"What we seem unwilling or unable to recognize, is that our entire modern world is itself inspired not by any rational process, but by a distorted dream experience, perhaps the most powerful dream that has ever taken possession of human imagination. Our sense of progress, our entire technological society, however rational in its functioning, is a pure dream vision in its origins and in its objectives." (Thomas Berry)
My book, The World Is As You Dream It has seen an uptake in terms of interest, I think partially due to the groundbreaking movie Inception. I really do believe the world is what we choose to dream it is. The foundations for our dreams are laid by every single one of us. We have the power as individuals to dream a better world.
In the Western world, individuals have given voice to dreams that have now manifested themselves all around us, in the billboards, the traffic, the heavy industries, and in our fixation on perpetual mining, construction and drilling for oil. We have bought into the philosophies behind those manifestations and, in so doing, given energy to the dreams of the individuals whose greed is satisfied by them. As the shaman Numi (in The World Is As You Dream It) pointed out, the dreams have come true, and we are now beginning to understand their nightmarish implications.
It is daunting when one considers the endless clearing of natural environments for more shopping malls and the endless construction of more big box stores filled with sweatshop-made and often non-recyclable products that none of us really need. This endless drive for more is the result of a set of values, a cookbook of working philosophies, that has grown out of the dreams of a handful of individuals who espoused Utopian theories of individual enlightenment, freedom, and rights to accumulate property.
Those philosophies have been warped over time, stretched and contracted, molded and co-opted by greedy people who converted the original dreams into justifications for gluttony and personal aggrandizement.
The real question, then, is: How can we turn those philosophies around; how can we re-dream our position in the natural world? The dream we can create is one that honors the Earth above all else and is not dependent on the violent technologies we have come to associate with drilling, mining and constructing.
Everyone of us has the ability to alter our dreams and continually re-create ourselves and the societies we form. Loving our Mother is not a one-time dream or decision. It is an everlasting, minute-by-minute commitment. We must plant the dream, the seed, and the future it will give us every single day. We can all then take pride in the beauty we will most surely create.
Let us not not allow bulldozers and drilling rigs to determine the limits of our knowledge. Rather, let us -- individually and together -- open the way into patterns of understanding that are not confined by the walls of history. It all depends on how we dream it.
To take action you can support two foundations that I am personally involved with, the Dream Change Foundation, and the Pachamama Alliance.
I hope you'll join me in re-dreaming a better world for generations to come.