Strengthening your inner ear (so you can read better)

(This is from the ATS forums. I just posted it there and wanted to share some of what goes on with the world.)

I just had a dream, and I was forced to wake up by the alarm clock (need to do a Halloween podcast with the Vampire Metrou--their first one ever--let's hope it works out well). I was in an intense discussion and upon awakening I was sad that many of my (salient?) points had gone unspoken. I do like to think in a dream I have good points to make.

So immediately this reminded me of our chat here. Some things are difficult to do in a dream, read fine print, especially if you are dreaming about tomorrow's newspaper, or arguing definitively. Now my use of the word argument here is not meant in a "shouting match" kind of way. It is meant in the more Greecian sense ("I hopes") of dialog and having a point/counter-point friendly discussion about something. This discussion was very friendly by the way. Oh well, it is fading even now.

So one of the ways you can strengthen your inner senses (for lack of a better term at the moment to relate clearly what I am referring to) is to work on your dream skills. Your ability to read in a dream and recognize and remember words, listen to a song and sing along, or react to other people's spoken words--without waking up or having your conscious mind come stomping in and destroying the balance between awareness and "otherness" will help improve your reading skills to an amazing degree. This set of skills is also reciprocal. Your dreams will take on new dimensions of reality and fun that you had not realized you were missing.

This "stomping about" effect is exactly how the faeries see most humans; as uncultured troglodytes who lack finesse and by nature break everything they touch and have to shout to hear themselves think. It's not an unfriendly view--just one of weariness. Look around you and ask if you ever encounter humans whose sole awareness seems to extend to their line of sight. You can generally tell these people by the way they drive. But I digress (oopsie!)

The process is similar to writing, or as noted earlier, reading a really engrossing novel. My grandfather had the gift of being able to watch TV, listen to the radio, and read a newspaper all at the same time (and he married a MUCH younger woman and had 8 kids with her--yeah, he was a Scorpio, how did you guess? But the oil money he made certainly didn't hurt, I am guessing). The man's powers of concentration an observation were legendary. I wish I could have learned more from him. I doubt I can reach such heights, but a lifetime of practice can yield great results, so I had better start... um... at some point.