Powering Dreams

The first Industrial Revolution introduced machines. The second changed the way we do things, to best make use of those machines. The third shifted machines from mechanical to digital. The fourth will again change the way we use things and do things. All these huge turning points affected both our daily lives and the way we identify ourselves. Real empowerment isn’t us being scared of, and so avoiding, being replaced by machines. Real empowerment is us pausing to reflect on what we want our daily lives to look like. How we want to identify ourselves. Then being in a position to choose. Living hand-to-mouth and tying our identity to our labour makes us a cog in the machine. The real Revolution is realising we sit above that. That we can consciously build Engines to power our dreams.

Powerloom Weaving in 1835

Acceptance

Things change from where they are. Having a vision of where we want things to be is a key part of being human. We dream. We can close our eyes and imagine other worlds. It is one of my coping tools. When things don't go the way I want, I imagine a parallel universe where another Trev is dealing with that world. A world I can visit when my eyelids meet. My responsibility is this world. This Trev. With these eyes, ears, and touch open. To gather the flavour of those dreams, I need to nudge this world by learning about it. Wu wei is the Tao concept of non-action. Acting in a wholly natural, uncontrived way. Taking things as they are. The irony being that by not striving, you can actually achieve more.

Wu Wei

Let It Be

I was out of action for almost two days on Sunday and Monday with a bug of some sort. My favourite form of medicine is sleep. It tends to get rid of most ailments. I find the bodies ability to fix itself magical. While it does it's thing though, and I tried to sleep, my thoughts tend to go awol. I wasn't knocked out for hours. It was closer to that broken, distracted sleep mixed with dreams that were all over the place.

I feel almost in control of most of my dreams. Like I am directing the story. The problem is the 'almost'. When I am anxious, my dreams will often hit dead ends or caught in a plot twist I do not like at all. They include various relationships - friendships, family, teachers, colleagues, and various other people that I have come across in my life. Normally the anxiety ends up revolving around some sort of misunderstanding. I feel like people just don't understand the truth. If they understood the truth, then everything would be fine. But the dream won't got the way I want it too.

Because I am typically in and out of sleep at these points, I sometimes catch myself. I tell myself I am dreaming. It is not a pleasant dream. Just stop it. But I feel like I am on the cusp of solving some momentous problem that will make everything fall in line. Just letting it be is hard. I dive back in.

After two days of various of these types of fights, I really didn't feel like doing my normal reading trying to understand the various conflicts around the world, and how we chip away at some of the big problems. I do think you need to make space for the mind to switch off. Two ways which, now that I have more time, I find really useful are cleaning and cooking. It is amazing how chores when you are busy, become pleasures when you have space. A lot of things increase in quality when you add space.

Yesterday I made BBC Good Food's Tomato Soup. Not rocket science to follow the recipe. With some music playing and lights on the Christmas Tree, it is much easier to let it be.

Dreams and Dreaming (My Mom)

'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakens.' Carl Jung

Dreams and dreaming is a concept that is often spoken about, but generally informed by what we hope for or imagine our future paths to be: ambitions and desires. However, for me, the more interesting understanding of dreams and dreaming is what happens at night when I sleep. The time when my mind creates a world of personal myths and unchartered waters. The dream world is exciting, informative and opens up new paths to self-discovery.

I love my dreams. The good, the bad and the terrifying. I cannot censor my dreams. They access the very centre of my being and if I am open to interpreting them in terms of my own experiences, then I am provided with new understanding regarding that which I want to present and that which I would prefer to leave hidden. It is in looking at the hidden that I am able to learn more about who I am and where I need to be challenged.

I can remember dreams from my early childhood and understand now that some of them were my way of trying to work though personal challenges that were beyond my control. To accept.

One of my earliest dreams was a recurring one in which my mother was in a Nazi concentration camp and was about to be executed (yes I am old: must be if I am Trev's mother!). In the dream I had to save my mother. The walls of the camp were fortress high and had no access. I always woke up in a panic and would try to figure out how I would save her: consciously I would create a plan but in my dream I always failed.

In hindsight I can make sense of the dream. My mother was very ill and I desperately wanted to save her, but could not. I stopped dreaming this dream when she died.

Did the dream alter the course of my life? Not at all, but it was one of the earliest dreams that challenged me to look at the part of myself that wants to be a 'super hero' and save the world. It has taken me years to understand that I can't save anyone - I can only listen and be present. To this day I still catch myself falling into the old trap but my dreams give me a nudge when I do so.

Some of my dreams have been awesome. Once I dreamt that I was with a close friend and he called me out to look at the sky. In my dream state I saw a heaven filled with dazzling light and a choir singing the theme song from 'Jesus Christ Super Star'.

