Let’s Dream Together is a shared co-designed community evolving through the format of social dreaming.
The series began in April 2020 and it is sponsored by Psychology of Sailing in cooperation with the Centre for Social Dreaming. Open internationally, it welcomed so far more than 30 participants from countries such as Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, U.K., USA which were able/forced to connect via Zoom software due to the ongoing pandemic.
Participants with different professional backgrounds and levels of expertise and practice in Social Dreaming co-exist and cooperate in the community on a peer-to-peer basis. The experiments happen now on a 3 weeks schedule on Saturdays.
Social Dreaming Matrix #8 of ‘experiments in online social dreaming was on Saturday October 10, 2020 at 8:00 Los Angeles / 11:00 New York/ 12:00 Rio de Janeiro / 16:00 UK/ 17:00 CET
Hosts: Jelena Dimitrijevic, Carla Penna, Fabio Brunazzi
DREAMS:
(1) Feeling uncomfortable and walking around with anxiety. Going towards a mirror, I take off my earrings, I found out ….. (inaudible) I had taken off earring after earring, till I took out the whole ear lobe, look in the mirror and asked myself: are there some more earrings hiding?
(2) Walking thru a carnival – a hall of mirrors. Walking with a towel around my waist, trying to reach out to people, but as I as was going thru this maze I could not reach them. Later, walking in a similar environment, large flint stones leading me to a cellar. Greenish light, I expect a tomb, something sacred, but my towel is not there, I am naked. I gave up on trying to connect with others and I settled with preoccupying myself with myself: a myriad of images of my self. In a hall of mirrors. sadness. Loneliness
(3) Earring as hearing, still hearing with no earlobes, multiple images in the house of mirrors – Walking through water that I cannot feel.
(4) Almost waking I dreamt that on Google there was a function ‘recall your dreams’, which opened to a map which I was able to scroll. I clicked on a place on the map and I was dropped into a locker room – some street in the unknown city in the USA in the past– I saw one of those bells where you drop recycling glass. Enter into a void space that quickly transforms into a medical center. I hear myself calling: Next, come in. A patient complains about a diagnosis years back. I try to reassure him giving some dietary tips, I do need to take in the next patients, and the next and yet another.
(5) Looking into the mirror, I took out razor and cut off my left ear. I worried and wanted to sew it back onto the body, but I did not want to ask a medical doctor, I wanted only Dr. Carl Jung to sew it back on, because only he could know my inner workings and do a better surgery in order to hear better than a before.
(6) Senses, seeing hearing … – this dream was about breathing: I was attending an artists event (possibly Michelangelo), some sort of celebration taking place in an Indian or Italian Temple. We were all crawling. Suddenly I touch the finger of the person next to me. Suddenly there were masks – red and white. We all stayed very low so that we don`t lose breath.
(7) In a dark room, a couple wants to bring home an autistic woman, she didn’t want to pack for leaving and it was dark, warm and comfortable. Husband started to sing a springful of sugar from Mary Poppins in Czech, then everybody started to sing, and the situation got moving. Later in dream walking in a dressing gown that was soiled with poop, Czech couple helped with clean up. Feeling relieved she can move on her journey.
(8) Laying on a spa treatment table, about to have a facial. Women covers my eyes with a cloth. I have a vision of a sports field, but there is no sports going on: I sense a massacre is about to happen, there is a zombie feel. Oh my god! As the woman is about to return, I feel apprehensive, scared to take the cloth off my eyes. I have a sense that something is not quite right at all: something untold and evil within the (spa) context is going on with the men.
(9) Preoccupied with a couple of other people working on a problem: a woman was choosing what kind & color of skin she wanted to have. She was making decision about which pieces and body parts should be what color. She thought breast and body should be blue, however the council told her that thighs should be orange. Something was very important about the colors, not sure what.
(10) Trump in is in a kindergarten of aliens within the White House. Trump is trying to take the toys away from the alien kids. Vice President Pence is trying to stop him, dragging him away by the legs. Trump keeps protesting: “They are my toys! They are my toys!”
REFLECTION
After the dream matrix and quick break there is a moment of reflection, where participants engage in integration and analysis of the content of the matrix. The chat is left open and the hosts instruct participants to write a sentence that would summarize the dream matrix
‘Headlines’ – of the Matrix:
▪ Bodily pleasures and discomforts
▪ Isolated surrogate bodies in surgery – losing our senses in a hall of mirrors
▪ Screen, curtain mirrors veil and unveil what we see
▪ From the strange three-dimensionality to the bi-dimensionality in dreams
▪ Homo Somnians in Latin (Dreaming Man)
▪ A new vision of what it means to be human capable of higher perception and higher communication
The conversation starts by picking up many of the associations threads in relation with the dreams. The main pervasive universe of meaning is the body, seen in its medical, biological, physical and spiritual references.
This cluster of associative thinking reverberated through the matrix was difficult to bear in the dream matrix. At one moment it stopped the dream flow completely. Alien bodies, monster bodies (Frankenstein), slaughtered bodies, spiritual bodies (Vishnu and the Trimurti) artistic bodies (Alex Grey) invade the discussion that becomes body driven.
The discussion on body grows through the association to different colors of different body parts, the mapping of the human body, and Frankenstein, a being created by assembling parts alien one with the other. The beautiful soul of the monster is forgotten and outside take over, this congregation of different parts resembles the horror of diluting into the mass, the loss of individuality. The need to die tissues like done in medical-school signifies a need to map belonging, to recognize functional structures and the contribution of different part/system into the whole.
