, from one body to another, one song to another, from one realm into another, to gain knowledge, to be closer to the gods. We are all dreaming. We are all the dream. Robert Moss communicates across the boundaries between worlds, across time, as do the dreamers who have awakened to find that they are in a dream, within a dream, within a dream. 'You are a star that came down because/you wanted a messier kind of love,' Moss reminds us. We need these songs to illuminate the dreaming." — Joy Harjo, author of How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2001

"How wonderful that Robert Moss, writer, dreamer, healer, and shaman, has decided to show us his soul! For decades he's encouraged us to find ourselves through our lucid dreaming, teaching us to fly, and to connect without fear with Spirit. Now, in his book of poems, Here, Everything Is Dreaming, which spans a 20-year period, he opens a window for us into his personal dreaming—and what a magical and multi-layered land it is. He shows us the pain and pleasure of a life lived fully, and the mysterious ways of the shamans that walk with us — if we are brave enough to see them. This is a book full of texture and wonder from a dreamer and poet in his prime." — Candida Baker, author of The Wisdom of Women: Intimate stories of love, loss and laughter

"Through his haunting words and images, his 'shamanic songs for the seeker,' Robert Moss takes readers along on the soul's spiral journey through Life, Death, and The Return. He reminds us of ancient truths: 'Knowing is remembering;' 'The correct time is always now;' 'What you most fear is what you must do.' He beguiles us with stories of ancient myths existing in the midst of modern life. We meet the Great Bear, the Wise Man, the Fish, Silver Wolf, Red Fox, the Black Dog, Doubles, Ghosts of our future and past selves, and Guides. Moss urges us to find the grail 'in the one place it can be found'—ourselves. A rich gift for receptive readers." — Patricia Garfield, author of Creative Dreaming: Plan and Control Your Dreams to Develop Creativity, Overcome Fears, Solve Problems, and Create a Better Self

"In Here, Everything Is Dreaming, Robert Moss, author, expert in shamanic practices and renowned founder of Active Dreaming, gathers a moving, enlightening, and beautifully crafted collection of fifty poems and ten short stories which taps into the recesses of our souls, brings us on a journey to the darkest parts of our consciousness, and back into the light.

Written between 1992 and 2012, Moss's luminous poems and stories (one might say parables) trace a path between the physical world, the world of myth and a world that exists in dreams. Entwining images from earth where the 'deer puts up antlers as taproots to the sky,' the elements 'from the place where fresh water joins the salt,' and love—carnal and spiritual—'The boy—or rather, what is working through him—has struck as deep as human teeth can go,' Moss remains fearless in his exploration of consciousness. What Moss has learned and what he brings back are Songlines, guideposts to fully-realized, integrated and poetic lives. Moss writes in one of his later poems, 'I did not leave that undone./I did not let my courage fail me./I did not obstruct water when it should flow.' May we rejoice in his vision." — Joy E. Stocke, author of Anatolian Days and Nights: A Love Affair with Turkey, Land of Dervishes, Goddesses, and Saints

"Robert Moss has given us a phenomenal gift. His vivid collection of poems and stories, Here, Everything Is Dreaming, reveals the poet as a beguiling trickster who asks if we are 'asleep in the world, or awake in the dream?' He encourages us by example to travel off the map, to improvise, to seek the guidance of our dream soul in order to recover ourselves and be transformed. Moss moves effortlessly between worlds, spinning magical words that beckon beyond the edge of common perceptions where the mask of the ordinary falls away, revealing a primordial kinship with all that lives. He is a shapeshifter, practicing the primal art of regeneration, recognizing that to know is to remember what is most significant, then to act on it, again and again. This is, indeed, essential reading." — Joan Marler, Executive Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology