A Different Dream
A Different Dream explores how to manifest our deepest yearnings for peace, happiness, joy, belonging, and love through the emerging culture of friendship and joy. If we want to manifest thriving in our lives, both personally and culturally, we need to reshape our lives and culture to support the far-sighted, healthy energies of thriving.
At A Different Dream, we explore diverse topics about the connection between joy and pleasure as foundations for well-being, democracy, and the emerging thriving culture that embraces the rights of all living beings. We explore the seeds of self-trust we possess and consider how we can create a world that fosters trust in all aspects of life.
Get Ready For Democracy 2.0
Many think we are trying to save democracy. I would suggest that we have stuck our toes in the water with the assertion of individual rights - rights that are currently under attack. However, without a commitment to a common good in a country or the world, it is difficult to rein in the more predatory individuals and groups in our societies.
Individual rights are important. However, when the common good is not asserted, defended and maintained, those who would trample on individual rights gain the upper hand. Policing predatory behavior can be costky and challenging. Therefore, to harmonize individual rights and communal rights, each country, and each group within that country needs to make the common good their North Star. When the common good is an accepted norm along with individual rights, greed and other predatory behaviors are discouraged and more easily controlled.
One of the beautiful things about a common good is how it adapts to changing circumstances. It can be grounded and flexible. One thing it is not is dogmatic.
It is time to take the next step in democracy and establish the common good as the binding value that connects and frees us at the same time.
We are living during the greatest transition in human history. We have entered an adventurous time, an opening to a new way. We are crossing a threshold from the old to the new. We can catch glimpses of this new way through:
the problems and challenges crying out for fresh thinking,
those places in culture and nature where life seems broken,
the deep desire in people to be able to be themselves,
the exhaustion that comes from having to give so much to receive so little in return,
the extreme depletion of the earth resulting in continuous emergencies and life-threatening conditions,
the fresh investments in real community and consciousness offering a new sense of possibility,
the yearning for more freedom and balance.
A Different Dream is about this time of reclaiming, resetting, and renewing. It asks,
How can we create a world based on healthy thriving and trust? How can we be more ourselves, and what new way could we create? How could joy and pleasure become important foundations for a world that celebrates and honors the rights of all beings? How can they be important to a new emerging culture that fosters thriving and trust?
We are on a journey from a fear-based world to a joy-based one, which becomes our reality when we shift from predatory, hierarchical systems to egalitarian, thriving ones.
We need to transition from a short-sighted, violent, fear-based world to one that fosters thriving. Short-sigted, emergency creating culture is one reason we are struggling so much.
Thriving is a totally different approach to life. It is long-sighted and serves the common good, which supports everyone. The energies we need to cultivate this new way are self-love, connection, and joy: the energies of thriving.
I personally think we need to start a totally new conversation about how we can create a world that fosters thriving, trust, and joy and all of the goodness they create. We must accept the unraveling of our current survival/struggle system and the path of degrowth, which will bring us back into harmony with the Earth. We also must embrace and support the emerging culture of aliveness, which is based on the right of all living beings and the living earth - an important requirement if we are to actually create a new system of thriving. The new system will be totally different in terms of energy, pacing, priorities, and values. We need to welcome the feminine into the public square and invite new ideas about how to live embedded in and friendly to all of nature.
In this Substack, we discuss what and why our culture and system are dysfunctional in order to make the shifts and productive choices we need. We also discuss different possibilities for opening up our imaginations and creating a healthier world for ourselves. The frameworks we discuss provide inner mental understanding and emotional and energetic support to shift our alignment from the fear-based world to the emerging thriving model. We discuss new ways to think about ourselves, our culture and offer practices and new ideas for living to make it easier to embrace an uncertain future.
Most importantly, you get to write the new story. We make it easier for you to do so.
Topics
Our posts and discussions are meant to illuminate the deeper patterns creating our living conditions. With clarity about how we got to where we are and what needs to change, along with an understanding of the new emerging culture, making choices that serve you and those you love will be easier and more satisfying. We do not have to, nor can we afford to, live in a world built on violence and distrust. Culture does not have to be this ugly.
