GLiDE Accesses Dream Power as Antidote for Anger

The "Dreaming Peace" GLiDE is open to all people, even those who claim they do not remember their dreams.

(WINDYVILLE, Mo.) - Recently, US News and World Report¹s Kent Garber showed astute insight when he blogged, "This healthcare town hall was only nominally about healthcare. It was really about something else. It was about anger and fear."

Researchers at the College of Metaphysics in the United States are breathing life into what may prove to be an antidote for those unruly human emotions arising from current economic woes and pandemics threats. On September 5, they will measure the impact peaceful thinking has on dreams.

This GLOBAL LUCID DREAMING EXPERIMENT (GLiDE) will explore possible connections between what we think about during the day and the kind of dream(s) we have that night, said Project Director Barbara Condron. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, (For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. This experiment asks participants to turn that equation around by claiming those seconds for peace and noting their impact.

The GLiDE is an outgrowth of forty years of research into Mind and its potential at the School of Metaphysics, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational institute with centers in the U.S. and an online campus.

"Dreaming Peace" is the fourth experiment they have conducted in two years. In April this year, amidst reports of people losing sleep and having nightmares, GLiDE researchers focused on incubating dream solutions to the economic changes. "Encouraging people to turn to their dreams for guidance is a natural and useful step toward accessing more of the mind's power.

Dream referencing has been a part of every culture that has endured on the planet. Dreamers moved from nightmares to healthy perspectives about their own value in the marketplace. The dreams encouraged the creative right-brain thinking the current situation requires."

Last year, when the GLiDE team researched the moon's effect on dreams, they found that people remember more dreams in greater details during the full moon. "Many demonstrated the ability to maintain lucidity in the dream, often dictating the dream environment and making conscious decisions during the dream state," reports The Moon's Effect on Dreams, a book edited by Dr. Christine Madar.

A global study comparing 24 worldwide dreamers with 24 United States counterparts was recently presented at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Chicago. "This study is based on data collected during the Moon experiments. It paints a picture of the world as a whole and the microcosm reflected in the melting pot that is the United States," Condron explained. "The similarities surface, and what makes Americans different becomes apparent through the dreams."

She and COM researcher Tad Messenger expect to publish their findings by the end of the year.

GLiDE began in 2007, as a result of Internet growth. "The connections enable us to communicate with dreamers worldwide," Condron said. "This gives a global perspective of who dreams and what they dream about, affording us a unique window into the consciousness of humanity at a time in history when that consciousness is changing at lightning speed."

Students and faculty at the College of Metaphysics interpret dreams each week at dreamschool.org, the website sponsored by the school. The "Top Ten Dreams" of the week are most likely to come from dreamers in the U.S. but have increasingly come from people in Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, the Philippines, and twenty other nations.

"We hope for global involvement when we dream peace," Condron said. "The universal themes come forward in our dreams: birth and death, friendship and betrayal, conflict and resolution. New themes emerge as media plays a growing role in our lives and those images make their way into our dreams.

The mind's power is now beginning to be tapped by increasing numbers of people."

"A recurring theme in eternal wisdom, whether expressed by spiritual teachers like Jesus and Gautama, or scientists like Albert Einstein or Rupert Sheldrake, or Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Martin Luther King to Aung San Suu Kyi, is the ills we are capable of creating, we are also capable of curing."

In his time, Emerson's Transcendentalist movement directly influenced the growing New Thought which supported self-reliance, independence, and wholistic thinking. COM researchers rely upon these same principles in their research. "At a time when consciousness is evolving largely because of technology, mindfulness, compassion, and peace are becoming more valuable," Condron added.

The "Dreaming Peace" GLiDE is open to all people, even those who claim they do not remember their dreams. To participate, register for the online at dreamschool.org before September 1.