Engaging in the world as those around us perceive it is how we engage in what the Toltecs call the dream of the planet. In so-called innocence, kids manifest mostly love and little fear. The latter they have to learn or be taught: you can fall down, fire burns, ooh that hurt, some spiders may be poisonous, you have to behave, you have to follow these rules, being of a particular racial group informs your position in the world and your relationships with others, you can’t play in the mud, you have to do as you’re told, sexuality is supposed to be for marriage, that doesn’t go in your mouth, you should be attracted to people of the opposite sex, you are supposed to get good grades, the sexes are actually opposite, boys behave this way and girls behave this other, we don’t talk to imaginary friends, you have to work to earn a living, etc.

In other words, each of us has to undergo domestication in order to be accepted, fit in, be civilized, reasonable, and whatever else our society holds in high standard. Domestication is so powerful that after a while part of it stays with us kind of like an internal voice – don’t do this, you did it, what a dumbass, you should’ve known; you’ll look dumb, what will people think; you’re supposed to be this way, are you going crazy, what kind of idea is that, etc. We keep ourselves in check by assuming most of the rules that those around us attempt to enforce on us.

So tending to all this, we do not perceive and understand the world “as it is”, but as we learn and are taught to perceive it. Same can be said about our perceptions and understandings of ourselves and everything else. E.g., we learn to perceive a spider as danger, the mud as dirty, our sexuality as inappropriate or as something we have to wait on, our identities as fixed, the world as a place that’s round, time as something that passes, etc. The language that we learn names the world, and the things that happen, from a particular point of view. Not everything is named and not everything is offered equal amounts of attention and thought. Nonetheless, the ways in which we train our perception, and the ideas that go hand in hand with it, are subject to change.

It’s interesting to note how wine tasters can put many of their senses into experiencing and describing wine: they can distinguish a myriad of colors where most people might just say “red”. They can identify a bunch of aromas, flavors and aftertastes that can be traced to a type of grape, a region, a year; where most people might just say “sweet”. The sense of touch is also important: a prickly mouthfeel may tell of a wine that is young, whereas velvety and flat sensations tell stories of their own. Most people might not even experience any tactile sensations consciously, and when asked might describe the wine as feeling “liquid”… and on it goes. There are so many things which we can perceive that we simply don’t have names, categories, training, or attention for. This disconnect between what is out there and what we think or perceive to be out there is a very important part of the dream.

As might seem more than obvious by now, there are different collective dreams that span entire populations and epochs, and that usually go unquestioned. Whoever questions them publicly may face negative consequences (like being burned at the stake, being labeled as a freak, an outcast, a looney, an idealist dreamer, the ones discussed above, etc). Believing that the earth is the center of the universe and interpreting all events according to this can serve as an example. Following the code of conduct as put forth by the Sutras, Vedas, Koran, Torah, or by the Old vs. the New Testament can serve as examples as well. It’s interesting to note how social rules, scripts, norms, concepts, values and language change and are fluid depending on socio-historic and particular contexts. The way most people understand and interpret these books can serve as examples.

Another example we might consider involves the different dreams around categories of identity. For example, what it means to be a woman or a man, and how we’re taught to be (or not be) either of these, varies amongst a host of contemporary societies and cultures. What it means to be a woman or a man today, in each of these cultures, may be different than what it was twenty or three-hundred years ago. Then of course, there are different types of men and women within and across each culture or societal arrangement, tending to categories of race, class, education, religion, etc. And then of course we would have to look at language: which concepts and/or categories do we have for beings that don’t neatly map into the categories of man or woman as we’ve constructed them? what happens to people that challenge these categories be it willingly and/or unwillingly?

National and political discourse can also serve as collective dreams, and our history is full of readily identifiable examples. Think of the Nazis and the way that their particular dream spread to fuel genocide and war, or think of neoliberalism and the way it operates today. Another interesting set of dreams has to do with seeing the world as a hostile place that is out to get you; seeing planet Earth as a resource or commodity to be hoarded, dissected, and sold; or living in a world that is enchanted, peaceful, abundant, and full of mystery. Of course, these dreams are not mutually exclusive and we can shift back and forth between them in different moments and circumstances. What’s interesting about them is how most of the time we operate within them, and perceive the world and ourselves according to them, without realizing it.

Dreams play out at family and individual levels as well. A family dream might be revealed in statements such as “this is a family of [insert profession, social status, religious, ideological, and political persuasions and/or other identifiers here] and you better start acting like we do”. These statements are not always explicit, of course, and failure to comply can result in punishment, exclusion, expulsion, or as mentioned above, medicalization, trips to psychiatric facilities, etc. Think about the power dynamics that play in: how much can you really challenge family and social structures, when your very material and symbolic existence may appear to completely depend on them?

Your personal dream has to do with every idea you’ve accepted about yourself, be it consciously or not. Successful domestication relies specifically on this: becoming someone in relationship to others and matching this identity to your “self”. So, to a certain extent and for those of us living in some sort of social arrangement, domestication and living a personal and/or collective dream is inevitable. Nonetheless, becoming aware of the specific dreams that influence our lives enable us to change these dreams – to have a lucid dream, to wake up. Different ongoing personal dreams have to do with appraisals of self-worth, self-capabilities, self-performance, self-righteousness, self-trust, identity, and on it goes. Having specific ideas about yourself can get in the way of letting you perceive otherwise.

For me, one of the most curious dreams is one that states that the whole of our experience can be reduced to physical, mechanicistic, and logical factors and explanations. This dream goes hand in hand with one that states that “believing is seeing”, or that the full spectrum of reality is accessible to us via our conditioned senses and reasoning. This dream has implications in terms of the roles western science and modernity play in the lives of many people alive today. It also has implications at the individual level, when we discard some of our perceptions because they do not seem logical according to our understanding of perception and what the world is like. Explorations into these dreams is, in part, what got this post going.

All these factors and examples partially point at the difficulty of perceiving, thinking and speaking about phenomena that go beyond our consensual understandings of reality, and language as we’ve learned to use it. All of these dreams end up having material, physical, biological, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual consequences for each of us – they end up defining our reality. If you whole-heartedly believe that what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel with your senses as they are now is all that the world has to offer, you may miss out on a lot of experiences, or you may not know how to deal with an experience that pushes you beyond these senses. If you arrive at a personal dream in which you are clumsy and physically incapable, you can increase your chances of hampering your physical and biological development. A neoliberal economicist perspective may lead to the commodification of everything, including other human beings and forms of life. And on it goes. So, how shall we wake up?


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