DREAM SPACE

A SPACE TO PRACTICE DREAMING

Rosana Agudo. Spring 2010

Why speak of Dreaming? Why dream? What does it mean to dream? Why is
dreaming so necessary and, more worrisomely, why have we abandoned
dreaming, what “lies” have we told ourselves about the meaning of the word
to make us stop dreaming, what meaning have we given to ”dreaming” to
make it incompatible with evolution, with progress, so as to exclude it from
appropriate business language and even from everyday use, except in
intimate or familiar circles? Why do we even tell our sons and daughters to
“stop dreaming and study”? We ask them to do something “necessary” and
“useful”…

Why does dreaming have such bad press?

In my understanding, it has something to do with our Mental Model and the

way in which it defends itself so as not to change, which is precisely what it
is afraid of, change; that we might change. The Mental Model, if we haven’t
yet learned to detect it and to become familiar with its behaviour, lives
inside us and it is we who perpetuate it by enclosing concepts, thoughts and
ways of acting within its walls or allowing them to remain so. We identify
ourselves so closely with our Mental Model and with its suppositions and
beliefs that for all intents and purposes, we are the Mental Model; it acts
through us, creating the reality it needs to perpetuate itself and resists
everything that would make it visible and therefore, vulnerable. This is
terrifying, very frightening indeed!

We are convinced that if the world changes, it obliges us to change.

Therefore, we do not want it to change.

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That if we change, the world will have to change, otherwise, it won’t accept
us. Therefore, we do not want to change, nor do we want anybody to change
- of course, we will always make sure to stifle any emerging signs of change
that might deeply affect us, or the world-.

That if we dream, the world, (please, the “real” world and the people who
live in the “real” world), is going to reject us and we will not be able to
survive, and, if we must choose between rejecting, or being rejected, it
seems that we prefer the former. The people who dare to question or to
expose the prevailing Mental Model with its paralysing and contradictory
paradoxes (one of which is “tell me something new because we must change
before disaster strikes, but, please, make it something that I already know
and that won’t make me change too much), these people, as I was saying,
with their “theories” and ideas, are flatly rejected, with the excuse that
they instil fear.

The prevailing Mental Model is afraid of dreamers, artists, and pioneers,

and we let us not forget, as we commented before, we are the channel
through which the Mental Model is manifested and by which it creates; we
fear dreamers, artists, and pioneers, and, as executors of the dictates of
the prevailing Mental Model, in the worst-case circumstance we would like
to eliminate them. Otherwise, we silence them, or we look down on them
(because, moreover, we do not want them to know that we are afraid of
them; we fear such knowledge would give them power - but the power is
ours! - a new paradox).

Dreaming, therefore, becomes a threat to the Mental Model, above all to

the capitalist Mental Model, which is the prevailing one at the social and
organizational level, as well as at the personal one - unless, of course, you
are a dreamer, although questioning the capitalist system does not
necessarily make one a dreamer, as we will see later on.

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This behaviour, with all it implies, (especially and most dramatically the
human suffering associated with it), has an explanation as does everything
in life:
Current paradigm: TIME = MONEY
Emerging paradigm: TIME = ART

And money becomes a means and a consequence of turning life into an

“artistic” expression (in the sense of “the art of living”), in which people can
be present, be protagonists, instead of identifying with and serving the
system and its one enslaving model. It is not surprising that he, money, (the
one Francisco de Quevedo called “the powerful knight”), is agitated, and
the more agitated he becomes, the more he can be seen (let us keep in mind
that we cannot change what we are not aware of, what we do not see).
Therefore, in an evolutionary sense, this crisis, the shrillest manifestation
of which has been provoked by him, is the beginning of an unprecedented
revolution; it is not just another crisis.

A change of paradigm is, in addition, an evolutionary step for human beings.

Maybe the dreamers of the sixties have forgotten the dream they
verbalized, with the power that imprints the word, the music, and any
artistic and/or revolutionary expression, the aspiration that was so well
reflected in the song by the unforgettable John Lennon, “Imagine”. There
is a proverb that says “be careful with what you ask for because it might
come true”. Well, it is happening.

“YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER

BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE”

To create spaces to dream, to “store” them, and to share them, is

fundamental. To recover the capacity to dream is imperative, to remember
that creating a sustainable and fair economy for all is possible, that the
world, our dear planet is a place to learn the meaning of life and share it,
that work is the way by which each person and human group expresses and
creates for the common good, that money is limited but that wealth is
infinite, we must remember so many things to be able to innovate…!

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It is clear that we have other explanations as well as to why we don’t
Dream, that underpin the motives of the Closed Mental Model (CMM) to
convince us that we do not have time to dream, that it is not a priority,
in spite of the fact that at the same time it tortures us with other kinds of
thoughts: “we need to be creative, to innovate, to generate knowledge
and share it”.

The motives of the CMM to dissuade us from dreaming are strongly linked,
of course, to its fear of disappearing, to its fear that we may become
aware of another reality, that we may become freer. Of course, we are
already realizing that it is exactly the same fear that we are bound to, and
that we identify as “our fear”, “our reasons for”, etc…

Crises are useful not only for learning from our mistakes, but also for
growing. This crisis, this “cutting edge” of our growth process, brings the
good news that will make us freer because it causes us to explore
profoundly human questions, because we are not going be able to go ahead
individually unless we take into account the wellbeing of as many others as
possible; because it asks us to know ourselves, to be conscious and to
advance in a voluntary act of perceiving our travelling companions as
indispensable for our advancement and not just as tools for our wellbeing.

As we have seen before, this is not just another crisis; it is an

unprecedented revolution, of concepts and ideas, of ways to carry them
forward, of the creation and conceptualization of wealth, of work, of
culture, of energetic resources, of alimentation…

Let us return to the questions at the beginning of this article: Why do we

speak of Dreaming? Why dream? What does it mean to Dream? Why is
dreaming so necessary? Why have we abandoned dreaming? What “lies”
have we told ourselves regarding the meaning of the word to make us stop
dreaming? What meaning have we given to “Dreaming” to make it
incompatible with evolution, with progress, so as to exclude it from
appropriate business language, even from everyday use, except in intimate
or familiar circles?

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Why dream? Because we need to dream to have a Dream and, it is very
important to have a Dream.

Why is it so important to have a Dream? To try to make it come true.

Why is it so important to have a Dream and to try to make it come true? To

open the way towards its realization.

To open the way towards the realization of the Dream, means to Dream of
the possibility of achieving it and to gather the energy needed for its
materialization.

To gather the energy needed to Dream, to sustain the Dream, and to

believe in the possibility of its coming true, requires the effort of looking
and seeing oneself as the authentic and unique tool for its attainment.

It requires looking at, and seeing the world as the only possible scenario
for “my dream and me” to be realized.

I am the protagonist, the leader of my life, and my life develops in the

infinite scenario of the world, that is to say, of the planet and all that
inhabits it. I live my experience, my dream, woven into the web of all
life, every kind of life and everything influences me and I influence
everything.

And this makes me ask if the world, my dream and I are aligned and if we
constitute the necessary and fostering lever and support.

And this makes me question the world: my world, the world in which I live
my life and how I live it.

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And all this and much more - the voluntary and reflective process of
questioning, of seeing life and my life in all its facets and spheres, this
personal and collective “conciliation process” - is a process of growth, of
transcendence, of alignment with the energy of the future; of finding
ourselves together, we dreamers, in a common space generating and
transmitting knowledge… How could it help being afraid! How could we help
being afraid! To Dream, in the deep sense that we are using the concept,
means all this. To Dream means growth, it means the use of unimagined
resources, of potential capacities never before employed, of language that
touches the soul,…

A Dream Space is a space to dream, to learn by playing, to discover oneself

and others, to align the heart and the head in order to propose challenges
and elaborate strategies, both personal and organizational, to start to
manage space and time in a different way, less lineal and material than it
has been up until now. In short, it is a space to practice living in the future
that is more “now” than ever before.

“YOU MAY SAY I’M A DREAMER

BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE”

I have a Dream - and you?

Rosana Agudo
Spring 2010
TTi – Tecnología para la Transformación Interior
rosanaagudo@gmail.com

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