Copyright © 2009 by Barry Daniels
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The creative dreaming techniques described in
"Beautiful Dreamer" are real, and are used nightly by countless people around the world. Many of
these people keep dream diaries, and often claim to
find inspiration and guidance from contemplation and analysis of their dreams.
Lucid Dreaming is also real, although its mastery and use are normally only achieved by years of dedicated effort.
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER. Prologue
Nineteen Sixty: Yorkshire, England.
His friends called him ‘Titch’, which was simply a Yorkshire term for a person of small size. In fact Titch was not small; not for his age; it was just that any ten-year old boy who chose to run with a pack of twelve to fourteen year olds was doomed to be thought of as ‘Titchy’. Yet he was not small where it mattered most to the gang -- in his heart and in his spirit -- and he could hold his own in most of their rough and tumble games. But this one was different.
It was cold, that winter; cold enough that the ice on the canal could support the weight of a pack of small boys, who skated and skidded and chased and tumbled on the frozen surface. They ‘skated’ on the soles of their leather shoes, or, for the luckier ones, their winter boots, for ice skates were a rare commodity in that place at that time. And then they decided to play ice hockey.
Since no-one knew much about this strange North American pursuit it fell to Brian Lockwood to determine the rules of play. Being the eldest and biggest of the boys it often fell to Brian to make such determinations. They knew that hockey was basically a ‘girl’s game’ played by their female associates during the summer season while the boys played soccer. Yet they understood that in North America Ice Hockey was a game for the toughest, the fastest, the most skilful of men. Therefore the rules for ice hockey and field hockey must be substantially different in some important respects. Their ‘hockey sticks’ were whatever pieces of wood fell to hand; about half of the group brought out their cricket bats. The ‘puck’ was a well worn tennis ball. Each ‘net’ was represented by two piles of scarves and hats, similar to those which at other times would serve as the ‘goalposts’ for impromptu soccer matches.
The boys cleared a light snowfall from the surface of the canal over a surface roughly sixty feet long by the width of the waterway – about fourteen feet. The sides were selected by team captains – Brian Lockwood and his twelve year old brother Neil – into two teams. Titch was the last boy picked, and ended up on Brian’s team. “What position should I play, Bri?” he asked the bigger boy.
“You play ‘Outfielder’” Brian told him. “That’s like fullback in soccer. Go and stand by the goal, and if the ball comes back to you, bash it up to the Attackers. OK?”
“That’s like being Goalie!” Titch complained. “I don’t want to play goalie!”“They don’t have goalies in ice hockey,” Brian explained. “That’s why ‘Outfielder’ is such an important position, OK?”
Mollified, Titch stood by the goalposts, watching the tangle of arms, legs, bats and various wooden contraptions as the two sides melded into a single brawling mass. He longed to get into the fray, but knew even at ten years old that a good team player holds his position, no matter what. In his frustration he struck at the ice with his cricket bat – a device really suited to a much larger boy. The bat skidded off the surface, cracking the ice, and the momentum of its continued swing carried the small boy off his feet. He jackknifed in the air and headed downwards, butt first, towards the ice.
The front-line scrum continued to hack and swing, to punch and wrestle, until someone, more by luck than by skill, connected a solid whack against the dirty white ‘puck’. The ball shot out of the mêlée, back towards the ‘Outfield’.
“Get it, Titch!” Brian Lockwood yelled. But Titch was not there.When he hit the ice it exploded beneath him, and Titch fell into the frigid water, his rate of fall barely slowed by contact with the thin sheet of ice. At this time of the year the water level in the canal was less than four feet, but it might just as well have been forty. The shock of contact with the bitterly cold water caused the boy to inhale rapidly, reflexively, filling his small lungs.
He opened his eyes to see an angel. He recognised her from the pictures and descriptions given to him at his Methodist Sunday School lessons. She was enclosed in a sheath of golden light, and a halo of the same light circled her head. Her hair, too, was golden and cascaded about her shoulders in tight curls. She floated in front of the young boy’s wide-eyed gaze, and smiled at him with her mouth and her eyes and her face and with her entire being. The love which she felt for him was tangible and warm. There was no place here for ice or snow, or frigid waters. There was no place here for coldness of any kind. She held out her hand, and Titch took it.
