Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio, the place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector. Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is the place that we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are. On today's episode, we're going to take another trip into Dreamland, a place I like to visit all the time. As I've said before, I consider myself a practical person and therefore most often my dreams tend to be on the pragmatic side. I'd sort of like to use them to get insights on problems of dealing with my daytime life. And while feeling creative, I use my dreams to help spark ideas or come up with specific words or sentences to get me out of any writer's block I might be encountering. But dreams can also take us to worlds beyond our imagination and put us in touch with higher beings that open ourselves up to concepts and beliefs that could only be reached in our dreaming minds.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:18) - One person who has used her dreams in this way is my special guest today. Teza Lord is an acclaimed artist and author who credits her dreams as having put her in touch with the sacred in the everyday and using them as an inspiration for healing. Among her books are the nonfiction In the Eye, Easing Through Life, Storms, and Hybrid Vigor A True Reveal of Love. Her latest book, The Bridge Tender, is a fictionalized account of a woman's salvation and rebirth through her discovery of the divine. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Teza.
Teza Lord (00:01:54) - Thank you, Debbie, and welcome to everybody who's listening or watching.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:59) - Oh. Thank you. Teza. Teza. You've had dreams that have had a monumental effect on you. But when did you first realize the power of dreams?
Teza Lord (00:02:08) - Well, since a child, I've just been always listening and watching and very aware of coming in to this life with not necessarily dreams, but deja vu. And so it was hard for me as a child to realize, was this a dream or have I been here before? So I was always questioning my experiences.
Teza Lord (00:02:33) - And as I grew older, I started having what is known as the prophetic dreams, dreams that were showing me where my life was headed. To be brave, not to be timid about the way I feel connected to that world of unspeakable, unlimited ness, which is what dreams show us. And I use it for my work as a visual artist and also now a storyteller. For the last ten years, I've been publishing books because before then I didn't have the courage to be that public with my awareness in words. It's easier to do that with visual things because you can kind of fudge it is saying, oh, this is art. We artists are allowed to have vivid imaginations, but really everything does come from opening up to that dream state even though we're awake. So I have trained myself throughout my adult life, especially to be a conduit. And so I trust my dreams. I listen to them, and sometimes I just watch them as they're sorting through the rhetoric, through, I call it, of life.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:03:45) - You know, it's funny that you said that you were sort of to be intimidated about writing but had no trouble doing art, and I kind of feel the opposite. I can write, but the idea of putting any kind of art on paper for me is very intimidating.
Teza Lord (00:04:02) - So, you know, I've always been an artist and a writer, and I've always had this relationship of, do I use visuals, or do I trust words? And for me, words are tricky. Words have spins to them. And like the word God, a lot of people are very uptight about that word. God and other people. It's very sacred. And being in the spiritual development world and crusades throughout my whole life, that's been a very interesting word. But yet when I paint this cosmic connection that I feel with that word, I have no trouble.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:43) - It's harder for you to write about it than to paint it.
Teza Lord (00:04:46) - Oh, yes. Yes, because people are very picky about the way that they use words and the spins, especially in English.
Teza Lord (00:04:55) - There's a bunch of words that are very similar, like, you know, I can't think of anything right now off the top of my head, but you have to be much more cautious, I think, using words to depict the unseen realm.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:09) - I want to get back to those prophetic dreams that you had when you were younger. Did you have anybody to share them with at the time, or how did you feel when you had these dreams, and what did you do with them?
Teza Lord (00:05:21) - Well, I've always been a journalist. Thank goodness for that. And I've always had very special friends that I can share everything in these days. My husband, we've been married for 32 years. He also is very in tune with his dream state. That's the way he was raised. He was a child of Edgar Cayce students and teachers. So his parents actually wrote down their dreams every single night. And so my husband was trained about that. But before my husband came into my life, I would either paint or write my dreams.
Teza Lord (00:05:57) - Because I do know that if you don't record them, they can become forgotten or muddled. And sometimes it takes a while to get the imagery connected. Like, for instance, if you wake up in the morning and you have fragments of dreams or like snapshot, as we often have, and what is going to connect all these things together? And sometimes it's later in the day you just see something that triggers, oh, that's what that dream was telling me. And everything comes together. So it's always the relationship that goes deeper in the conscious mind. It's not just in the dream state, of course, as you know.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:06:36) - Oh, absolutely. So when you do paint the images from your dreams, are you painting the literal images, or do you work out the symbology and then paint?
Teza Lord (00:06:48) - It's not paint like in my books, for instance, I do black and white illustrations. So let's talk about the most recent one, The Bridge Tender. I always create images from my visual connection, not using photographs or not using a model because I've done my homework.
