Dec/Jan 2001 Sentient Times

SENTIENT TIMES Dec/Jan 2001

Transforming Our Dreaming
By José Stevens

Attachment to personal history is the most restricting obstacle that confronts us as we aim to become free as human beings. Interestingly, mostly older souls are the only ones actually interested in personal freedom and even then there is resistance to letting their histories go. Personal history, which consists of every memory that we each have gained thus far in life, conscious and not conscious, is the memory of people, events, places, and experiences recorded through our five senses, whether positive or negative in our evaluation of them. These memories chained together form one's story, identity, and personal dream that entwines constantly with the mass dream that humanity is collectively dreaming. It is possible to erase the load of emotion that this history carries, to render it neutral, thereby erasing it.

The Collective Dream

The collective dream, called the physical plane or material universe, is being dreamed by the Tao, as are our local personal dreams. The Tao is not however attached to these dreams. You could say that the Tao gave birth to the dreamers and then began watching what they would dream. The most sophisticated dreamers are sentient beings like human beings who are capable of dreaming up incredible things. Unfortunately, because of a combination of their amnesia, creativity, free will, and ego orientation, these dreams sometimes turn into nightmares. Then the Tao itself endures a bit of a nightmare because it is witnessing all the dreams of all its dreamers all the time.

In the act of creation, the Tao lovingly decided on a non-interference policy. That is, it created the dreamers and agreed it would abide by whatever dreams they created, knowing of course that in the end all dreamers would wake up and recognize the basic foundation of love in the universe. Many people curse the Tao for this, believing that it was cruel of the Tao to create this policy, just another bad idea. But the Tao could not have done it any other way without restricting free will. If we lacked this freedom to create any kind of dream we thought of, we would complain that the game was fixed and would try to rebel. Nothing less than total freedom to dream and discover is the loving way of the Tao.

When sentient beings gather together in great numbers their collective dreams become very strong. For a long time on the planet the dreams were about survival, and then came a long period where the dreams focused on order, laws, control, and collective living. Then came grand dreams of ambition, power and material gain. These three levels of dreaming, corresponding with the first three soul ages, include basic amnesia or unconsciousness. These dreams harbor the beliefs that everyone is totally separate, in competition, and that the creative force of the universe either does not exist or exists as some kind of angry punitive external force. Today these powerful, centuries-old dreams are all entwined and carry great momentum for humankind, inclusive of older souls struggling to wake up from the drug-like stupor of this mass dream.

The collective dream has developed a kind of personal ego, an identity of its own based on what it has become, a long story. This planetary collective dream has become a great power and gobbles up everything in its path. It feeds on the personal dreams of all the people on the planet. What it considers the best food of all is drama, especially drama that is intensely emotion-filled, particularly trauma with lots of anger, fear, jealously, envy, and violence. Not only does the collective dream feast on these things: it requires them to maintain its remembered identity. So the collective dream keeps trying to incite more incidents of trauma so it can have more food, just like a raging forest fire that hungrily demands more trees for fuel. The dream then reinforces itself every second with more of the same.

Most people's personal dreams are sucked into this vortex and without realizing it are contributors to a vast nightmare lifetime after lifetime. Sometimes they dream pleasant things like loving relationships and satisfying work and creating great beauty but these things are not as enticing to the historical collective dream as are the more intense traumas. Sooner or later, each person tends to be driven into the great karmic dream to contribute to it, be enslaved to it, and be victimized by it. Human beings have become like sheep or cows filing into the slaughterhouse of the dream. The results are not pretty.
It is important to realize that this grand collective karmic dream is not evil, just unpleasant. Being a dream, it has no substance, just momentum. To experience the truth of this, try to prove that you or anything existed one second ago. There is no evidence to that effect. The only thing you can actually prove is that you are aware in this instant. Everything else is just a memory. All fossils and memorabilia exist only now, even though they appear to relate to a past story. So the dream is not real but appears to be real; has no historical substance but only pretends to have solidity. Its power comes from the momentum it has been given and the fuel it is now receiving in this instant by all the dreamers who think they have no option other than to have this ongoing, nightmarish dream.