Together they floated towards a beautiful city of light. The many tall buildings seemed to be made of glass, glowing in all imaginable colours. It reminded the boy of the ‘Illuminations’ which he had seen the previous winter at Blackpool, on a day-trip by coach arranged by his Sunday school; but these colours were far more beautiful.
The fact of his situation registered, finally, and his small features creased into an expression of confusion and fear. “Am I dead?” he asked his angel. “Are you taking me to Heaven?” The angel made no reply, and the two continued their journey over the gleaming rooftops. They crossed the city and left it behind them. An unknown amount of time passed – minutes or hours, Titch was quite uncertain – before they came at last over more familiar territory, and the boy recognised the small coal-mining village on the outskirts of Sheffield where he had lived for the ten long years of his young life. Along the canal they drifted, to a spot where the snow had been cleared, where a group of young boys were clustered over something – someone?—lying, unmoving, on the snow covered bank of the waterway.
“That’s me, isn’t it?” Titch asked. “That’s my dead body, I know it. Why have you brought me back to my dead body? When are you going to take me to Heaven to be with Jesus?”
“It is best that you should not ask these questions.” The reply formed itself in the boy’s mind. His angel had not turned, not moved her lips; but she had spoken to him. “Who are you?” Titch asked. He sought frantically amongst the sketchy memories of his Sunday School teachings. “You can’t be God because you’re a girl! Who are you, then? Are you the Mother Mary? Are you the Angel Gabriel?”
“It is best that you should not ask these questions,” the spirit replied again. “What happened was not meant to happen, and I have come to correct the situation. It is best that you should not know of me, not yet, nor remember any part of what happened here today. I will make it so.”
“Yes,” said Titch, not understanding, “But you should at least tell me who you are. It’s only polite. What will happen now? Will you leave me here? Will you leave me in my dead body? What will happen to me?” The thought of being trapped in his dead body was not a pleasant one, and the boy fought hard to compose himself and not let his fear show through, as befitted a tough son of Yorkshire. Yet his angel felt the fear threaten to overpower the child, and turned to take him in her arms and comfort him. Titch felt the warmth of her love soak into him and through him, and a feeling of perfect bliss soothed his concerns and drove out the fear.
“My sweet child, I will never leave you. I will be with you always, throughout your long life and in the life to come. I will never let you come to harm.”
A sudden inspiration occurred to the young boy, derived not from his Sunday School teachings but from a more prosaic source. “Are you my Fairy Godmother?” he asked. The angel smiled, but said nothing. And then everything went black.
He opened his eyes to find himself face down in the snow, coughing out great quantities of foul tasting canal water. Twisting his head slightly he saw Brian Lockwood’s concerned face hanging over him, while brother Neil pounded rhythmically on his back. He had no knowledge of how he had come to this. His last memory was of swinging his cricket bat at the canal’s icy surface and losing his balance. He did not recall hitting the ice. His memory from the fall to the opening of his eyes was a black void.
In the way of young boys, especially those concerned with impressing their older, tougher friends, Titch did not at all appreciate being the centre of attention and the focus of alarm. It was unthinkable that his friends should be concerned for his welfare merely because he had slipped on the ice and, apparently, knocked himself unconscious for a short time. He had not yet noticed that he was dripping wet and freezing cold. Titch leaped to his feet and faced his fellows. When he strove to speak he noticed that his teeth chattered, and the full nature of his situation was finally brought home to him.
“Listen, Titch,” Brian told him earnestly, his face a study in concern, “You must get warm as soon as you can. The best way to do that is to run. Can you run?” What a stupid question; of course he could run. What Yorkshire boy could not run! He began to run. His muscles felt strange, and sharp pains lanced through his legs. Ignoring these small inconveniences Titch ran on, and the pains lessened as the muscles warmed. Brian and most of the other boys ran alongside to ensure that their smaller colleague came to no further harm. They covered the half mile to Titch’s home in a little over five minutes, a very creditable time for the snow covered terrain, particularly given the circumstances. The group hung back at the gate to the small garden in front of the semi-detached brick-built home where Titch lived. Alone he unlatched the door and ran on into the small living room where a welcome coal fire blazed. His mother looked up from the newspaper she was reading and took in the scene in an instant. The dripping, panting young boy was at a loss for words and so spat out the obvious.
