about

Martin Gales was born in Wallace, Idaho, on January 8, 1953. He moved with his family to Spokane, Washington, when he was seven years old. He attended high school in Spokane and later graduated in English Literature from Seattle University in 1975. He graduated from law school at Gonzaga University in 1984, where he was an associate editor of the Gonzaga Law Review. He commenced practicing law in Spokane in 1984 with an emphasis on civil litigation for injured and wronged plaintiffs.

In 1999, Martin began keeping a dream journal in response to a series of intense dreams. Remembering his dreams and writing them down led him to question more deeply many areas of his personal and professional life. He found symbolic connections between his dreams and his waking life. He began reading on a variety of subjects outside law, including mythology, religion, literature, history, science, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. He became more curious about the world in general, embarking on a series of travels such as his law practice would permit. He spent six weeks in Southeast Asia, traveling to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China, and Hong Kong. He taught himself Portuguese and wandered through Brazil for six weeks, from the Amazon basin to Brasilia, from Rio to Sao Paulo, from Iguaçu Falls to the Atlantic island of Santa Catarina. On yet another trip, he spent six weeks along the eastern seaboard of Australia. He says these are things he would not have considered if dreams had not aroused him.

As one example of how dreams inform our lives, Martin recalls a serial dream that had plagued him from the late 1980s into the mid-2000s. In it he was stuck in law school and was not being allowed to graduate. The context and circumstances changed from dream to dream, but it would always end up with him still being in school and frustrated over it. Several years into his dreamwork and associated studies and travels, Martin realized that his serial dreams about still being in school had stopped. Looking back, he interpreted the series of dreams as messages from his unconscious that he needed to become more “educated” and that whatever he thought he knew was not enough. Martin posits that eventually his unconscious became satisfied after several years from the knowledge he had gathered in his studies and travels, and so the serial dreams stopped. His unconscious had allowed him to “graduate.” Martin hastens to add he doesn’t necessarily know everything now that he needs to know, but that at least he’s better off than he was.

Martin believes that everyone can enjoy similar benefits from dreamwork. He wrote Parallel Universes to encourage others to become curious about their dreams. Rather than an oddity, dreamwork is something that has been practiced by humankind almost everywhere since recorded history, both in primitive and highly developed cultures. Dreamwork has fun aspects that arise simply from remembering dream experiences, and practical aspects from considering which dream themes might carry over into waking life. Parallel Universes also provides many pointers on different steps and strategies one can use to incubate dreams, and insightful tips on how to remember dreams.