Dreams are like the annoying friend who tells you what you really need to know even though it destroys your pet fantasies about yourself. You can deny it at first, but overtime the wisdom is impossible to ignore. In other words, dreams help you keep tabs on what’s going on under the surface in your emotional life, and remind you where in life you've seen this pattern before. And occasionally, they connect you to sources of wisdom deeper than your own personal psychology and even the socio/cultural stuff to ancestral truths and transpersonal glimpses of reality.

 - Ryan Hurd, Professor, Researcher, Author

Ryan Hurd is like a character straight out of folklore. Call him a modern day Puck or perhaps the Sandman’s shadowy brother. And instead of dreams, he sprinkles nightmares—not out of any morbid pleasure but rather due to the potential that facing your worst fears is where self-knowledge begins. And even more profoundly, where we might find answers to life’s more existential questions.

And although Ryan tends to gravitate towards the darker side of dreaming consciousness, he is the one of gentlest souls you will ever meet.

This grasping at truth is evident of a recent, yet familiar nightmare he had about a year ago of a tornado outside the house. He became lucid and decided to face this force head on. Ryan muses:  I went outside and yelled “I’m ready!”  The tornado zeroed in on me and quickly advanced, suddenly transforming into a young woman with soot-colored clothes. I invited her in the house and she told me, “A storm is coming.” I asked her for more details and she only said, “Have courage.”  The dream shook me, and actually less than 2 weeks later, several abrupt and unforeseen changes in our life occurred, instigating a decision to move back to the east coast within the year. 

Through all the turbulent times and a recent dramatic move back East, Ryan appreciates the lucid dreaming process and has drawn strength and courage from the words of the tornado goddess. And from nature herself. His degrees in consciousness and dream studies as well as archaeology has given him a new perspective and appreciation for the natural world and sacred sites. This includes investigating a prehistoric rock art site in Nicaragua and the mystery of rock piles in the Eastern United States. 

This incredible gift for lucidity, writing prowess and keen insight has earned Ryan a reputation in the dreaming field.  When Ryan is not walking between the worlds and facing shadow material, he is writing, writing, writing and teaching when he can and more importantly, grabbing some shut-eye: Not out of well earned rest but because this is where the true work and passion lies. He explains, “I take a lot of naps, in between which I write books and articles about dreams and consciousness. I’ve been editing the Dream Studies Portal for over three years now, bringing dreaming to a ever widening audience. I do what I do because I’m passionate about bringing dreaming and other forms of imagination back into our culture.”

Aside from his popular site, his recent book has been getting strong raves, Sleep Paralysis: a guide to hypnagogic visions and visitors of the night, published by Hyena Press.  “This is the first self-help guide to working with those weird and uncanny sleep paralysis experiences of being assaulted by spirits and ghosts while laying in bed paralyzed."

As the new year turns, he will also be focusing on book readings and presentations on sleep paralysis visions, new book and ebook projects and in March, his first article in a peer-reviewed journal will be published in the Anthropology of Consciousness. He also has a book chapter about using lucid dreaming as a intuitive archaeological method in Rebearths: Conversations with a world ensouled, a volume of nature writings edited by Craig Chalquist, PhD.

Ryan has the Bay Area to thank for all these blessings and opportunities for this is where he studied dreams professionally, connected with the larger dreaming community and met the other love of his life. “I came to the Bay area for graduate school, and as it turns out, to meet my beautiful wife. There’s no place like SF for dreamers.  It’s like Mecca. It was an amazing education to work and play with so many internationally-renown dream workers. Even though I recently moved to Philadelphia with my wife to be closer to family, we still come through the area at least once a year.”

Though Ryan Hurd may walk in the shadow world, he is a light to us all in the dreaming community.

Ryan Hurd is a consciousness researcher who maintains the Dream Studies Portal and is the author of Sleep paralysis: a guide to hypnagogic visions and visitors of the night. He has a MA in Consciousness Studies and a Certificate in Dream Studies from John F. Kennedy University. His dreamwork has been cited in PsychologyToday.com and the Huffington Post, and he also writes for The Dream Tribe, a group blog by professional dreamworkers with articles on many different aspects of dreams and imagination. Ryan also gives lucid dreaming workshops. For more information you can reach Ryan at dreamstudies.org.

For more info:  If you would like to be a part of this series and receive guidelines or have any question or comments please email me at CypherandClio@aol.com