“I fell in the canal, Mom. I fell through the ice into the canal.”His mother stared for long seconds, mixed emotions of anger, relief and love moving over her face. “Harry Murphy, if you’ve ruined those new leather shoes I’ll kill you!”
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER.Nineteen Ninety Eight: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Chapter 1
Early in January Harry Murphy decided to keep a Dream Diary. That is, a daily (or nightly) record of his dreams. His wife, Liz, thought it was silly idea, but then Liz was long used to putting up with Harry's silly ideas and this one seemed to be much more benign than many of his previous sillinesses. Less costly too. The expensive Clarinet he had bought a year ago was now gathering dust in a bedroom closet. Harry had seen people playing the Clarinet on TV and thought it looked easy
Harry had been interested in dreams since he was a young man and had read Freud. Unfortunately he was one of those people who rarely dream, so his interest had stayed more clinical than personal. He had always believed, however, that there was something very powerful about dreams; something which, if tapped, could be a very useful tool in everyday waking life. He knew that much of mankind's inventiveness and creativity comes up from the subconscious mind, by means of a mechanism which is neither well understood nor particularly reliable. He imagined that if he could tap directly into his subconscious by way of dreams -- few and far between though they may be -- it could be the shortcut to Fame and Riches for which he had been searching through much of his life.
The decision to keep a dream diary started while waiting for Liz at Halifax Airport one snowy January afternoon, when a small display of books outside Cole's bookstore caught his attention. Harry was attracted to this particular little book by its blue-on-blue cover, its title -- "My Dreambook" -- and the price; about what he had expected to pay for a magazine to pass an hour or so while he waited for Liz's flight. He thumbed open the book and read a few lines from the flyleaf. "Although you may not be aware of it, you do dream," the book told him. "You dream several complex, vivid dreams a night. Every night. And with a little help from this book, you will remember every detail of every dream."
"And that" said the book "Is just the start of where I will take you!"OK, thought Harry. Sold. He paid the sale price, explained yet again that he didn't really buy enough books to merit getting one of their discount cards, took his prize over to a red vinyl-covered chair and started to read. The next thing he knew Liz was standing over him asking "Harry Murphy, are you going to get up and drive me home or should I get a taxi?" On the way out of the Airport he stepped back into Coles and collected a small spiral-bound notebook and a supply of looseleaf paper.
Harry stayed up past midnight reading his fascinating little book, and learned much about the current state of knowledge regarding dreams. The physical side of the business made for pretty dull reading, with much about brainwaves, dream states and rapid eye movement. It struck Harry that this branch of science had not moved a lot over the last five decades and still seemed to rely heavily on students dozing off in research labs with electrodes glued to various parts of their bodies. About the only progress since the nineteen fifties seemed to be the use of computers. These greatly improved the speed with which scientists could determine which sleep state the subject was in -- for what that might be worth. He speed-read most of this and got very little out of it.
The psychological side of dreaming was more interesting, and seemed to have come a long way since Sigmund Freud had determined that all dreams are about sex, even if you're not dreaming about sex. A section on the interpretation of dreams told him how biblical prophets had once made a good living by telling kings and emperors what they had really been dreaming about when they dreamed they were having sex. He learned that dreaming of a cat could mean any of half a dozen different things, none of which seemed to have anything to do with cats. He flagged several pages for later study and moved on.
The spiritual aspects of dreaming were beyond Harry, especially at two o'clock in the morning. There was mention of hypnosis and the opening of one's spiritual channels; of states of meditation and of spirit guides; of spiritual growth and progress along The Golden Path Towards Enlightenment. It made his head ache. He closed the book and went to bed.
