Dumpert - Liminal dreaming: exploring consciousness at the edges of sleep

Jennifer Dumpert is a dream scholar, a dream hacker, a dream weaver. She is a cartographer of threshold statesthe spaces between dreaming and waking, or as she calls it: liminal dreaming. And thats what this book is all about. If youve ever been curious to learn more about the cosmos behind your eyelids and the realms you visit every night, then let Jennifers Liminal Dreaming be your guide.

Jason Silva, host of National Geographics Brain Games

Falling asleep is not a loss of consciousness but an offering from the psyche to anyone with the wisdom to accept it. Jennifer Dumpert is pointing the way to the door thats already openone more accessible, sustainable, and transformational than any drug or virtual reality. Anyone seeking access to deeper, weirder, or just plain better states of awareness need look no further than this how-to and why-to guide to liminal dreaming.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human

Liminal Dreaming is a fascinating exploration of a little understood territory of our interior landscapethat peculiar zone in between sleeping and waking that each of us passes through everyday of our lives. With patience, clarity, and insight, Jennifer Dumpert, a seasoned dreamer, leads us through this land of hypnos, making available to the reader a third state of consciousness: neither day nor night but somewhere on the edge of botha place of creativity, intuition, and vision. Many books put their readers to sleep. This one can take you to the edge of it and leave you there to dream.

Gary Lachman, author of A Secret History of Consciousness

Jennifer Dumperts Liminal Dreaming is an extraordinary guidebook for exploring the borderlands of human consciousness. It maps the exotic shoreline between the conscious domain of waking and the dark sweet waters of the dream world. Dumpert provides us with an array of personal exercisesa pragmatic vehicle for directly experiencing this wild psychedelic ride through imagination, mystery, creativity, and healing. Perhaps most importantly, by reminding us the natural continuity between waking and dreams, this work reminds us of our own innate wholeness.

Rubin Naiman, PhD, clinical assistant professor of medicine, University of Arizonas Center for Integrative Medicine

Copyright 2019 by Jennifer Dumpert. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Cover art gettyimages.com/Eloi_Omella
Cover design by Howie Severson
Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in Canada

Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER : The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dumpert, Jennifer, 1965- author.
Title: Liminal dreaming : exploring consciousness at the edges of sleep /
Jennifer Dumpert.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2019] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048509 | ISBN 9781623173043 (trade paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Dreams. | Consciousness. | Self-actualization (Psychology)
Classification: LCC Bc10f078 .D78 2019 | DDC 135/.3dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048509

North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We partner with FSC-certified printers using soy-based inks and print on recycled paper whenever possible.

For my parents, Jack and Shelley

Who taught me to expect love

Its hard to sit down and write acknowledgments and not sound like someone receiving a lifetime achievement honor at the Academy Awards. I realize I cant devote ten pages to thanking everyone who deserves it. I foolishly left this for last, and as I sit here ready to hit Send to submit the manuscript to my publisher, Im filled with so much gratitude I cant imagine how I could possibly express it without composing a short essay.

My publisher, North Atlantic Books, and my editor, Pam Berkman, of course merit mention. Ebonie Ledbetter and the editorial crew copy edited, and Im so much more grateful for that than I realized I would be. My mother-in-law, Sandi Zarcades, also copy edited. Michelle Faust drew wonderful illustrations and stayed totally on top of everything we needed to know about that process, for which Im deeply thankful. Several of my colleagues in the dream work community or related fields really stepped forward. Although I take full responsibility for anything I got wrong, Dr. Rubin Naiman did his best to correct my science, as well as encouraging me at every step. Ryan Hurd shared his deep knowledge many times, as hes been doing for a dozen years now. I got help from Jeff Warren, with whom Ive chewed these ideas for years; Kelly Bulkeley, who started encouraging me decades ago; and Deirdre Barrett. Gary Lachman generously shared ideas and time. David Presti, David Eggert, and Michael Silver offered me some early, critical science advice. Anne Tara Szostek kept my online ship running. Mark Pesce and Moudou Baqui gave me important ideas.

My family gives me so much. I have over-brimming gratitude for my parents, Jack and Shelley Dumpert, my sister Hazel-Dawn Dumpert, my brother-in-law George Edmondson, my brother Bill Tutton, and my other brother-in-law Alvaro Vega. Im blessed to also have wonderful, supportive in-laws, the Zarcades family: Sandimom, Peter, Sandy, Athina, and Niki, who accepted me with open arms and lovingly absorbed me into the family, as did my other set of in-laws, the Davis family: Russ, Geri, and Harry Amo.

My friends keep me afloat, and I have a lot of great ones: Paula Wansbrough, the other half of me; our Solstmas crew, Fire and Earth Erowid, Nat Ward, Michelle Faust, and Erik Davis; and Polly Superstar, on whom I rely in so many ways.

A lot of other people have supported me in many ways throughout the process of creating this book. Lissa Ivy Tiegel, Astrid Javier, Spiros Antonopolus, Erica Morton Magill, Scott Bodarky, Molly McGarry, Heather Lukes, Katherine Rochlin, Debbie Sciales, Oliver Lowe, Vibrata Chromdoris, Naropa Sabine, Edward Fenster, Gregory Wells, Sylvia Thyssen, JP Castiaux, Anna Rockwell, Rob Steiner, Gregory Wells, Annie Harrison, Sara Slavin, David Heller, Betsy Ekstein, Paul Kelly, Sam and Jude Kelly, John Bartenhagen, Matthew Teel, David Arnson, Jody Edmondson, and Gina Giammanco.