ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Levy was born in 1956 and grew up in Yonkers, New York. In the mid-’70s he attended the State University of New York at Binghamton (now called Binghamton University), receiving degrees in both economics and studio art. While an undergraduate, he was hired by Princeton University to do research in economics. After graduating college, he stopped his studies in economics and pursued his career in art, moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he both made and taught art. In 1981, due to intense personal trauma suffered a few years before, he had a life-changing spiritual awakening in which he began to recognize the dreamlike nature of reality. During the first year of his spiritual emergence, Paul was hospitalized a number of times and was told he was having a severe psychotic break from reality. Much to his surprise, he was (mis)diagnosed as having a chemical imbalance. He was informed that he had manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder and that he would have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. Little did the doctors realize, however, that he was taking part in a mystical-awakening/shamanic-initiation process, which at times mimicked psychosis but in actuality was a spiritual experience of a far different order that was completely off the map of the psychiatric system. Fortunately, he was able to extricate himself from the medical and psychiatric establishment so that he could continue his process of self-discovery. Thankfully, as Paul freed himself from the shackles of psychiatry, he found his spiritual teachers, who, instead of seeing Paul as crazy, recognized that he was beginning to spiritually awaken. A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for more than thirty years, Paul has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma.

After the trauma of his shamanic breakdown/breakthrough, he became a certified art teacher. Because of his intense interest in the work of C. G. Jung, by the end of the ’80s he found himself the manager of the C. G. Jung Foundation Book Service in New York, as well as the advertising manager for the Jungian journal Quadrant .

In the fall of 1990, Paul moved to Portland, Oregon. In 1993, after many years of struggling to contain and integrate his nonordinary experiences, he started to openly share his insights about the dreamlike nature of reality by giving talks and facilitating groups based on the way life is a shared waking dream that we are all co-creating and co-dreaming together. Paul is the founder of the Awakening in the Dream community in Portland, Oregon, and facilitates a number of Awakening in the Dream groups every week, in which people who are awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality come together in a way that helps everyone deepen and stabilize their lucidity even further. A wounded healer in private practice, Paul is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality.

Paul Levy is also the author of The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis . His website, Awaken in the Dream, is at www.awakeninthedream.com ; his email address is paul@awakeninthedream.com . Though he greatly looks forward to and reads every email, Paul regrets that he is not able to personally respond to all of them.