* * *Harry arrived at Burton's Press at 7:30 Monday morning and Louise met him in the foyer. Harry had worked at Burton's for close to twenty years, and had worked in virtually every area of the company. For the last eight years he had served as Production Manager for the firm. "It's a Code Two, I'm afraid, Mr. Murphy" Louise told him without even a "Good Morning".
The "Code" business had started as a little joke between Louise and Harry some months ago, but she seemed to have taken it more seriously than Harry had intended. Although he recognised her as a first class Administrative Assistant, he had to admit that Louise was also a first class worrier. At least once a week she would be waiting for him in the lobby with some new piece of gloom and doom, and he had quickly noticed that her dire warnings fell neatly into half a dozen categories. For example, "The Crabtree-Vickers is down again" was a Code One. This was not an uncommon occurrence, nor was it surprising that a forty year old printing press should break down on a fairly regular basis. Any serious production problem was a "Code One". "Code Three" was used for Personnel crises or Union problems. "Code Two" meant that his boss, Theo Burton, was having conniptions again and needed Harry to go up to his office, hold his hand and say "There, there, Theo, don't worry. Harry is here now and Harry will fix it."
Theodore Francis Burton was the grandson of James Eliott Burton, the man who started Burton's Press some eighty years previously with an old Linotype machine and an antique Letterpress. Theo was the last of the line; no more Burton's at Burton's after Theo. Although the family no longer owned the company Theo remained a significant shareholder in Burton's and served as Chief Executive Officer. This entitled him to an executive office on the eighth floor, an Executive Assistant, an executive salary, an annual executive bonus and, perhaps the most valuable perk of all, a seat on the governing board of AGI -- Amalgamated Graphic Industries Corporation. AGI owned Burton's, five other large printing institutions, eight smaller ones and twenty other companies all more or less connected with the printing and publishing business. Most of his employees considered Theo to be a nice guy, but totally useless. He was the spoiled son of James Francis, who was the spoiled son of James Eliott, but there was nothing of the old man's steel left in Theo. His main function was to attend the monthly AGI meeting in Toronto and bring back his notes to Halifax. These he read to Harry and the rest of the Burton's Management Team on the Monday mornings following the Toronto trips. The meetings were invariably short since nobody asked questions. Nobody asked questions because they all knew perfectly well that Theo had no answers, and it would only cause embarrassment all round the table to expect them from him.
Harry grabbed the coffee which Louise held ready and headed for the eighth floor. Theo met him coming out of the elevator. "Harry," he shouted loud enough to be heard from floor three on up, "Harry, they want me to take early retirement. Early retirement, Harry! How can I take early retirement? How am I going to manage, Harry? They say I won't even have a pension!"
Doesn't anybody bother with "Good Morning" anymore, Harry wondered?He got Theo settled in his black leather recliner, asked June to bring in some tea, and tried to calm him down. June Sawler was Theo's Executive Assistant, this title being one step up from 'Administrative Assistant'.
"Theo, for starters, you're sixty three years old, and you would have had to start thinking about retirement soon anyway, so let's not lay too much emphasis on this "early" business, shall we? Secondly none of us in the management group have company pensions any more. Those generous annual bonuses we've been getting are supposed to let us make our own financial arrangements for our golden years. And thirdly, you still own twenty percent of Burton's stock, which should pay you a yearly dividend about the size of my present salary and bonuses combined. Take a deep breath Theo, and just think about this."
"Seventeen," he said."What?"
"Seventeen percent. I own seventeen percent of Burton's, and they want that from me, too. They want to give me a two percent share in AGI in exchange for my Burton's shares, so I won't even have that."
Harry did some quick mental arithmetic. "Theo, they are being nice to you. They are offering you a good old "golden handshake" to make the parting easier. In terms of how much it will pay you, your Burton's shares are equivalent to about one, maybe one and a quarter percent of AGI stock. If they are still offering two percent this morning call them back and grab it."
"But what am I going to do, Harry?""Just what you've always done, Theo." That didn't come out the way Harry intended but luckily it seemed to go straight over Theo's head. "You can do anything you want, whenever you want. You don't have to wait for weekends to go to your cottage. You can spend the whole summer fly fishing if you want to. You can take the trip to Europe you've been talking about for the last five years. Go on a world cruise. Lie in bed late in the morning if you want to. Every morning, Theo."
