I agree that dreams seem to be involved in laying down memories but I realise that dreaming gives us access to a part of our brain we do not normally have access to.

We dream primarily the same way that we have consciousness of the world for the same reason. Basically, that our brains evolve to simulate reality and to control what's happening around us.

One thing I love is to stop doing. When I just STOP and start looking, I enter a state that is much more dreamy, and find I look at things quite differently. It seems like a change in scale - both very close up, and simultaneously very distant.

I think both science and art are impelled by curiosity: What's really happening? How do things really function? How can I really engage with the world around me? These are questions that artists and scientists both ask.

I think that when you go on a shamanic journey, you're allowing yourself to have much more access to your unconscious or your sense of connection within the universe, whatever you want to call that. You've accessed places in your brain that you don't normally. You're still there - it's your brain. But you have access in a way that you normally don't. For me, doing that felt like being in a new environment.

Shamanism is the oldest form of communicating and healing. It probably resides in all of us.

My interest at the moment is to use my dreaming self (which I also access in shamanic journeying) to engage with the Earth. In my waking rational life I often forget about the Earth, or I get worried or confused by contradictory information. With my dreaming brain I can have access to powerful images of what is going on in the Earth, from day to day.