Contact with the deceased, especially in dreams, is natural and easy if we are open to it. It’s a very common experience. Our dead may still be around, because they have not yet moved on and that can be problematic if they don’t understand that they are dead (in the sense of not having physical bodies any more). Or they may come calling, for all the reasons we might call on each other in regular life, and then some. And in dreams we go traveling, and may find ourselves in realms where the dead are at home. These experiences have been the source of the enduring and near-universal human belief that consciousness survives physical death, and of countless geographies of the afterlife.

If you dream of the deceased and want a longer or clearer communication, learn to go back inside the dream and do that consciously, through the technique of dream reentry that I teach as a core practice of Active Dreaming. If you don’t have a dream, make a simple ritual. Light a candle, put out objects that remind you of the deceased and perhaps a little food and drink they would enjoy. Then initiate conversation on the assumption that they may be around, and record whatever comes into your mind that may be a response. Or write a letter to the deceased, as the Egyptians were fond of doing.

photo (c) Robert Moss