About half of this was getting through, but it seemed to be enough.
"Theo, I think it could turn out to be the best thing that's happened to you in years."
"But what about Burton's, Harry? How are you all going to get along if I'm not here?"
Bite your tongue, Harry. Not even a flicker of a smile. He's one of the Good Guys, remember, and they don't exactly outnumber the other kind around here.
"Well, Theo, we'll have to face that problem sooner or later. And I'm sure that AGI will insist that your replacement is at least as capable a manager as you have always been." Careful Harry, the man isn't stupid.
Theo smiled. June came in with the tea.So now we come to the big one, Harry thought. The $64,000 question. Don't let it sound like you really care that much, or as though you've been waiting for this moment for the last five years. Sip your coffee, Harry, and don't drool.
"By the way, Theo, did George say whether they have anyone in mind to replace you?" George Thorpe was the President and Chairman of the Board at Amalgamated Graphics. George wasn't exactly a dictator, but the last person to stand up to him with any amount of vigour had not been heard from for six months. Office gossip said he was managing a Copy Centre somewhere near Yellowknife.
"What? Oh, no." Theo was elsewhere. "You know Harry, I bet I would get rid of this awful indigestion I get every time I eat anything. Get the old insides back into good working order, what? Out from under all the stress, you know, sort out the old tummy, don't you think?"
Stress? What stress? "I'm sure you're right, Theo. Did he, did George, did he happen to mention.......?""Oh, yes, sorry. No. Not that I recall. He says he wants me to go up to Toronto to discuss the changeover."
"Changeover? So he does have someone in mind for the job?"
"Someone in mind? Oh, I see. I don't know, Harry. Yes, come to think of it, I believe he may have. Probably some recent MBA from some prestigious American Ivy League. Likely the nephew of one of the boys on AGI's board of directors. Somebody who can speak to computers in their own language but has the interpersonal skills of Attila the Hun. Damn shame for Burton's. What the old firm really needs is somebody like you, Harry. Someone with a knack for getting along with people. If you weren't too old, that is. If I thought there was a chance I'd suggest you to Thorpe when I talk with him next. You know, I think I will, dammit."
Now how's that for a backhanded compliment, Harry wondered. I'm forty seven for God's sake, with twenty good years left in me. I'm a perfect age for the job.
Theo was standing with his back to Harry, staring out of the window, probably thinking about fly fishing. The Code Two was obviously over. Harry excused himself to Theo's back and left.
Back in his office Louise had re-scheduled his morning meetings, postponed those who couldn't make the new times, and replaced his tepid cup of coffee with a fresh one from the machine by her desk. The morning sped past and by the time he noticed how quiet the third floor had become it was half past lunchtime.
Despite the gossip Harry continued to believe that the staff cafeteria ('StaffCaff' as it was unaffectionately known) was not harmful to your health unless you actually used it. He therefore tried to keep his visits down to emergency use only, which averaged out to about three, maybe four times a month. Having an important customer arriving in his office within the next hour constituted such an emergency, so he grabbed cup, plate, plastic utensils and tray and made the best of what was left in the stainless steel bins. He saw Mick Shaw, Burton's Pressroom Chief, sitting alone and went over to his table.
"G'day Scotty" Harry said, setting his tray down on the small cafeteria table. Mick was as Irish as the Shamrock. He came to Canada in the early seventies, and took a job in a Montreal Pressroom. Mistaking his accent, the locals (with no malice intended) called him "Scotty". It stuck, and moved to Nova Scotia with him in the mid eighties, but he'd never grown to like it. He gave Harry a look.
