I'm reading William Domhoff's The Mystique Of Dreams. He says Senoi work is a fraud. I've tried this practice--it pushes you to confront dream figures, threats and fears, never backing down, and going for any desire you recognize, no matter how taboo. Domhoff found the practice was made up around 1930 by a white guy who claimed it was the ancient shamanic tradition of the Senoi people in Malaysia. It wasn't, and they're mad about it. Don't want credit for promoting theft, incest, rape and murder--in dreams or out.

I ask my dreams to comment on Domhoff's exposé. Senoi work's origin was a hoax, but parentage isn't practice--does that make the technique invalid?

My dreams answer.

Malaysian train. I'm a scholar of dreams lured up on the roof in engine-smoke, by a wonder to put us all on the map: a manta-squid from the dreamest deeps. Only seen lesser specimens, dead. But this giant new exemplar, it seems, was shoddily caught, for it just woke and burst from its prison-jar, to wrap lustful tentacles round me, and leaps into lagoon. I hold my breath, pry with the moments I have left, fight rape, while colleagues shriek and curse the control-board--try to zap beast-brain, turn passions off & on... but monsters have a life of their own.

• Train: training, tradition? The career track? The... GRAVY train?
• I'm female, fighting tentacles: today I saw a 1950s sci-fi magazine cover of a tentacled alien grabbing a woman, by queer artist Margaret Brundage, I think. Felt like she longed to be both the groper and the groped.
• Creature looks dead but isn't: the "Senoi tradition" was a hoax, and the technique's self-centered, so it's unhealthy for most Americans. But...
  1. Mere facts never stop New Age gurus from making a buck by faking tribal lore. "Senoi" workshops will just ignore Domhoff's exposé. Monsters have a life of their own.
  2. Origins aside, for shy folks like me the technique works. We need to fight for ourselves no matter what. Oh, up on the Career Track academics may have a control-board--more nuanced dream-theories--but when you're dragged under, they're no help! Monsters have a life of their own.

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