The Presidio Dialogues

(These notes, taken real-time during the event, are not a full transcript of the evening’s conversation, but simply bits caught here and there. They are provided here with the intention to give a glimpse to those who could not attend, a reminder/touchstone for those who were present and to be useful to further inquiry. We apologize in advance for any errors in listening or interpretation. Feel free to use them as you will: add, subtract, divide and especially, multiply – or even go exponential! – Best, Y.M. Burgess)

Program Description: Please see the Dialogue Archives

Notes on Opening Comments from the Conversation Starters
John Renesch , host, The Presidio Dialogues

• The American dream has gone through a metamorphosis, from freedom now of greed and plenty, now a goal of corporate structure, inst paying attention, clash between industrial and indigenous

Stanley Krippner, professor of psychology, Saybrook Graduate School

• Dreamers tell better stories.
• Most dreams are negative. The people who dream rehearse for disasters. Consolidation of memories helps problem solve the next day.
• The process of dreaming is part of neuroscience, a whole brain process.
• Nature and musical sounds like language there’s less division between left and right.
• If the shaman takes it seriously, the dream would be taken seriously.

Bill Twist , co-founder, The Pachamama Alliance

• Dreamers tell better stories.
• indigeneous people don’t distinguish between nighttime and daytime visions.
• Nighttime dreaming shaping the decision making of the daytime. The Achuar wake at 3:30am, drink tea until they purge, then share dreams all together, as a family. This practice informs each one about their position in the happenings and shapes how they proceed in the day.

Lynne Twist, The Pachamama Alliance

• If you are coming to help us, don’t waste your time.
• The real job is to change the dream of the modern world.
• Indigenous people are not living in the same trance that the modern people are - that of "more ..." We are pummeled by advertising that constantly reinforces "not enough" and has displaced our imagination to dream what we want for ourselves and we've defiled our system on which we depend.
• what role can each of us play in turning the tide before it's too late?
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• look to see how "we" are caught in that trance
• "Resource" is a misnomer for that which we are part of."
• We need to be conscious of our connections and begin to extract ourselves from denial: we are lost from our kin.

Notes on the Whole Group Dialogue

• I didn't invent my dreams, nor dreaming. The Earth created it; it's the Earth's speaking rising through human which we create.
• Maybe the universe dreamed itself into being.
• I already have the answer: I go into a trance by the food I eat. With sugar, I can stop and look and ask: “Do you really want to not be present?”
• Am I conscious even today?
• Archetypal dreams, cultural dreams are potent. We dream together, and the dreams orient our landscapes. How do we struggle to create that as a dominant story for the culture?
• When you immerse in different cultures, your thinking begins to change, cultural norms we take for granted are different culture to culture, city to city.
• I want to remain aware that it’s a view I have.
• Use imagination wisely. We can step into creativity for the world, becoming conscious of my own consciousness.
• Waking from the trance, there’s a sadness.
• The story affects life.
• To adopt a new view, what is there to be left behind?
• There’s a pain of separation.
• Best way to remember one’s dreams is to honor them. 1) Take notes noting images and keywords. 2) Share your dreams. Create a dream group. 3) Incubate by telling oneself: “I will remember a dream when I wake up.” Ref. books by Gayle Delaney.
• Share dreams for breakfast as the Shenoi in Malaysia.
• How to the dreams change? What transpired to bring about the change? Missionaries showing a different way. The approach of the outside world.
• Our culture’s dream is of greed, scarcity and division.
• The 3rd Reich of Dreams predicted the rise of a dictator. They longed for the hero to lead them into greatness. Now we are having ecological dreams.
• Social context for dreams. In every culture there’s an aspiration to be a part of something they’re not in.
• It’s not that we’re consciously dreaming. We’re unconscious, entranced. We’re asleep.
• Normal folks are having conversations with – they are aware of their connection with – different parts of the Earth: the streams, land, sky and animals. This is lucid dreaming, but in our culture we don’t share these experiences.
• Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged … The law of unintended consequences
• Feeling to cutoff I hold on. We can feel the shift country to country wide open to a different reality. How to take it back to another trance. Each place has a distinct experience. Wish I could be selective about what I keep
• A shared autopilot. Shared cultural trance – nothing more than a conversation we have about the world. Re: labeled, consumer: takes, diminishes, depletes, destroys. Rather citizen: he or she responsible for well being of something.
• Consumer culture has no room for imagination marketing eclipses capacity dominated by messaging
• Mark its material conditions that create consciousness
• Few conditions allow for acting out of collective vision like artist together living a dream.
• A sense of theater, connected with destiny about it we need to create the physical conditions of beauty and balance.
• Mutual organic process of interaction in harmony with sacred earth.
• Synchronize, integration sleep and day dreams
• We don’t have a mechanism to incorporate unconscious/conscious behavior. This culture we limit to the verbal.
• Propping the old, awakened as a dreamer – calling to others, look for the twinkling in the eyes, learn to dream together.
• We’re asleep to something. We’re awake to that at night.

Notes on the Reflection on this Dialogue

• So many great people here. I can't even believe it.
• I realize I don't know the difference between dialogue and conversation.
• feels so crowded with all the talking
• sometimes too directed, not enough space and silence
• I'm tempted to engage with the intellectual sharing but then realize this is loneliness communicating out loud.
• I’ve been struck in a catalytic way by so many of the stories I’ve heard here.
• for me, the thread in the conversation has been “the trance” because in this reaction to simplify to get back to nature – there isn’t anything that’s not nature. Intention put it there.