Most importantly, these topics help you embrace more of your wholeness, which will make living in a collaborative world easier. You will feel more secure and appreciate yourself more. These are our topics:
Democracy 2.0: What is not working and why? What deeper patterns and foundations are our current cultural systems built on? What are the intentions and consequences of these old building blocks of culture? What and how does culture stand in the way of necessary change, and what can we do about it? What is creating the violence and distrust in the world? What unreality is not working, and what reality needs to be given space? What is the next step in democracy, what is involved and how to we embrace it?
A Different Dream: How do we create a culture that makes trust, thriving, and healthy aliveness central to our culture, not the survival model? What does a culture that fosters trust, thriving, and healthy aliveness look like, and what is required to make it a reality? How does friendliness towards ourselves and life change our cultural structure and institutions and make life easier and better? How does the Commons provide a way to create a world that is healthier, more functional, and friendlier to all? What is a world healthy in all aspects like?
Embracing Gentle Living: How does gentle living make it easier to live in a state of flow, in connection with reality, ourselves, and each other? How does gentle living help us make nature a part of the conversation in life, not just a resource to be used? How does a model of caring heal all people and the earth? What are practical ways to take back our lives and transform them through a human-scale gentle living approach?
New Sovereignty: What foundations of human culture block healthy autonomy and agency? What do we need to know about the old authoritarian and patriarchal patterns of the past to release those which no longer serve us? How can we come to terms with the deceptions and violence of these systems? How can we release false enchantments of unworthiness to welcome a new relationship with ourselves that embraces and celebrates the good in ourselves? How can a Joy Practice help us shift into a healthier relationship with ourselves and all aspects of life? How can we reclaim our agency for friendship towards ourselves and others? How does balanced ecological living support healthy autonomy and agency and prepare us for a collaborative, inclusive world, especially for those marginalized by circumstance: race, gender, nationality, or childlessness?
The Joy Practice The joy practice is a way to focus our energies constructively. It helps us shift our energies from competitive and hierarchical ways of being to practical and grounded approaches to life that are low conflict and more social. Our hierarchical systems are anti-social and that needs to change. With a focus on gratitude and what we are creating, a joy practice enables us to enjoy our contributions and those of others, all of which make this world a beautiful place.
Joy As A Practice
It is time to celebrate the good in ourselves, each other, and the world.
For thousands of years, the world has been anchored in fear. We need a new anchor supporting an emerging collaborative, healthy, grounded culture. It is time to change from a world based on fear to a new world based on thriving, which creates the energy of joy, not just as a feeling but as an energetic foundation and skill.
Joy is a different kind of bold. It lets us imagine new possibilities and tap into new sources of power to heal ourselves and the challenged world we call home. When we exchange ideas about scarcity for the freedom of being and having enough, we make space for ourselves, each other, and the needs of nature.
Embracing having and being enough means we can chill and go easier on ourselves and others. We, therefore, have space for the natural flow of what poet David Whyte calls "the conversational nature of reality." Embracing this new way opens the door to joy.
Joy is not just a feeling. Joy is an intelligence, an anchor, a practice, a skill, and a compass. Joy is a way to make friends with ourselves, each other, and nature. It is time to make the spirit of friendship that joy creates a living reality in our lives.
Joy invites fresh, cherishing energy and a way to love ourselves and our lives. Since we are embedded in the natural and human world, we can think of joy actively and playfully as a skill or practice. This is how we create all sorts of openings for ourselves and others through fresh possibilities.
A Different Dream is a place for the questions we need to ask, and that beg to be asked so we can rethink how we live to create something new. It is a pathway to a new way of being.
At A Different Dream, our intention is to invite practicality, sanity, groundedness, health, and joyfulness into our lives so we can be a constructive part of the rebalancing necessary to live more aligned with nature and accepting of ourselves and others. it is a freedom we all deserve.
Please join us at the link below.
Who this is for
People who are:
committed to democracy and interested in exploring how we take the steps to create Democracy 2.0
tired of a world that does not work and ready for one that does.
in the process of transformation and seeking new ideas.
invested in seeking new, healthier ways of living.
who know they deserve better.
who have been marginalized through their nature (sensitive/empath), life circumstances (childless), and social norms around racial and other forms of identity and want a better life.
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