Asimbonanga (We have not seen him)
Asimbonang’ uMandela thina (We have not seen Mandela)
Johnny Clegg feat. Savuka
Laph’ekhona (In the place where he is)
Laph’ehleli khona (In the place where he is kept)
There is a dance and there is music in the matrix (Carnival, a Springful of Sugar), The South African lyrics of the songwriter recognize the lack of visibility. The musical echo fades away in the matrix, the ebb and flow and the rhythm is impaired by the strong associative work. The reference to hearing, earrings and ear surgery reminds the participant about the act of listening, a dimension explored in the reflections of the previous episode of this series.
Listening seem to be an important ability in the current online environment and the international character of this particular matrix At times works as an obstacle (noise, internet connection, different accents/use of the English language). This creates an acoustic box where the resonance expands or contract the generation of novel thought, like a hot air balloon inflating and deflating. There is expectations, and efforts, sometimes confusion and compassion.
A cluster of feelings is around loneliness and isolation. The hall of mirrors in the dream that bring an infinite reflection elicitS this feeling. Julian Assange is mentioned in his isolation, a forgotten and lonely figure. In a matrix we both experience togetherness as well as being alone with the dream.
In a short story by a Japanese writer there is a teenage boy who lives a segregate virtual life (otaku) got transformed in a rat, and he is amazed by discovering the full fledged sensations and feelings like taste and smell. The movie Surrogates in which humans operate androids for engaging with real life while they hide in a safe space environment, leaving the machines doing what our bodies used to do, tells us of our slow retreat toward safe and comfortable spaces. Outside is dangerous and overwhelming.
There is a debate elicited by the supposedly lack of emotions throughout the dreams. Were there not emotions at all in the dreams or is dream-telling in the matrix that leave out emotional contents? This struck an electrical nerve and a conversation about how offering dreams in a Matrix means to let go of emotional attachments to them, and how the individual experience of a dream is simply not heard or perceived differently by other participants. Sometimes this creates a feeling of misunderstanding, of not being heard (or listened to). We are reminded that the dreamer is not important only the dream that can evolve and mutate in the matrix through the multiple reflections (mirrors!). Listening to our listening.
E-Motion as emotive movement. The Internet and the grid help the circulation of electricity, but Social Dreaming has been doing this for thousands of years. Are the zoom windows, the glass through which we peek into each other’s lives, the sliding doors of imaginary underground stations obstacles or opportunities to touch other people lives through dreaming?
Post Matrix integrations
Participants in the Let’s Dream together have some tools (mailing list, Facebook groups by Centre for SD, personal exchanges.) to continue the conversations activated by the SDM. It appears that an integration done few days down the road from a Matrix helps work on some sedimented thinking that might still be turbulent closer to the matrix. Following are some of the thoughts emerged in this after the game moment, few of which have been threads brought along through the series
The sense of disembodiment is often associated through different social dreaming matrix with the increase in the use of online communications made it mandatory by governments and public and private institutions due to the ongoing emergency created by the Covid-19. This especially typical in Covid-19 themed matrixes but it appears inevitable even in this series which has no explicit frame of reference.
However the disembodiement experience and referred to separation it perfectly fits in the groove follow the body/mind dualism which affected the way many cultures made sense of human experience throughout history. The reference to ancient spiritual and philosophical myths is often presents in the dreams of the series, but this time made us converge on questions like: what is the dreaming body? The tendency to divide and separate is common during reflection moments and interpretation dialogues. Within the Dream matrix the unbound language of dreaming show a more location independent: Bodies and focus of attention shift, transform, dislocate.
When we try to read our social surrounding through the lens of dreams are we limiting the impact of SD by applying an external interpretative layer on a content than in itself could be generative of new radical thinking?
Which dynamics appear? The dynamics of bottom up (Dream to social representation) vs Top Down (social representation to dream)? Do we use dreams in Society or do we use Society in Dreams?
This problem gets to the core of the infinite reflection through mirrors experienced, that touch the relation between individual/social. Who are you but my reflection?
A deep related questions is: are stereotypes, cognitive biases, epistemological obstacles, affecting the way we reflect and associate with dreams in a social dreaming matrix? Or… do dreams help show us how our interpretative lenses need to be adjusted in order to read a richer and more interconnected reality?
Part of the implicit themes of the Let’s Dream Together experiments became along the way “the way we work online” in the specific with social dreaming and in general with groups.
Social dreaming is proving to be a good enough container for anxiety during online sharing even though there are open ended questions about how to harness full potential in online world.
There sits the debate on camera on/camera off, having the body free to engage in physical activity while in the matrix so far does not see a clear consensus. During the experiments we tried different type of body relaxation, yet with mixed feeling and reactions. However even this experiment do not seem to offer a shared opinion yet.
There is also a suggestive hypothesis that hosts (and people connected to host responsibility like tech and integration) can have a different experience than participants, as they might be engaging in typing and other activities, with the hosting team more focused on cognitive processing and participants more in emotional processing. Online environment might enhance this divide.
The idea of “Social Emotion” emerged as a consequence of the link emotion / body, particularly in this last matrix. A question emerges: Is Social Emotion in virtual setting same as in face-to-face settings?
Despite the physical distance, and the international character of the series some participants reported the perception of a thread connecting us all (metaphor of sailing through water) that make them feel as if they were in the same room.