Teza Lord (00:07:08) - I've studied so much about all those things. I can piece it together like a play. And so I have an image of an automobile accident where the victim of the automobile accident died, but her energy was transferred into the protagonist's Thea Bowman. Now, how to do that? In a little tiny image. That's challenging, because we've got a bunch of things going on. We have the physical world which has come to a crashing halt. We have the unseen world, which is energetically all about us all the time. And then we have that transference from one to the other at the moment of impact. So I love puzzles, I love challenges, and so that to me is the ultimate challenge of putting that kind of a relationship of the seen and the unseen into an image.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:10) - And what is your thinking when you do that? Do you start with the actual thoughts or your feelings about it? How do they meld together?
Teza Lord (00:08:23) - Good question. Well, let's see when I first realized the connection between images and dreams or a connection to the unseen.
Teza Lord (00:08:33) - Really? Because it's not just dreams, it's a consciousness that some of us wish to develop in our waking life. It's like a tool in our toolbox so that we can function better in this world. That can sometimes be so harsh and confusing. So when I first realized it, I started drawing something and somebody leaned over and looked at what I was doing, a very close friend, and said, oh, that's Apollo and Daphne. It was a woman being chased by a very virile man, and she became a tree. And I said, oh, who's Apollo and Daphne? And so I looked them up and by gum, you know, it was Apollo and Daphne that I was drawing. But yet I believe that all these myths and connections to the true reality that we are given as human beings is in our DNA, because we all have it, if we can learn to tap it. So the dreams give us little hints, and then those of us who have trained ourselves like artists or dream workers, we work with that energy.
Teza Lord (00:09:42) - We don't get scared by it, and we don't say, oh, it's the only thing. It's the interconnectedness of what we're dealing with in this reality, with the opportunity to tap into the amazingly formidable and and comforting power of the unseen world.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:03) - And when you tap into the unseen world, do you find yourself discovering new concepts or new beliefs that you never could have imagined otherwise?
Teza Lord (00:10:15) - Surely every single thing that has been revealed, I say, oh, it's always been in me, I just forgot we all forget that we're all connected until somebody or something, usually something really intense, like losing a loved one, the death of a very close friend or parent that shocks us so that we get shaken out of this so-called harsh earth reality. And we have that door open, the door of perception, and we realize that this is what's happening. We're all interconnected, even with the plants and the animals and the minerals and the and the atmosphere and water and everything. So I feel very comfortable with that state now, because it has been revealed to me since early childhood.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:11:07) - And and I believe you also say that we are animals and--
Teza Lord (00:11:12) - Oh yes, my book Hybrid Vigor, which is a very important book about what animals and humans have in common and what we can learn from the animals, the wild animals, the domestic animals, the insects, even the snakes and whatever the turtles, the whales. And could. Many of us forget that we are animals and that we are brothers and sisters with the animals. And our character traits are very similar to the animal world. We can learn a lot, like when we get sick. How many of us just go to bed and rest like the animals do? Very few. Everybody is so success and driven in our society. They they think we already have to push through this. No, we don't have to. We can be an animal and curl up and sleep and let that animal instinctual nature heal what has gone awry.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:12:10) - I know so many people do forget it, like you say, and especially because society is out there, you're going to go, go, go. And the idea of stepping back for a lot of people is horrifying thought.
Teza Lord (00:12:26) - Yes, it is, and that's our role. I think those of us who work with these energies to be louder, with the purpose of working with these energies, the unseen energies, whether they come through dreams, meditation, empowering techniques and just opening up to those realms that other people shut off as unnecessary or even not existing. I feel sorry for people like that.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:12:55) - And so you are here to uplift them. And with that, we are going to take a short break. We are talking about dreams and art with Teza Lord, and we'll be right back.
Announcer (00:13:37) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:45) - Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're talking about dreams and art with Teza Lord. Well, Tesla, do you use dreams for healing?
Teza Lord (00:13:58) - Oh, very much.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:14:00) - How do you do that?
Teza Lord (00:14:01) - Well, the in-between state, like, for instance, awakening. You're so, like half there. And that's the perfect time to do healing work. And you're not all the way ready to step out of bed and grab your coffee or tea. So that in-between state is where I find that you can really pinpoint energy that needs to be intensified, like within our own physical system. We can scan ourselves that we're awakening, and we can find a place that feels long. I need the energy and so we can send it that energy. But a dream that tells me something that needs to be healed or has already been healed or will be healed in the future. Those dreams are more like. Almost like the cosmos has written a prescription for our soul growth rather than our ego.