If you examine this dream from your personal perspective and try to give meaning to what I dreamt without knowing me or my context at the time, you are likely to be wrong. My dream is my dream and the symbols can only be interpreted by me, often in conversation with a trusted friend who can help me unpack the meaning. My dream did however give me a moment of ecstacy (totally unrelated to the drug!)

Some dreams have taught me to look at my dark side. They are the more challenging and at times scary in that they often highlight what I don't want to see or look at. However, when I take the time to stop and examine them I am truly humbled by the uniqueness of our minds to provide us with very powerful metaphors and personal myths that can be life changing.

If you wake from a dream that lingers and leave you feeling unsettled then listen to your soul and explore the meaning of the personal story you have been given.

Storytelling, myths and legends as well as dreams have an ancient history. Dreams are recorded in all texts of great religions. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and many other ancient cultures valued dreams. Throughout history, and to this day, the value of dreams has been recognised.

'A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read' Carl Jung

'What a pity!' Swartdonkey's Mother

Chill Out and Work Hard (Jonathan Winter)

I caught up with an old friend and colleague in Jordan Springs on the weekend. Geoff had left Aus as teenager and has recently returned. He took me past the school he went to as a lighty. He says there were 72 of them in the school. His class was mixed with each row a different grade and the teacher teaching them all at the same time. I love the idea of that. When I was at school, a lot of the learning came through asking peers for help. Often the best teachers are those who know only a little bit more than you. They remember what it was like not to know! Living in residence at university gave me the chance to mix with some of the guys who had been at school with me, but a few years behind. Jonathan was one of those guys. I would have loved to be in a mixed classes with some the guys above and behind me like him. Good thing learning doesn't have to stop when school stops... a guest post from Jonathan Winter is coming.

Chill Out and Work Hard

by Jonathan Winter

Long term goals have not worked for me. Does that make me a failure? I’m not asking this question of you, dear reader. I’ve at least accrued enough wisdom to know that what you think of me matters less than what I think of me. So, do I think I am a failure? I live a comfortable lifestyle in a first-world country. I have sought-after university education, a supportive, loving network of family and friends, and a decent job that pays the bills. Yet, in the past, I have sometimes pontificated over the aforementioned question. Am I a failure because I haven’t lived up to expectations? The expectation that I will achieve the long term goals that someone of my ‘ability’ should be able to reach.

Stuff that!

I don’t think this is a unique trap that has befallen me. I, and many of my brethren in this vast, interconnected, globalised (western) world, have been taught to dream big. And when those dreams fall through, you and I are going to feel a bit shit about it, aren’t we? So I’ve decided that the real question I should be asking myself is: “What motivates me?” The answer is goals; short term goals.

I’ll let Australian comedian and musician, Tim Minchin, elaborate.

I advocate what Tim advocates: be micro-ambitious! Increasingly I’ve found that the successful people whose example forms the basis of our carefully formulated dreams are (a) exceedingly lucky and (b) successful not because they followed a dream but because they seized opportunities that arose whilst in pursuit of something they found stimulating. Consider the career of Jack Black. His background is fairly unremarkable, but what I take away from his story is that if opportunities had not come his way he would still be happily jamming away in his apartment with his buddy, Kyle Gas. Happy. You’re not going to seize opportunities if you’re not happy.

I suspect that the complex of chasing unrealistic dreams has worsened in the digital age with a previously unheard of degree of immediacy and access into the personal thoughts and lives of those we idolise. I’ll refrain from pointing to the egregious popularity of certain reality stars and socialites, but the opinions and commentary of the uber-successful tend to betray a truth that ostensibly says: these people are ordinary folk. Why can’t I be uber-successful too? The answer is (of course): Stop thinking like a damn fool. Paint that picture; invest $1000 in that stock you’ve been eyeing up; take that first kite-surfing lesson; reread that family law handbook. Set the finish line over here not over there. Keep busy and derive satisfaction from your micro-achievements. Let the bigger picture take care of itself a little bit.

One of my mother’s favourite idioms is “how do you eat an elephant?” (one bite at a time). I say forget about the elephant. Focus on finishing that chewy morsel on the elephant’s hindquarters. Maybe you’ll eventually eat the whole elephant; maybe a delicious minty slice of roast lamb will show up instead. Mmmm, roast lamb! Ok, ok, that tasty metaphor has run its course. In the interest of wrapping things up I’ll list a few other expressions that I think should be stricken from ‘common knowledge’:

• You can do anything if you put your mind to it
• You can be anyone you want to be
• Follow your dreams
• Do something you love, and you won’t work a day in your life (Ok I still quite like this one – doesn’t seem to work out very often though, just don’t let it get you down!)

I’ll leave you with the inspired ramblings of another comedian, Jim Jefferies (language warning)! Meanwhile, I’ll revel in the satisfaction of achieving the micro-goal of finishing this little article.