"Sorry, Mick.""G'day, Murph" he said, relaxing the scowl. (Finally, half way through the day, the elementary courtesies observed!) Harry had always thought Burton's was lucky to have Mick Shaw as Pressroom Boss. Back not too many years ago you could get by in such a job with a good working knowledge of the printing process and the personal toughness necessary to enforce your orders; but in today's high tech world, with half the equipment using built-in micro-computers the first step in trouble shooting a press problem was often searching for bugs in a computer program. Mick Shaw possessed a rare combination of computer savvy, printing knowledge and ham-sized fists. In the pressroom, when Mick said "jump" it was wise to be well up into the air before asking him "how high?"; And the techies had told Harry, away from Mick's hearing, that "Scotty" knew as much as the best of them, and was immune to jargon. It was said that one smartass sales rep had tried to snow Mick with hi-tech bafflegab once. Only once.
He was puffing and chewing by turns on a long, fat cigar, occasionally flicking ash onto the "Strictly No Smoking" sign which he'd taken from a nearby table and bent into a rough approximation of an ashtray. He looked abstracted, his eyes semi-focussed across the large dining room. Harry followed his gaze in time to see June leaving by the big swing doors that led to the elevators.
"She's a cracking bit of stuff, that secretary of Theo's," he observed. "Do you suppose he's getting any of it?""No" Harry told him. "And she'd cut your Irish heart out if she heard you call her a secretary."
"Yeah, what is it? Personal Assistant, right? Well she can assist me personally any time of the day or night!"
"Executive Assistant, Michael. And why do you suppose she'd look twice at a thug like you when you're sitting next to a stud like me, tell me that now, will you?"
"HHmmphhaa" Mick spluttered, spitting cigar smoke and coffee. "Yeah, right, in your dreams, Boyo!!"Harry looked at Mick. The Pressroom Boss had the face and physique of a successful barroom brawler, and his lunchtime conversations rarely deviated from sports, Clint Eastwood movies (for which he shared a fondness with Harry) or the supposed sexual appetites of assorted Burton Beauties. Harry decided to try the question anyway.
"Do you dream, Mick?"Shaw looked at Harry as though he'd been asked how he'd enjoyed his summer holiday on Mars. He said "Do you mean, like do I think I should have a crack at Theo's job when he leaves next month? Like, do I have -- what is it they call them? Career Aspirations?"
Before Harry could register surprise that Theo's secret was already doing the rounds he remembered how it had been yelled out to him at the elevator that morning. Mick had probably known even before that. "No" he said. "I mean regular dreams. At night. When you're asleep. You know. Dreams."
"Odd sort of question, Murph.""Well." Harry decided to come clean. "It's just that I'm reading this book, and it says that everybody dreams, several dreams every night. But, me, I dream once every two or three months, so you see....."
Mick grinned. "I see. You think you're not getting your share, that it? Relax, Murph. I don't buy it. I don't remember the last time I dreamed about anything. It was probably that June Sawler, personally assisting me, with them long legs wrapped around........"
Harry choked on a piece of yellowish vegetable matter. "OK Mick, not while I'm eating this .... whatever it is. I take your point.""You know what, Murph, you should talk to my nephew, Virgil. He has this thing about dreams, too. What was it he was telling me about? Something about 'Elusive Dreaming' which is like some kind of magic trick. If you learn how to do this 'elusive dreaming', you can make wonderful things happen." His watch beeped, and Mick was gone without another word. Well, at least Harry had had a "G'day" from him.
As he watched Shaw's retreating back Harry realised that Mick was probably recalling something he'd heard in passing anything up to four or five years ago, and stored away for possible use somewhere, some time. Quite a man, that Scotty Shaw. Elusive Dreaming, Harry thought, sounded like something worth looking up.
Liz was playing bridge that evening, so after supper Harry sprawled out on the living room couch with Bach playing softly on the surround sound system, and opened his Dream Book. There was no index and no mention of Elusive Dreaming in the contents pages, so he picked up where he'd left off, and started on the instructions for the remembering of dreams.
It was worse than playing a Clarinet, Harry thought. If he'd expected this to be easy, he'd picked up the wrong little dream book, and his dream diary purchase had been a tad premature. Step One .... (Step one? Just how many steps are involved here, he wondered. He flicked briefly ahead and saw that there were four) Step One involved convincing yourself that you would remember your dreams.
To do this, he read, you need to create a little mantra; a li