Update January 30, 2012
Almost a whole month into 2012! And just past the Dragon New Year in many parts of the world. Amazing isn’t it, to be alive in this time on planet Earth, so rich with possibilities, such as: a new consensus of awareness, one that incorporates all sentient beings into our consideration and appreciation! We hope you are all enjoying the conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon in the night sky at this moment, a time traditionally associated with expansion and sharing–and lightness, fluidity, and even (gasp) laughter!
We are excited about new events coming up this year, such as our awesome February workshop on February 11 and 12 in Pasadena– Look Who’s Talking: Dreaming Awe. You should see the shiny faces of the team here as we prepare this workshop–lots of discovery, lots of wonder, lots of joy. We are really look forward to sharing this exploration with you!!!
For a first taste of some of the wonder, you can look under “What’s New?” for the feedback from our recent webex class on the topic–thank you to all who wrote, your mood is deliciously contagious!
Our next webex class will be Saturday March 3 at 9 am PST, where we will pick up on some of the fruit from Pasadena and dream forward to the Equinox workshop in Sevilla on March 24 and 25: Dreaming Well-Being Forward: Navigating the River of Feeling Within. In Spain, we are going to breathe, sing, dance and track our way to a closer relationship with our own feeling nature and its vital role in our well-being. Updates for all these events and more can be found at www.cleargreen.com
So we are wishing you all a joyous awakening and expansion into full being–grounded in the generous earth, and lovingly embracing the sky–in this Dragon (winged serpent) Year of 2012!
with affection,
Cleargreen
Update September 24
Autumn/ Spring Salutations to Everyone! We’ve added some new items, including some of your findings from the St. Petersburg workshop, from the recent online class, “Finding Our Stories,” and a link to a very interesting discussion of science and consciousness from Dr. Deepak Chopra! Enjoy!
Update August 21, 2011
HAPPY LATE SUMMER/ WINTER TO ALL!
If you are new to Tensegrity® practice, click here for some helpful information! And here in our weblog, we’ve streamlined the organization to make it simpler and more accessible to you! Look to the “From You” section for sharing and feedback on all the various Tensegrity® classes and workshops, the “Romance with Knowledge” section for new articles and ideas of interest, and “What’s New?” named for Carlos Castaneda’s favorite question, for updates!!! Enjoy!!!
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Here we will post news related to Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity® events and topics of interest.
We will start with an online interview proposed by our co-sponsors for the upcoming workshops in Amsterdam, Netherlands: “The Art of Dreaming, Awake and Asleep, with our Fellow Navigators, the Whales,” and in Curitiba, Brazil: “What are You Longing For? Tales of the Xingu River”
You are welcome to send questions related to these workshops by Friday, November 19 at 12 noon PST to cleargreen@cleargreen.com Subject Line: Dreaming Interview. We will answer a selection of those questions here next week and the following; the first questions come from newcomers to the practice group in Berlin in their recent meeting of the “Taste of Dreaming Together” class. Please enjoy! Love, Cleargreen
What is the effect of dreaming on my daily life?
First let’s clarify what is meant by dreaming. Dreaming, for the seers of the lineage of don Juan Matus, is an art—it’s the art of being able to move the assemblage point—the orientation of our perception of the world—away from the position of self-reflection, where the focus is centered around “me,” to the many other positions that exist. Don Juan called this the art of “traveling on the sea of awareness”—an organized mass of energy fields in the universe that is aware of itself, and to which all beings are connected. To dream is to be able to shift the point of our connection to that sea, with a sense of order and purpose, retaining our integrity and ability to function effectively and constructively in daily life. It means restoring the joyful human adventure, returning to our nature as learners, as perceptual travelers, as creators in concert with the universe.
The seers of don Juan’s line first noticed that our perception shifts much more fluidly when we are sleeping—a time when the assemblage point moves naturally—but chaotically; and so they made the effort to bring order and purpose to that movement through a whole set of practices designed to help one open doors of awareness in one’s sleeping hours—starting with being aware when one is in a dream, and holding one’s attention on the items of that dream—and recognizing that one can act in that dream. And so, as our teachers pointed out, dreaming is a key part of moving past the habit of feeling like a victim, or believing that ‘someone is doing something to us,’ awake or asleep. We don’t have to, for example, be chased by a pack of dogs, or coworkers, or what have you, in our dreams—we can turn and ask them to stop. We don’t have to long wistfully to know what are the contents of that fascinating book with the golden cover sitting on the table. We can walk over to it, open the cover and start reading. If we are trained in mathematics, we can find solutions to complex equations—as Einstein did in his dreams. We can continue working on the essay, or the piece of music, or the architectural design, or the relationships we are working on in our waking hours; we can find inspiration and solutions and insight for an infinite number of things.
