#003 Dreams of Abundance

Once I had a dream. A really tall creature with a skin that looked like the darkness of the universe, full of bright stars, arrived and explained the next steps in the present would not be for those who are already here. "To whom, then?" I remember to ask. "Them,", the entity said.

Some travelers told me about issues to answer the emails. I fixed that. Now I expect to get a lot of love on my inbox. I also would like to say thanks for your patience with some misspells of me writing from scratch to your inbox every morning. I hope the messages are clear and I accept your kind and generous feedback. 💙

Last time I wrote you about listening to the wind and about ideas that come to search for you. I know, is not always easy to be open to that between a long list of zoom meetings, simultaneous freelance projects to different clients to deliver, or worried about paying taxes in two or three different countries (I know...). I also told you about the Artist's Way. My morning pages are that sacred moment I forget about the tasks of the day and allow myself to talk about dreams, creativity, and energy, having the strong belief that what is important will stick around me for the rest of the day.

It was writing the morning pages that I discovered I was not allowing myself to dream of a different life. That gave me confidence about suggesting ending a long-term relationship that we were having different dreams for the present and future. Writing, daily, steadily, made me have, on the pages, a companion to go through the following dark months alone during winter in Europe while dreaming about having sunny days again, which happened only months after in Brazil. And also gave me the confidence back to share my story and my learning with you. So today we will continue our conversation by talking about the power of dreams.

Our "solar seal" of the day, the visual package of the information coming from the galactic source, is called "The Blue Night". Invites us to dream about abundant worlds. And also tells us that intuition is some sort of way to make powerful messages travel across time. When we are starting a new cycle like this one, to be able to dream, to recollect them and to act on their direction is a powerful service in our planetary journey. Through a decolonial approach to what time is, we find in different cosmovisions and cosmoperceptions other paths to living well instead of living better. Nature is speaking.

Song Under a Tree

In Namibia there is a semi-nomadic people known as the Himba. The Himba consider the day their mother decides to have a baby to be the date of birth of their children. When a Himba woman decides to have a child, she goes out and sits alone under a tree, until she hears the song of the child that wants to come. After she has heard this child's song, she goes back to the man who will be the child's father and teaches him the song. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, they sing the child's song, as a way of inviting the child to incarnate.

When the woman becomes pregnant, she teaches the child's song to the other women that will help to the labour and older women in the community, so that when the child is born, everyone around her can sing the child's song to welcome her. As the child grows older, the other villagers are taught the child's song. If the child falls or gets hurt, someone sings the song for him or her. Or maybe the child does something wonderful, or goes through rites of passage, so as a way of honoring that child, the people of the village sing his song.

Among the Himba there is another occasion when the village sings the song to the child: if the child commits a crime or something that is against Himba social norms, the villagers call him to the center of the village and form a circle around him. around. Then they sing their song. The correction seen Himba for antisocial behavior not as punishment, but as love and identity remembrance. Because when you recognize your own music, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt the other. And as the child goes through his life his music is the theme of his life. At the wedding, songs are sung. And finally, when the child is lying in his bed, ready to die, all the villagers who know his song come and sing that person's song for the last time.

Colorful Parachutes

Ailton Krenak, the most prominent Brazilian indigenous activist and leader of the Krenak people, says in his book "Ideas to Postpone the End of the World" that we need to take people out of their centers. If we are falling, we need to open colorful parachutes and the indigenous wisdom is what brings these colors back to life. Ailton is part of an indigenous movement to "rewild" our hearts, merging Science, Art, and Spirituality in online sessions with global specialists as his guests. "Selvagem" (in Portuguese, Wild) is the name of the independent initiative making a bridge between two worlds.

Manifest Dream

To Sidarta Ribeiro, a Brazilian neuroscientist, to dream is a powerful tool to imagine desirable futures. A lab where we can experiment to bring new visions from potential time to actual time. He is the author of the books "The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams" and also the recently released "Manifest Dream" (only in Portuguese, for now). In the last weeks he was the main attraction of the most interesting podcasts and youtube channels I like in Brazil, but don't mistake his work as only a trending topic. His studies are being conducted since the 1990's and he is one of the founders of International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal, that is always making me impressed. What I highlight about his work if he is a new name for you is his ability to approach modern science and indigenous spirituality side by side. Like on this conversation about Dream-drawing with Ailton Kreank, also for Selvagem (Wild) a study cycle about life.