Teza Lord (00:15:05) - Waking up from a dream saying, oh, I need to do some work. So it's more of a combined thing when we're awakening, but when we're in the actual dream state, we're in R.E.M. and we're having visuals or sensations or just feelings. Sometimes just we can't even pinpoint it. Those are things that we're supposed to be paying attention to. And if we don't have a clear answer when we awaken, we need to go further and ask, and we shall receive an answer, maybe not right away, but through meditation, by eliminating the outside disturbances is where I receive a lot of my answers that come up in dreams. Like, for instance, my work. I've always had this a wish and desire, a purpose to make my work public because I want to help uplift humanity. I don't care about being rich or famous, but I really care about spreading love. That's kind of my obsession. It's a good obsession. And so to to figure that out, how to do that is very challenging, because there's one part of a brain could be the creative brain, and the other part of the brain is the more rational, you know, the left and the right side.
Teza Lord (00:16:26) - We all know about the different functions of the brain. In order to be a creative and to interpret what the dream world is transferring to me; I've had to learn to be whole brain. That is a real challenge.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:16:40) - You find, though, that in some sense maybe it stifles your creativity because you're being emotional?
Teza Lord (00:16:48) - So I think that nothing has ever stifled my creativity. I am blessed. Maybe I've never experienced writer's block or artist blog. I get challenged, it's like going out for a treasure hunt. Like what's going to be next? And what am I going to discover? It's not just about bringing the work to other people. It's for me to discover more and more. I mean, it's just endless what we can discover, even up to the very moment of our last breath. And I know that because I have been with my parents at their last breath, and the things that they discovered and the things that are revealed in that oh so sweet spot, it's like getting birth, that magical feeling of bringing a new being into this existence.
Teza Lord (00:17:39) - It's that same magical connection when the soul is departing and going back to the source. It's just so much is revealed.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:50) - And so it's a shame that those kind of revelations for most people don't happen much earlier in their life.
Teza Lord (00:17:58) - My father actually said that as before he left his body. He said, what a shame. Most people never know that we are one. And he was kind of like in and out of his state. And when he came back all the way to the reality that his body was giving out on him, I could report to him and say, 'Dad, do you remember what you said?' He said, 'No, I don't.' I was in a dream, and I said, you, you actually said that. What a shame that people just don't realize that we are one. And he said, no kidding.
Teza Lord (00:18:39) - And he was so comforted because in his real so-called real consciousness, he had never allowed himself to have that experience. But his in his dream state, as he was leaving, he did experience it and I was there to be his reporter.
Teza Lord (00:18:58) - What a gift for both of us.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:19:00) - Oh, very much so. And I wish we had giant programs for everyone who is in the last stages of their lives, to have somebody to help them focus on remembering their dreams. I saw that with my my mother too. My mother was never a dreamer. But I was with her in her last days. And she had dreams of seeing her father. And in the dream, she was a child. And I told her about it. It just brought her such great comfort and such comfort that could have for people who are afraid of death or afraid of leaving this plane to realize that you don't have to be afraid.
Teza Lord (00:19:43) - Yes, and I want to share. Speaking about mothers, the strongest healing dream I ever had was after my mother left her body, and my mother and I had not an easy time. As often happens, you're either very, very close with your mother or there's some kind of antagonism.
Teza Lord (00:20:02) - And so we could never work it out on the earth plane. But when she left, she came to me in a dream, and we were like children. We both were equally playing. I was moving her around in a wheelbarrow, and we were laughing and giggling. And instead of mother and daughter, we were both just two happy souls and no words transpired between us, but just joy. Just bliss. And I felt so healed when I woke up, I said, that's what I could never get from my mother. I wished I could give it to her, but she resisted, so we had to wait for her to go back to the source. And it was beautiful, healing.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:48) - A beautiful story. A beautiful dream to have.
Teza Lord (00:20:53) - Yes.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:55) - Oh, I want to get back to your latest book, The Bridge Tender. You write about a woman who was a drug addict and had no direction in her life, but she goes through a transformation, and it becomes a very powerful, uplifting story at the end. How did you come up with this idea?
Teza Lord (00:21:13) - I always believe in each of us is the microcosm of whatever is happening out there in the world. And the protagonist, Thea, that you mentioned, she is the epitome of the excesses of our world today. I mean, she had to be just completely nuts because this world's pretty nuts. I think all of us would agree if we didn't have some comfort, either from the unseen dimension or some people get it from other means, as Thea did, just to get through. She became a drug addict, and she acted out badly, but she was miserable, so she had to have that experience, and I had to present it in a very real and harsh way for people to realize that there is a transformation waiting all of us, the even the worst despicable person that you think is just lost in God. And so finally, she has these experiences that make her realize that she has a choice. And it really boils down to a choice. We choose to either live or die.
Teza Lord (00:22:25) - If we're into addiction that heavily, or we choose to open up to the bliss of life, or we decide, no, there's no fun here. This is just something I'm burdened with. I've met people like that, and Sophia has this transformation, just like I myself did. I am all the different characters in that book, and like most novelists who would agree that every single character they write about is a part of themselves that they can intimately connect with. But it's not necessarily the ego that is presented out there to the world. And so when she finally makes the choice to allow the natural state to her animal nature basically just to be the way that she came from the source and the evolution of her soul, she was there, present and unseen. Magical events start happening. At first, they're just like sparkling lights. Her dog notices it before she does. She has this dog, Doctor Bob. Doctor Bob was quite a character, as some people have told me, that he's their favorite character in the book, because Doctor Bob is also kind of like the shadow.
