I started recording my dreams in 1982 but it took over a year for me to realize that I was having psychic ones. A couple of them were useful; a few were intriguing. But others were confusing and some were downright disturbing. I discovered that, in the latter case, I had lots of company. In this culture, the most often reported psychic dream is a negative one. It's a dream of danger, disaster or death.

As the years progressed, I became increasing active concerning my dreams. I was engaged in what Patricia Garfield calls "creative dreaming" That is, I was doing deliberate dreaming, dreaming with intention. And I soon learned that many dreamworkers have problems with the idea of "controlling your dreams." They believe it has dangerous results for your psyche. At the very least, they think, you lose the benefit of pristine messages from your Inner Self. At the most, well, nobody has ever actually said that you might go crazy...but a few pundits do threaten that intentional psychic dreaming means you've left the straight and narrow path to Spiritual Good.

Under other circumstances, I might have come to the conclusion that, by bringing intention to the realm of psychic dreams, I had opened up Pandora's Box. Surely terrible consequences waited to leap out and grab me like some phantom of the night.

Yet, here I sit, safe, sane and spirited, writing a course about the subject. So, is there anything to the idea that psychic-creative dreaming is bad for you?

Let's step back a bit and look at the big picture. Human beings are not perfect. That means that we are capable of making mistakes, being unprepared and generally screwing up--in every field of human endeavor. We are especially prone in those fields characterized by extreme lack of knowledge and experience. Add emotional immaturity and lack of practice and unwillingness to do our homework, and yes, that can be a recipe for trouble. Fold in mental instability, and the angel cake is guaranteed to fall.

For far too long, psychic dreaming has been a troublesome prospect. For far too long, we have assumed there was nothing we could do about it. Being a helpless, hopeless victim of nightmarish dreams was our fate. So, yes, it's quite possible to collect horror stories about psychic dreaming. And profitable, too: consider how many TV shows are looking for examples. If you want to convince yourself that psychic dreaming can be a problem, it doesn't take much to do it. If you want to scare yourself silly in the process, be my guest.

But I've been through that phase, and, as exciting and dramatic as it can be, in the end, it's just not very much fun. After a while, even trauma gets boring. How exciting, how revealing it was to find out that there is such a thing as an upbeat creative psychic dream.

Nowadays, there's a growing contingent of folks who are beginning to discover that deliberately programming a dream can bring them *more* information from the Inner Self, not less. They are also placing psychic dreams in a safer context; putting psychic and creative together to good effect. The dream net may have been a dream catcher of monsters from the sea of unconscious in the past. But that is changing. The explorers of the leading edge are learning to distinguish between sea serpents and giant squids; between mythic creatures and real dolphins and whales. Life inside the dream is evolving into a better experience because these folks are acting to make it so--on their own. And together.

The strongest reason to bring intention to psychic dreaming is to help co-create user-friendly dreamspace. The creation of the playground of the mind is a crucial step that been lacking in our culture. We need a place to develop and practice psychic skills where we are not intimidated and manipulated by tidal forces we don't understand. In calm waters, we give ourselves the opportunity to befriend those talents and abilities so that they work with us, not against us. Once we establish a safe, sane bay in which to strengthen our psyches, we can launch into further adventures without feeling overwhelmed by the mysteries of a deep sea voyage.

Now, if you stand at the boarding ramp of a new journey, what might your first action be? I can tell you mine. At heart, I'm a scaredy cat. I rarely launch into any new endeavor without considering all the angles and weighing all the odds. On the other hand, I've got Alice's curiosity and a bit of her wonderland lust. I'm willing to heed the call to adventure, as long as it's an acceptable risk. So I looked high and low for all those elements that would make the journey an acceptable risk.

Whether you stand at the dock, cheering on the folks who are intentionally creating user-friendly dreamspace, or whether you join them and become a participant in the process, your dreams will appreciate the fresh new wind that's blowing in from the sea of unconscious. When some night you find that you've activated the dream net, know that there's playground of the mind where you can go to practice psychic skills in a supportive environment. We really do have a choice about the direction we travel, the dreams we build, the nightlife we live. And the sort of company we keep.

(Excerpted from *Psychic-Creative Dreaming,* the Internet course by Linda Lane Magallon. To obtain further information on this course go to http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/fbnc/fbnc01.htm (Fly-By-Night Club)