BUY THE BOOK ABOUT THE BOOK CHAPTER EXCERPTS REVIEWS TOUR SCHEDULE MEDIA APPEARANCES PRESS KIT JOIN DREAM LIST AUTHOR BIO AUTHOR INTERVIEW READERS' COMMENTS DREAM FORUM CONTACT Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Epilogue

Chapter 3 (Excerpt) THE DREAM OF THE BODY Inner Journeys of Health and Illness On a journey, ill, and over fields all withered, dreams go wandering still ---Basho I once appeared on a television show whose producer had decided to dramatize the dreams that had led to my diagnosis of cancer. He had diligently tracked down my doctor, who told of his skepticism when, ten years before, I had appeared in his office, affrighted with nightmares. "He didn't look sick," Dr. Jekowski told the camera. "He had no physical symptoms. I didn't see any point looking for a needle in a haystack because of a few bad dreams.” The doctor confessed his lingering bafflement: "How could someone know about a small, localized tumor that was not secreting any substances that would make him feel different?" What had made me feel different, and what had kept me returning to his office until the tumor was finally diagnosed, was the unprecedented clarity and emotional pitch of my dreams. They had ratcheted up my feelings of terror and despair to the extent that I was forced to respond, for I had never felt anything of such intensity in waking life. The same TV show included a segment in which a medical "sleep specialist" was interviewed about his technique for "curing" nightmares. "First we change the original dream," the therapist explained, "and then we rehearse a new one." One of his patients recalled a long-tormenting, repetitive dream: "I'm in a log cabin on a cot with a blanket over me, and something comes up in the covers. It's coming up to kill me. I start screaming and yelling and kicking and hitting, and then I wake up." The doctor urged his patient to "rescript" the dream's ending to a "more positive version" that would be "more comfortable" for her. Now, in her new version, the "thing under the blanket" obligingly reveals itself to be "just my dog Missy, coming up to cuddle with me." The patient said this image made her feel "warm, so when I get scared in a dream it's OK, because I saw it was only my dog, and I love my dog." Added her doctor, with a note of satisfaction: "She'll repeat this whenever she has a disturbing dream." Concluded the sonorous narrator: "If we have the courage to face up to our nightmares, we can control and eliminate them." Who would begrudge this tormented woman a peaceful night's sleep? But I almost felt like shouting at the screen: What was really was under those covers (literally, “covered up”)? It could have been a long-repressed anxiety; a chimerical warning about something urgently needing her attention; or divine Apollo himself, come to be her lover. We will never know---now it is a dog, not a god. I do know, had I followed this sanitized "control and elimination" strategy to deal with my own disturbing images, I might not be alive today. Chapter 4: Dreams of Personal Calling