Dreaming Circle
What is Dreaming Circle about ?
The Dreaming Circle is one of the essential skills of Dragon Dreaming. It is the process by which, in a win-win way, the project of an individual becomes the project of a team. In the Dragon Dreaming pathway, this is the first stage. The next stages then are the planning, the doing and the celebrating, which are not in our focus in this description.
Working on a project that has been started by someone else always generates less personal motivation than working on a project collectively owned by a group. And yet every project is always started as the dream of an individual. But, all too often the dream is not shared. And yet as Carl Gustav Jung and Australian Aborigines knew, we rarely ask, “where do such dreams come from”. Failure to share our dreams in an appropriate way is one reason why 90% of all projects get blocked in the dreaming stage. It is easier to work on “our project” than to work on “his project”, and yet every project starts as an idea of one person. How can this apparent paradox be resolved?
Catherine Baldwin calls this first process “calling” or “casting the circle”. This is the first stage in converting an individual intention into a collective one for Dragon Dreaming, and is a process by which “project ownership” is transferred from the individual to the group. Rather than maintaining a sense of possession, the group becomes custodians of the collective dream of the project. But to do this it needs a “Dream Team”, an initial circle group that can be drawn from friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances, or people you have identified because of their possession of special skills, who come together to share a dream.
The method, philosophy and background knowledge of Dragon Dreaming, and in particular here the Dreaming Circle, support people who want to make our society more eco-social: to playfully plan projects, to strengthen the community and to bring about a change towards sustainability.
Audience
Is participant experience relevant for Dreaming Circle ?
Audience description for Dreaming Circle
Anyone.
An initial Dreaming Circle group can be drawn from friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances, or people you have identified because of their possession of special skills, who come together to share a dream.
Requirements
a space where everyone can sit in a circle and won’t be interrupted by sound or weather
Run Through
Identify people for your Dreaming Circle, pick a time and place that is convenient for all, a place free from external distractions, and where excitement of the participants will not disturb others in the vicinity (a crowded restaurant is not advised!).
Meditation, drumming, singing or some other exercise to make a transition from the hustle and bustle of everyday life into a ceremonial or intentional setting.
Introduction
Dream and record
- Talking piece - one person takes the talking piece and only this person - holding the talking piece - is empowered to speak. The others practice deep listening. Exceptions: expressing that you can not hear the speaker or saying “ho” or “ah-ho” to express support or agreement
- The simplest form is to pass the talking piece clockwise around the circle. Each person pauses in silence when the piece comes to them and feels into which dream may be arising that wants to be shared.
- Use Pinakarri (=is a word of the Aboriginal Mandjilidjara Mardu people of Western Australia and literally means "ears standing up" and is usually translated as "deep listening," a listening with the whole bodymind.)
- Use a talking piece
- When writing, write the essence of the dream, not a whole paragraph
- Each person adds one dream at a time
- Neither be too rational nor too abstract
- Relate the dream to real-life
- Write the dream positive and as if it would already be real
Closing
Next steps
Online
Maybe, a Dreaming Circle could work online, but we don’t have the experience yet. We are open to hear from you if you have experienced an online Dreaming Circle. We can imagine that an adaptation can be that the speaker can choose who is next until all have spoken.
Variations
Material for
Talking piece, pen and paper to capture the dream, gong or candle in the middle to mark the beginning and the end of the Dreaming Circle.
The Dragon Dreaming Ebook. A systemic design process, a philsosophy and a methodological framework for the realisation of collaborative and regenerative projects, organisations and platforms: https://dragondreaming.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/DragonDreaming_eBook_english_V02.09.pdf
Other Resources – The Fact Sheets: https://dragondreaming.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Final-Index-DRAGON-DREAMING-FACTSHEET.pdf
Impact
project
ERASMUS +
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. Find more information about the program and its goals here: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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