Teza Lord (00:23:48) - We have to acknowledge our shadow, our dark place, in order to burst through and let the light come in through the cracks. So Doctor Bob, who is a black and white tuxedo dog, and he had a way of tripping out, he could remove himself from reality just by. Letting leaves touch his back, he could transport himself into a state. And he actually taught Thea. Whoa! My dog can do it. How can I get out of this feeling? Not being comfortable in my skin. So Doctor Bob helps Thea realize that there are energies all about us. And pretty soon the lights become manifested with messages, and she starts having journeys in her dream state.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:24:37) - Yes, a dream state does play an important part in the story, and in the book one of the characters calls all her art dream times like that.
Teza Lord (00:24:50) - Well, dream times ... the Aborigines of Australia call their work dream times. I've always loved Aborigines and indigenous people. I'm very connected to the indigenous world. The dream times are very much a part of keeping things alive.
Teza Lord (00:25:11) - And when an indigenous in Australia creates a dream time, they're doing that with the purpose of keeping the energy alive by acknowledging it in paint. Or sometimes they go on walkabouts. You've heard about the walkabout, or just walk the desert and sing the song of a thing. A thing could be a washing machine. They want to they want to acknowledge the existence of a washing machine, or a rock or a cloud or a mountain. It could be anything. And so a dream time is to acknowledge that there is an interconnectedness of everything, and nobody has the answer to what it's all about. It's the mystery and the fun of being a human being with this elevated kind of perspective is we enjoy the mystery. We don't have to know all the answers. Not everything has to fit into a tiny little package thing life because it's just not that way.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:26:20) - It is so true. Teza. Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you didn't embrace your dreams?
Teza Lord (00:26:26) - Oh my gosh. I don't think I'd be alive.
Teza Lord (00:26:29) - I don't. When I was a kid. I started running away from home when I was a child, like five years old. They say we choose our parents. As I said before, my mother and I had an intense antagonism. I think my family of origin basically thought I was insane, which is good because it propelled me to be comfortable with, you know, there's certain people, they call it holy Madness. You just go crazy with the idea of the sacred and the divine. I'd rather be in holy madness than angry and confused about the state of the world. I think anybody would. I am a recovering person. I'd been 40 years without any drugs or alcohol. And that part of Thea Bowman was very much a part of my experience, as well as all the other characters that come into the picture. So I don't think that I would have made it in this reality if I had not just trusted my dreams, and the energy that it presented to me was the reality.
Teza Lord (00:27:35) - And also, I'm a lifelong Yogi. I started practicing yoga because of a bad back scoliosis. If anybody has scoliosis, please check out my free yoga on my YouTube. And so from the age of 18 till now, which is almost 60 years, I have been a Yogi. And when you start doing these yogic practices, your energy channels open up. They call them the chakras in yoga. And so by the time I reached 21, I realized, wow. I have yoga now. I don't have to just say I'm going to be dead because I really thought I would be. Because it seemed uncomfortable to be. Not fulfilled with my dream state. But then I found yoga. I found the connection of meditation, which comes eventually. Anybody who starts practicing the physical yoga eventually goes into meditation and understanding this sacred energy of yoga. It's not just about your physical, it's your mental and your spiritual and everything connected. So today I'm very grateful. I'm a proud 76-year-old, very fit Yogi, and I feel comfortable with the role that I have embraced because of trusting this dream state is real.
Teza Lord (00:28:58) - And the yogis say, this is what I was getting at bringing yoga in the Yogi saying, this is from the scriptures, not just from, you know, teacher Beverly Hills. The yogic scriptures call this reality of the political and the environmental and everything that we have to deal with working and raising a family, a dream. And they say that the dream state is the real consciousness that we humans are a part of.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:27) - And it's so true. Well, Teza, how can people find out more about you and your work?
Teza Lord (00:29:32) - Well, I have a beautiful website, tezalord.com, and that's Teza. Some people don't know how to spell it. And over there it's like headquarters. I call it the mothership. And I have a YouTube channel. I have a podcast, the Zee Lord podcast, and I have all sorts of other wonderful books besides the Bridge Tender, which is my baby that I offered the world now.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:54) - Well, Teza, thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Teza Lord (00:29:59) - It's my pleasure, Debbie. Thanks for inviting me.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:30:01) - We've been speaking about the transformational power of dreams with Teza Lord, I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams everybody!
Announcer (00:30:18) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to DreamPowerRadio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.