Dreaming the New Dream

A new dream is possible but requires enough dreamers to wake up from their collective nightmare and choose to transform the dream. A few very old souls, transcendental souls, and the occasional infinite souls have managed to wake up from the collective dream and to some extent they managed to wake others up enough to sway the dream a little. Jesus, the Buddha, and Krishna were examples of such wakers, yet even they could not change the fundamentally painful direction of the dream the planet was dreaming. They each realized that it would not be possible to change the entire dream until there were enough mature human beings on the planet willing to wake up enough to change it. They had to settle for presenting the option of an alternative and giving pointers about how to wake up.

Mostly these teachers have not been heeded because few human beings were mature enough to know what they were talking about. A few took these guides' lead and used their help to wake up from their own personal contribution to the nightmare at large. Most, however, simply incorporated what the teachers said into the ongoing dream without waking up at all-similar to the way a person might incorporate the sound of a
passing siren into their dream.

Now, for the first time, the possibility of humankind waking up from the mass dream exists on a collective level. The possibility exists of establishing a new dream, a dream that allows the dreamers to wake up within their dream just as on occasion you discover you are dreaming and begin to take conscious control of your dream. To wake up from this hypnotic dream is an act of great courage and discipline and not only is it possible, it must be done in order to create a new dream that serves essence and spirit rather than a set of painful dragons.

The local collective dream is made up of many different aspects that together feed it and lead to its unique character. One major aspect of the dream is the fact that the Earth is a warrior planet, run and dominated by warrior mentality. Although the population is divided up among seven different types*, and warriors make up only twenty five percent of the population, they are the ones who determine the overall game plan for the most part. Why? Because here on earth the dominant life form is simian, an aggressive mammal with opposable thumbs perfectly suited for the warrior approach.

Warriors are producers, doers, and action-oriented people that are happiest when there is a physical project to be carried out in an organized fashion. With powerful independently mobile simian bodies to work with, warriors are able to organize, direct, and produce an almost infinite variety of things out of the resources of the planet. Thus the dominant societies of the world have come to value production, organization, and development as their chief accomplishments. One could say then that warrior dreams have had an easy time being realized because the environment has been so conducive to manifesting them.

Now let us introduce an-other influence and strong motivator for the current collective dream that people like to call reality. Earth at this time is heavily influenced by a young soul mentality that is in many ways akin to the desires and wishes of a ten- year-old, the mentality that has dominated the world for the last several millenniums. That mentality is a "me first, he who dies with the most toys wins" value system. Remember also that this is not a bad thing but simply a developmental stage of humanity that has outlived its useful life at this time. This ten-year-old maturity level represents the third stage of development after having completed the infant and toddler stages. This child stage has now virtually run its course and the planet is ready to enter the fourth stage, the mature or adolescent stage of development. It is worth noting that the third stage now being completed corresponds with the warrior role and the fourth stage now being entered corresponds with the scholar role.

When you combine the production, development, and organization of the warrior role with the fantasies of ten-year-olds you can see what has happened to the collective dream. The dominant dream has become about voraciously consuming what is produced so that more can be produced and consumed. Through the additional ten-year-old's fantasy, one can achieve the grand prize of being the absolute winner, king of the mountain, top of the heap, controller of the game. This then becomes a dream about competition for power to control and win. Production of material things, selling them, and their consumption is what life has become about. These goals have become the gods and everyone is harnessed to serve this mass end. The fallout of that dream is that only a very few can win and most will be in various stages of losing all the time. The winners fear that they will be pushed off the top of the heap at any time and thus they can only guardedly enjoy the spoils. This state of affairs is called suffering since winning in this fashion can never satisfy the needs of essence with its awareness that all is one. According to essence if one person suffers then everybody suffers the pain of that.

Thus the time has come to transform the dream in order to enter the fourth stage of development, the scholarly dynamic of understanding and the exchange of ideas and philosophies. The old dream then must be starved so that everyone can wake up to a new transformed one. The warrior productive orientation will not go away so it will have to be incorporated into the new dream. Warriors will still want to produce, organize, and build so the dream will have to find ways for these things to be done in a more mature Earth-friendly way. Perhaps goods can be produced that use fewer resources and are more invisible so that they serve without being intrusive. This is already manifesting technologically with advances in the speed and size of computers, electronics, and communication devices. There is no limit to the possibilities in the evolution of warrior ways.