Tree of the Dreams

To Yoruba culture, Iroko is the name of an African tree that holds fortune and good luck. It is also the name of an entity, the spirit of such tree, which roots and branches connects the vast network of possibilities in time. An enchanted representation of our collective timeline itself.

"A reminder of that big green tree" (Wait But Why)

Once I had a dream about this tree. I was in driving a car and suddenly I was in a different road. It was not "dreamy" anymore, I was feeling actually there. By the side of the road, people were getting up on that giant tree and I started to do the same. I found many friends already there. And I had a branch to call mine. All my notebooks and letters were there as books I wrote in this life and in past lives, with different names. While I was reading it again, a really tall creature with a skin that looked like the darkness of the universe, full of bright stars, arrived and explained the next steps in the present would not be for those who are already here. "To whom, then?" I remember to ask. "Them,", the entity said, showing what was behind of an imaginary curtain that opened from this dimension to another one. A lot of star babies, the cutest creatures I have ever seen, dreaming of the future while waiting to come to life. And I woke up.

"The Desire of Others: An Ethnography of Yanomami Dreams"

David Kopenawa, leader of the Yanomami people in Brazil and author of the book "Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman" tells us that we need to relearn to dream not only with ourselves but with every living being. He drew the cover of the book "The Desire of Others: An Ethnography of Yanomami Dreams" from Hanna Limulja, that lives amongst Yanomami people in the last years. As he says in The Shaman's Message: "we need to help the Yanomami to hold up the sky. Can'’ you see?”

Facing Reality

To go deep into the context, the Amazonian rainforest is under great threat, as deforestation, mining, infrastructural development, and exploitation of natural resources gain momentum under President Jair Bolsonaro'’ environmentally regressive policies. Since 2019, the devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has been running at its fastest pace in a decade. An area of extraordinary biodiversity, the Amazon is home to more than 350 different indigenous groups. The exploitation of the Amazon has a number of social impacts, particularly on Indigenous communities, who are forced to deal with significant degradation of their environment, as well as their way of life. Yesterday, Bolsonaro was shaking hands with Elon Musk. Elon Musk also announced recently a deal with Vale for mining niquel (that the company explores in Canadá and... in the Amazon rainforest region).

– Who is that on the trenches by your side?
– And does it matter?
– More than the war itself.
Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms"

4 Dimmensions of Design for Sustainability and Regeneration

To deal with such a challenge and design, more than sustainability, a regenerative world, great work is ahead. it is necessary to face all the 4 dimensions of change: ecologic, economical, social, and the change of the worldview, promoting a transformation of consciousness.

I will continue sharing tomorrow my learning about dreams of abundance tomorrow, on how to seed the future, for the generations to come. For now, I bring to you a powerful question:

Is it possible to recover the sense of imagination,
the power of dreaming?

There are two worlds. One side holds a myth of separation and speed: fast, masculine, western, colonial, capitalist, consumerist, commoditized, dogmatic, hierarchical, corporatist, synthetic, and individual. Where the institutions are the symbol of power. The status quo. But there is also another side, showing us a myth of connection: slow, feminine, decolonial, shared, careful, maker, activist, with care, spiritual, distributed, organic, and collective. Where the people are the symbol of potency. The great mother. The world of the separation, and the world of the connection. But there is no solution to simply going back to the past or escaping to space. We are in the middle of both stories. An interregnum between narratives. The future will be the entanglement between prisms of these two narratives that are already happening right now.

To our generation, it was promised that we were not in an age of subtle changes, but in the subtle change of an age. In the midst of the chaos, to some of us, it is already happening. As said by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, to be contemporary is to have a relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism. It is the end of the single narrative. A reminder that there are many histories in our history. Many layers and dimensions of reality were silenced and kept in forgotten realms. Now we struggle with the inadequacy of our grammar: temporal awareness demands new codes, behaviors, processes, systems, and collective agreements. Let’s seek in ancestral and emerging narratives other possibilities for our existence?

With love,

Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes
NS1.34.11.20, Sat 21 May 2022
Kin 003 Blue Electric Night