/from narrator: this page is aggregate of scattered q&a from team member to Segrei Izrigi around the dream mapping topic./
Frequently Asked Questions
Question 1: (question lost, presumably something generic about dream mapping)
Here’s the idea: you keep a dream journal (incredibly useful at the start of your practice), but as you record your dreams, you focus on mapping the setting. For instance: “Met up with Cryonus on some strange street. We talked about Tibetan sharks. Meanwhile, four robbers were raiding a jewelry store, and there was a hellish shootout.” Then you sketch out the layout of the street, the buildings’ positions, and try to remember what lies beyond (i.e., outside the perception bubble). If you can’t recall, just leave it as is. Add the dream’s entry number to your journal. Mark this number on your dream map. I’ll go over map orientation later. After a while, these “bubbles” will start connecting. They’ll multiply and merge, gradually forming a dream map from hundreds of fragments — an island of the tonal. This map-making process organizes the tonal. Then one day, BAM! You start recalling dream locations from five or ten years ago. You might sketch a railroad and station you saw in a dream, and suddenly remember traveling that route to a place called N. You know it was a dream, and maybe this place doesn’t even exist. But it does in the dream world, and you’re drawing it.
This dream memory starts to visit you more and more often. You feel something growing inside, powerful, immense, unstoppable. And then, HA! It bursts into you! In that moment, you can draw almost the entire map! You know almost all the places! You’re burning with knowledge and inner strength. You can do anything. People are drawn to you like flies to… well, you know. Power attracts everyone. For a few hours, your sense of significance shoots sky-high.
It’s a dangerously intense moment. A crossroads! One way or the other! Either into obsession with power, which leads to a burnout, or toward a calm and careful journey forward. I’ll write more about this. Hundreds of people dropped out of the Dream Hackers’ path right at this point. They went on to become “ordinary people” — so ordinary that they’d tear their hair out with longing for that time in their lives when they were carried by the bird of knowledge.
Do you know what you call the “glance of awareness”? It’s your experience of meeting another dreamer. What usually happens is that when dreamers meet each other, they often perceive their peers as otherworldly beings. At certain stages, I and about ten others had to initiate new friends — showing them “shared dreams.” The first meetings are always like that. People didn’t handle me well. Remember how Castaneda would lose it in his encounters with Don Juan’s friend, Don Genaro? Everyone either loses it or feels their power draining from fear. It’s all the games of first attention. Until the brain adapts to encounters with elements of second attention, meeting with fellow dreamers feels like “a battle with sinister creatures trying to capture my soul.” That’s exactly how one friend described her first encounter with me.
Question 2: How to make a map of the dream world if it is not stable and constantly changing?
When you start mapping your dreams, you’ll realize that not all areas of this constructed space are in a state of constant change. What you currently call the “dream world” is an illusion. It’s a kind of description of a real phenomenon that slips out of our awareness. To describe it more precisely, we introduce an artificial substitute.
Here’s an example: An unknown criminal robs a store and speeds off in an unknown direction. We’re left with a double unknown. The investigator uses an “artificial substitute” and gets (a) a plaster cast of the tire track and (b) a fingerprint from the crime scene. A day later, the traffic police identify the car make, and the Interior Ministry issues a notice for a man named Kuzkin, whose fingerprints match those found at the scene.
The takeaway: by introducing an artificial substitute (the dream map), we can learn a lot about that elusive phenomenon you call the dream world. The map is not the dream world. Just as a globe isn’t the Earth.
As you build the map, you’ll find areas of transmutation — zones of constant change.
Also, keep in mind that sustaining attention within a dream requires power. With enough power, the world is steady and solid, just like everyday reality. With too little, you’re swept along by the dream’s plotlines. All the knowledge a dreamer needs boils down to two tricks: introducing attention into the dream and anchoring whatever you perceive.
Question 3: I still don’t get how to make a map of the dream world if it is not stable and constantly changing?
I’m writing this material with a purpose. A simple explanation won’t cut it; it needs to be compelling enough to pull you in, to move you from just thinking about lucid dreams to actually practicing them — that real, sometimes irritating pursuit of truth. :)
Believe me, if someone came along right now offering to lead you through all seven gates of dreaming, you wouldn’t believe them. Words are just words. Progress requires effort — your effort. If you want to evaluate my method, try it for yourself.
Question 4: Can a dream map be really made?
Yes. People have been doing it since ancient times — just look at maps, globes, and shamanic drawings. Multiple systems are used for spatial orientation (for example, the Cartesian system and angular coordinate systems).
Orientation is essential in all fields of human knowledge, and it’s especially useful for dreamers. Remember how don Juan always asked Castaneda where the omens came from — the south or the north? Or which direction the stream carried him?
Question 5: Can a dream map be really made?
First, it’s a way of “not-doing” the dream. This means focusing attention not on inner dialogue (which, as Ray pointed out, sneaks into our dreams too) but on something most people never consider in dreams — the landscape, the setting of the dream events.
Second, by mapping your dreams, you’re revisiting them. Debates about the importance of such a review are as pointless as debates about reviewing one’s life. If you see value in it, do it. It’s a way of gaining strength and knowledge. It’s a choice. My grandmother didn’t bother with it, nor did my grandfather. :)
Third, mapping was a strategic technique of the Dream Hackers. The ultimate effect of this technique could be described as an “explosive” recollection of nearly all the dreams in one’s life. Not recollection in the sense of remembering what was said or done, but of all the places visited in dreams — the positions of the assemblage point that the dreams activated. This is the point where many dreamers begin to see lucid dreams regularly. And then they start wondering: what next? What intention will lead them in their continued search for knowledge and freedom?
Question 6: Why do people sometimes see labyrinths, massive structures, and boundaries they can’t cross in dreams?
People see similar dreams, with similar plots and personifications. Psychologists call this phenomenon archetypal imagery and interpret it as a shared layer of human consciousness. (We might suggest they read Castaneda — they’d realize this is the human bandwidth of consciousness). Yes, labyrinths are symbolic, a manifestation of some energetic aspects of the universe. Our mind transforms them into a pattern that, for reasons we don’t fully understand, appears to us as a labyrinth.
As for why people end up in labyrinths, I have a theory.
The labyrinth is part of a program embedded in our consciousness by the flyers. It’s a program “worm” that grows within us, consuming our energy resources and memory, and eventually replaces the person with itself, imposing its own rules. That’s why I think Doc is an oddball — he’s bound to lose his fight with the flyers. And yet, I respect him deeply. He’s fighting them!
I understand that flyers are just personifications of certain forces or energies. That’s why the Dream Hackers decided to “hack” their imprint — that “implant” that made us forget how to be free.