Individual Dreaming

Now let us discuss some more of the dynamics of individual dreaming that contributes to the large dream. We are distinguishing here between the dreams that occur while asleep and the dreams creating your everyday waking reality. Here we are focusing on the latter. Let's distinguish further among the various types of mental activity that contribute to dream material. There can be a difference between desires, wishes, fears, hopes, fantasies, and dreams. In undisciplined and immature people these things tend to all run together, one contaminating the other without any knowledge of how to separate them out. In younger souls, there is no awareness that their dreams are actually what they are manifesting into physical reality. They tend to believe that life is happening to them as if by magic or by delivery from gods and demons. Older souls are more likely to be aware that they are creating their reality through a dreaming process but they do not always understand how to dream without fears and fantasies tainting their dreams. The process of separating fears from dreams takes lifetimes of training and discipline and is eventually learned by everyone until mastery is achieved.

Everyone has little wishes and desires that crop up based on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. For example: an employee might wish their employer would just get sick for a week so the employee can be less stressed; a minister may lust after a parishioner, perhaps a married woman; an athlete may fantasize death or injury for an antagonistic rival; a driver may hope another driver who cut them off on the road will crash and so on. Normally these fantasies are fleeting and amount to nothing but when they are prolonged and intensely wished for they can turn into destructive dreams karmic in nature. These hopes and wishes can become dreams and unless the other person is well protected, they will manifest creating harmful effects in the environment and severe consequences for everyone involved.

Most people have heard the expression "be careful what you wish for, you might just get it." This piece of wisdom tries to warn people about the necessity of examining wishes and hopes to see if they are in the best overall interest of essence or merely feeding a private wish for gratification that will create huge costs in the long run. Older souls become cognizant that not all wishes and hopes should be brought about in reality because they would go against what essence has in mind. Older souls learn to discipline themselves not to indulge in fantasies that do not serve essence because they have learned by experience that there can be horrible consequences to getting everything they want in the moment.

Fantasizing about having an affair is usually much more fun than having the consequences of a real affair, something that can come with enormous stress and suffering. The minister who fantasizes the affair with the parishioner does not realize at the time that a real affair may cause them to lose their entire career and marriage in one fell swoop.

A dream differs from a wish, fantasy, hope, or fear in that it is the product of repetitive thoughts and feelings concentrated over a longer period of time with intent to be realized. The others mentioned are fleeting and often lack the intent that propels them into full-fledged dreams. They may lack the intensity to grow into a dream. Fears and worries can become dreams when they are chronic, repeated, and intensely visualized even if they are not strongly intended. A good guideline for older souls then is to concentrate on and to dream about that which brings what is needed by essence when it is needed. Mature souls and early level old souls with life tasks to take care of can dream of that which helps them fulfill their missions and agreements. Very old souls, wanting nothing, usually don't dream about anything but just being blissful and bringing balance and harmony into the world all around.

How you perceive yourself, your dreams and the dreams of others strongly affects how you dream. If you perceive yourself to be powerless, then your dreams will reflect that. If you perceive yourself to be a lucky person with strongly attractive features then your dreams will reflect that. If you are afraid of what others have manifested then you may feel so intimidated by their dream that you give your power away to it. On the other hand if you perceive that their dream, no matter how fearsome is simply a dream creation and nothing more, you can feel the courage to change that dream or replace it with a dream of your own.

Healers and shamans become proficient at dreaming of healing for others. They use breath to propel intense intent into the harmonious integration of a person who has fallen out of balance, become ill, or developed a dysfunction. They learn to dream of wholeness and this dream matches the deeper wholeness of the sick person. Their dream of wholeness breathed into the patient reminds the sick person to dream of recovery themselves and they are healed through faith. Thus faith is extremely important in the dreaming process. Consider fire walking for a moment: The fire walk is successful if the person conducting the ceremony can effectively bring each person to firmly believe they will not be burned by walking on the hot coals. The greater the faith, the more successful the event. People with great faith in themselves, in their ideas, and in their support teams are people whose dreams rapidly and intensively come about. By contrast those with little faith are not effective dreamers. They can spend years of their life with doubt and skepticism not manifesting very much of what they want at all. When it comes to dreaming, faith is everything.

