This week has been spent chasing down fiat currency to feed my bank account to satisfaction, and, living the dream.
Or at least, A dream, one of the dreams that has percolated through my consciousness for years now. By dream I mean something cultivated in both waking life and while asleep—some hazy yet captivating story of the desired future and how its parts and pieces fit together, that merges into the present and binds and braids real possibilities together.
I mean that loosely as well as literally.
It was April 2021 that I first dedicated some intentional and in-ritual imaginal energy into picturing my ideal future workspace. I saw it would be sunlight, a large white room with drafting tables... I would be surrounded by vibrant collaborators working to make amazing designs come to life. I would be thriving in a director role of some kind, guiding the way, leveraging the collective genius in the room toward deeply fulfilling works in the world.
And it was July 2021—one year ago–that this space which I occupy today first became a seedling in my life, and today is blossoming into... well, not far from what I pictured it would.
I share this not to humblebrag, but to invite you into a sliver of my world and praxis. I do dream, and I do follow my dreams. And, they do bear fruits.
What is this mysterious praxis? Though at times I love me a good speculative supernatural metaphysics woo-woo conversation, we can set all of that aside and focus simply on how our minds construct meaning.
There is lots of information our conscious mind is definitely not capturing as we go about day to day life. There is far more information our unconscious minds are tracking, but it remains subliminal: below the surface of conscious awareness.
This wealth and well of actually-processed yet untapped information provides the source of the wisdom found in our "intuition"—and also, in our dreams.
In dreaming, our minds are actively defragmenting our brains: attempting to sort and reorganize the raw data of lived experience into the appropriate frameworks leading to effective survival. You can almost feel it: the mind is chewing up, composting, cutting up and collaging, reorganizing and reconfiguring the meaning we are assigning to things in our lives. It is no wonder dreams take shape in an inscrutable, strange, unbounded mythic language built of ancient psychic archetypes like monsters and lovers and gods and mothers and stalking, shadowy men. Our primordial brains function through mythic language: assigning (often-exaggerated) Meaning to real or perceived patterns.
Doing so successfully has accommodated our survival and thriving for millennia—when we evolved in high-fidelity environments. That is, environments in which perceived salient signals could be vividly, accurately read, and one could construct a relatively survival-sound internalized mental model of the world.
This is not so today. Under today's gnashing complexity pressures, disinformation proliferates and propagates. It is becoming next-to-impossible to discern noise from signal, to discern lies from truth. Disorientation is the result, and is rampant.
Perhaps why we need our dreams and our imaginations more than ever before. We need to rely on the knowledge we know but do not know we know to discern grain from chaff at all scales of our lives. We need to leverage our evolved capacity to unlock and harness such depths of knowledge through dreams and trance/flow states ("associative" mind states). Using our intuitions and dreams to orient and make decisions affirms our oneness with the information we encounter that shapes us. Using holistic ways of knowing like intuition and dreams while partnering with sound practices of critical thinking, interrogation/inquiry and self-reflection allows us to maximize our adaptability—honing our abilities to effectively and efficiently parse a situation and proceed.
Using the reference cache of my strongest dreams, and noting even the subtlest cues in waking life—for example, the way a dream I had is evoked (associated) by the shapes, colors, emotional tones, or movement-patterns embodied in that moment—I navigate WITH my dreams. I do not disregard them, I regard them. And in doing so, I make possible this praxis in which I stitch the future and the present and the past together into something more illuminating than anything else—a living present glittering at the corners and edges with the magic of dreaming and future-making.
Really, what I'm discussing here is just one aspect of the depth and breadth of Remembering called for and called forth by Fractal Praxis.
Before we ask whether our dreams will come true for us, let us ask: Are we willing to "come more true" to our dreams? Are we willing to bring our embodied faith, witness and attention toward our dreams, to bring them back into the fabric of our lives with reverence, regard, and sacred relationship?
My Ask
Sign up for the Denver Resilience Hub newsletter if you want! This is the mailing list for the "co-op church" I've been mentioning in the last (1) (2) newsletters and that is photogenically featured in this and those posts.
Also please complete this short survey of what you want to see more of from Fractal Praxis. No matter who you are, reader—I want to hear from YOU!
My Gift
Here are some excerpts from the "doctrine" I am working to draft for the above-mentioned "church co-op" project. What do you think? Let me know your feedback!
"Oneness principle. Our true nature is as continuum with the living ecosphere. We believe in oneness (Life as a unified yet complex system). We create conditions for our fellow beings, and we depend upon the conditions created for us, in a sacred cycle. This is an irreducible reality.
Life as Genius principle. We love nature and worship the wisdom embodied in living systems. We marvel at the resilience and creative adaptation that life represents, in its persistence and evolution throughout time.
Regenerative patterning in Life provides templates for success as a species, and as stewards of other species throughout the planet.
Sensemaking & Wisdom Co-Production. We believe we are in constant communion with all other beings, actively generating intelligence through interactions and adaptations.
We seek deeper intimacy and understanding of regenerative patterning in nature, and use design thinking to identify opportunities for adaptation.
By embracing regenerative patterning, we remove illusory barriers separating us from the holy infinite game of Life. We come into greater alignment with our true natures, and with what life wants for us: that we return in right relationship to all our parts, that we practice and know reunified co-creation with Life and for Life, in unending relationship and learning.
To put "God" in it... "God is Life/Life’s holy order in the universe. So we put our faith in the doctrine that God expresses his brilliance through regenerative patterning, and it is intelligent/sentient humankind's sacred role to harvest more wisdom and knowledge about regenerative patterning, and innovate and extend such patterning through embodied reflection and collaboration in stakeholder communities. This orientation provides a fractal (scale-irrespective) framework in which practitioners can achieve thriving."
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