So the answer to how one’s sleeping dreams can affect one’s waking life is both individual and unlimited—each one ultimately finds that answer for herself or himself.
This leads us to a key parallel step in one’s daily awareness: To be aware that in waking life, one is also in a dream—a position of the assemblage point—and that just as one can act in dreams of night, one can also act in dreams of day. So we can look at: What kind of dreams are we living in our days? Dreams of joy? Struggle? Fear? Love?
Our teachers told us that there is a constant interplay between our waking and sleeping awareness, and that whatever kinds of dreams you are living in one state, you will be living those kinds of dreams in the other.
It’s all a question of where we put our attention. Because we have this marvelous inherent ability to choose the focus of our attention, we have a tremendous influence on our own experience. Modern physics, starting with Werner Heisenberg, and just about any discipline involving awareness, is now making a similar statement.
As some of you may have heard, our teachers encouraged us to be scientists of perception: Don’t take our word for it, they said—go investigate, find it out for yourself in your own experience. Find out if a shift of attention results in a shift of experience. You are more than capable of doing that.
So we have been exploring that possibility ever since, as have many of you—some of you are just beginning, others have been at it for a while; we look forward to all of us waking up and grooming the dreaming attention, together in Amsterdam and Curitiba.
Why is this workshop material to be kept to oneself after the workshop?
In these workshops we are going to create together a consensus, an agreement, of intent: the intent to cultivate and nurture the dreaming attention by being present to our senses—both inner and outer. A number of Tensegrity practitioners and groups are already participating in that intent by their practice, and by the dreaming attention exercises they did or are doing during and after the “Taste of Dreaming” class that is going on now in over 60 practice groups around the world: gazing together in their group’s spot of choice—by the ocean, or a grove of trees in a park just outside the practice hall, under the stars—and intending before they sleep at night, to dream, by recalling the mood and the wonder of that moment of gazing together. In that sense, the reach of this intent is big, and the beginnings of the new journey of dreaming are already being practiced and shared by many practitioners, many of whom have already told us about feeling a silence that was deep, calming, restful, individual, and shared—and that their attention and experience in their dreaming at night was greatly enhanced.
For the workshops themselves, we are asking participants to just practice what they learn there—practice it themselves and embody it. Our teachers recommended this to us as a way to take care of a new endeavor, a new dream, whatever it might be. They said it is a matter of energy, and they compared it to a new seed—do you plant the new seed, and allow it some time to take root and grow, giving it the appropriate amount of water and light? Or do you let it disperse with the wind, or constantly poke at it or dig it up out of the ground to show your friends—“hey, everybody, come and look, a root!” It seems funny—and it is—yet this is what we do, they said—left to our own devices, our habit is to disperse the energy of any new seed or dream in our lives, any moment where we start to get in touch with our deeper selves—we instantly want to tweet about it, or educate others about it, to find some way to be seen as special for it. And oops! All the energy goes to the ego’s agenda instead of to the actual dream.
Now if you are dealing with a nightmare, instead of a dream, that’s something to disperse, our teachers said. Go ahead and ask a friend if they have a moment to help you release what’s bothering you, and you can tell them privately and dispel the fear.
If on the other hand, you are dealing with the seed of a new dream, it’s an act of self-love to let the seed grow—to inhabit that dream, to cultivate the trust in yourself that you can really be in your own unique bubble before attempting to share with others.
We all have different passions, interests, lessons to learn, gifts to share—and we all have different ways of perceiving energy, some more oriented to sound, others more visually oriented, some more toward scent and taste, others more tactile or kinesthetic, others have an inner sense of “knowing”—or various combinations of the above. In these workshops and after, we want to give space, time and support to honoring and cultivating one’s individual way of dreaming and perceiving. It is the integrity of that individual journey that supports another layer of dreaming: dreaming together—an effort that will be enhanced by everyone at the workshop as well as those who are not physically there, yet who are nevertheless sharing the intent and practice of dreaming.
Those present at the workshops are of course free to share their experiences with each other and to stay connected afterwards, if they wish, in ways that support each other’s ongoing inner journey as dreamers.
Meanwhile, if you attend the workshop, and want to share something with your practice group afterwards, you can share your presence, your joy and keen awareness that comes from nurturing your own bubble of dreaming. That is a very powerful thing to bring to a practice group, and to any group endeavor.
© Laugan Productions and “Dreaming Together: Journeys in Tensegrity® Practice,” 2010-2012.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laugan Productions and “Dreaming Together: Journeys in Tensegrity® Practice” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