Unfortunately faith in anything can be sold and sometimes the faith is in something that results in harm. The reason that the collective dream is so successful is that it has been and is being sold exceptionally effectively by individuals, universities, corporations, societies, and cultures that have absolute faith in it. Younger souls have successfully sold the idea that more is better, that in amassing and consuming material things lies happiness, that in science lies all answers, that controlling nature is desirable, and that winning is what is important. These concepts are spread twenty four hours a day through a media that is completely caught in the dream itself and doesn't know it. Anyone at odds with these concepts is invalidated including all those societies of the world labeled third world because they are not producers and consumers at the same level as the big guys. They are seething in anger at being invalidated so they fantasize destroying the first world countries and at the same time they buy into the dream by wanting to emigrate there to make their fortunes. This second desire has more power and intensity so it more often becomes their dream.

Power and Intent

So now we have raised the concept of power, another important ingredient in dreaming. It takes more than faith to propel an idea into a dream that manifests. It takes power, the energy to manifest it, and it takes the focus of intent. The curious thing is that power is something that is dreamed up just like everything else. So you have to have the power to dream and you have to dream up the power needed to dream effectively. This is like the age-old chicken and the egg dilemma on the surface but really it is just like growing up. You have to do it by yourself but you can't do it without help. In other words both are entwined or inseparable and there is no one source. The original power to dream came from spirit or the Tao and of course spirit dreamed it all up anyway.

Local dreams take enough power to manifest in a limited environment. With enough power behind it a single person's dream can spread out to affect thousands, millions, even billions of people. There is no limit to the power of one personal dream. Therefore dreams penetrate everything everywhere just like lubricating oil. You cannot dream and keep it from influencing the rest of the universe. Before you know it, it will be everywhere so watch what you dream.

Where do you get the power to dream? You get it by first stopping up the power leaks in your life, the negative thoughts, the fearful worries, the depressions and anxieties, and the distractions of false personality. Next you take care of yourself and honor your body and your health with good food and exercise. Then you follow practices that magnetize power to you-meditation, service, teaching what you know, contemplation, silence, prayer, being in nature, practicing true rest, true play, true work, true study, and discovering the exalted forms of your true home, your true path, and your true teacher.
How do you dream effectively? First you have to know what you want, not just what you want to avoid. In order to know what you truly want you may need help from sources of inner guidance to help you realize what is important. You may vision quest, journey within, meditate, or practice any number of personal guidance techniques readily available through transpersonal teachers, books, tapes, and seminars. Then you need to empower the dream you want to manifest by:

Strongly intending it.
Focusing on it often and intently.
Writing about it.
Contemplating it.
Meditating on it.
Sharing it with trusted others.
Visualizing it and sensing with all the senses.
Feeling it is already happening.
Giving gratitude for its existence.
Acting as if it is true.
Enlisting support from your inner totems, guides, and helpers.
Talking to nature about what you want including trees, plants, animals, mountains, deserts, lakes, streams, oceans, clouds, etc. and asking for their support of your dream.
Breathing your dream consciously into all of the above.
Enlisting people who are powerful, support your dream, and will help you manifest it.

A good guideline to follow is to ask yourself these questions about your dream: Is this what essence wants? Will this serve my higher purpose? Will this serve the health and happiness of the planet? Will this support long term satisfaction or is it a temporary whim? If the answers are yes, your dream is an excellent one and you can count on getting major help with it but you have to have the humility and the courage to ask for the help consciously. Hope doesn't get you there. Wishing doesn't either. Fearing that you won't get it nor have it is even worse. Remember that your dream is not something you do in isolation. In some way it will affect everyone and everything. Will it be food for the tired old dream enslaving the planet or will it support the waking up to a fresh satisfaction for all? You choose.

*The seven roles being referred to are warrior, scholar, priest, king, artisan, server, sage. Each human being perceives the world through one of these seven essential roles, and although these are not the usual career definitions, they do assist in describing how we as individuals structure our environment.

Reprinted by permission from the Pivotal Resources Inc. summer and fall newsletters provided by Jose Stevens Ph.D. and Lena Stevens, internationally known authors, teachers and corporate trainers with Power Path Seminarsú. In addition to providing group and personal retreats in Santa Fe, they make regular trips to the San Francisco Bay area for personal consulting and public lectures. To subscribe to their newsletter for timely, practical and informative articles please contact Pivotal Resources Inc., PO Box 272, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87504-0272, (505) 982-8732, fax (505) 989-4626; pivotal@pivres.com; www.pivotal@pivres.com. In addition to other quality articles, the Winter issue for 2001will include information on the specific influences that will support and challenge us in the year 2001.

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