VIA REGIA WORKSHOP The International Dream Conference

Amsterdam 25-29 July 2011: Rita Westvik, Norway

Unity and Honouring Diversity.

WORKSHOP July 29; 13:00-15:00 Amsterdam, Rita Westvik

we share the Dream

Professional life, for me never strictly separated from personal life, has been: 1 part media, 1 part politics, 1 part science and 1 part night-life, dream-life included. "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of

the mind." (Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900)

About this dreamer:• 30 years of brainblogging• Paintings• VIA REGIA – an interactive

e-book manuscript • 2 scholarships

• Part 1: Theory• Part 2: Day-and night-

book notes from 1987 and 1997

I have been a brainblogger since early eighties and have filled more than a hundred hand written books with dream-stuff. I have now finished my book manuscript VIA REGIA - Tales from the Otherworlds. Although neuroscience and brain research has moved Freud’s ideas more to the periphery; dreams are still the royal road, the Via Regia to the unconscious activities of the mind. Dreams are windows into the hidden self, navigating between many worlds, a VIA REGIA to deeper understanding of our emotional, mental and spiritual development, both as individuals and as a species. To my experience dreams still present themselves in distorted, weird narratives with coded messages.

"Even a BLIND HORSE WILL FIND knowledge" is the title of one of my dreams. This horse I meet in a dream on a sidewalk restaurant in Paris, where a lot of talking animals use to hang out. The horse has one open and one closed eye, but is blind to both. The horse wants my Red Apple, and resolutely sticks it’s mouth towards the fruit. I warn against a small part, a little bad spot, but the horse is extremely sensitive and sure of himself and eats the whole apple in one gulp — with the exception of the bad little bite. Maybe the horse a variant of Ambrosia, which was the name of a woman who was blind in one eye and sought healing in a dream Temple in ancient Greece. She laughed of cures offered her in the wake state, but in her dream she was healed — for the pay of a silver- coin. Was she really healed? That we cannot know. But we all know the consequences for mankind when Eve ate the apple from the tree in the Garden of Eden.

Who am I, what constitutes a Norwegian woman like me? In a longer perspective, both you and I are a result of a random link of the amino acids in the beginning of time, formed by dust coming to Earth from outer space; a consequence of a big bang, or was it perhaps a mild exhalation.

Perhaps are each and every one of us frozen souls in the era of global warming; a consequence of an erratic moment of indecision some place in cosmos, probably in Africa’s darkness. Breath. Star Dust. Amino Acids. Coincidences. Mitochondria, the power stations inside our cells.

In the womb we are already bearing an entire world of development in the deeper memory. I think that's why the fetus and the infant newborn dream so much; the brain has to download and save in deep and virtually inaccessible archives all history, all stages, all survival tricks, everything a living creature might need in the next phase; life as a solitary being on our blue planet.

We like to think that the body is a machine with interchangeable spare parts and that the brain is a computer. In our anthropocentric approach and exaggerated confidence that technologies can save the world we tend to neglect the fact that we are both animals and spiritual/mythological creatures.

I myself like to levitate and fly in my dreams.-)

In the first part of this workshop I will share some findings and reflections with you in a presentation based on VIA REGIA followed by a dialogue (to explore the basic purposes of dreaming).

The meaning of dreams is not necessarily the most important meaning of dreaming. So: What is the meaning of dreams?

To dream is paradoxically to wake up; in our dreaming state we make sense of loads of information, store and strengthen signals, learn and reflect - which in turn change our practices in wake practice and make us more alert and receptive to signals and patterns we otherwise would not notice.

ACTIVE MINDS and PARALYZED BODY characterize out dreaming state of mind-body.

Sir Eugene Aserinsky + Nathaniel Kleitman discovered REM sleep, but it seems that the dream can occur in other phases, so passive versus active sleep is a possible better description. Active sleep is more a type of lively wakefulness than quiet sleep; speed, life and drama – a state of stimulus, exploration, discovery and colorful experiences – while we are paralyzed in the body. This is nature's way to protect the dreaming creature; that otherwise would be an easy prey – for themselves and others.

I see dream as a continuous download of information and experience, inherited from times and species we don't know, and that gives us the necessary natural wisdom of life itself. In addition dreams make a sort of an alarm system enabling us to protect ourselves and wake up if something is threatening and simulating danger to prepare for possible threats in wake condition. Reptile brains are dictated by genes. With the mammals comes the emotions; passion, hatred, fear, anger, love, attraction. Nathalie Angier brilliantly summarizes: "The bigger the brain, the bigger the emotions". That is nature's law.

At an anatomical level dreams seem to have a function of rewiring, reconnecting and strengthening connections between neurons. Some computational neuroscientists talk about

the connectomes, as a field of scientific interest connected to research on genomes and proteomes. The USNational Institutes of Health has already begun the “human connectome project”, planning to map the brains of 1200 people the next 5 years (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, fMRI etc, New Scientist Feb 2011).

As connectomes and bridge builders our dreams can help the construction of the subjective notion of structures, symbols, and relevance-systems in our wake life. If we don't fully understand what these words mean, it doesn’t matter, just reflect upon the words. Some words grow in meaning over time. It is a good practice to read or listen to something we don't understand – every day.

Dreams add to our creative, social, emotional and erotic capital and basically determine who we are – or rather; who we are becoming. Maybe it's just music, in addition to dreams, that can capture the deep resonances and dissonances that both the individual human being and our collective life is accompanied by. Musical training seems to significantly alter the structure of our brains (increased auditory skills, higher reading abilities, larger vocabulary etc.)

What stimulates the brain stimulates our dreaming. Nowadays THE BRAIN AND DREAM FOOD at a physical level is thought to be the chemical group called FLAVONOIDS rather than fatty acids, found in blueberries, cocoa, green tea and red wine. And I would add to the list of affordable dream food: Light, love and long nights. And music, of course!

So; to the other meaning of meaning: What can be the meaning of dreams?

How much can we really stand and under-stand ourselves while we live? It is my point of departure that my ability to understand myself and my own dreams are limited. Most of the insights we obtain during our lifetime are through dialogue and negotiations with the living beings we meet and interact with. It is never without friction to mingle with others, but it is the only path to development – if we are not going to be arrogant loners, spin crazy or uncontrolled anarchists. Dialogue is a key to more insights and less war. Dreams may disguise, displace and distort the content. They are at the same time surprisingly shameless in their lack of censorship. Dreams are individual and collective experiences sent to our dreaming minds from the dark unconscious, sometimes to our wake bright minds. It’s my hope that we all will be more receptive to the free streaming from ourselves to ourselves.

My dreams are not my dreams; something more and bigger than me dreams IN ME. Is there a collective subconscious? We dream the same dreams, “we sail together, we share the dream” – are we co-dreaming? I think so. To my experience more then one person may explore the same dream landscapes simultaneously, the same way as synchronicity takes place in everyday life. We humans are all wandering biochemical factories and museums; the zinc and magnesium in us now was also there in the first soup of life. We are future beings from outer

space, who never cease to surprise others and ourselves. The last stop in life is death, the transition to another State of existence. Then our present ecosystem is transformed. The ancient salt lake which forms the sea inside every cell will dissolve; overflow its boundaries, burst through the membranes and into the light, where the language in my vision is speechless, but immensely rich and delightfully understandable. Like coming "home".

Life may as well be understood as an episode, a field of meaning created between complex frequency fields. Dream in this perspective can be understood as an intangible middle-world between life and death. Or one of Many Worlds.

I like to think of dreams as oxygen for the learning mind, balm for the brain, snapshots of the soul, an emotional compass at a biological level. Dreaming is free, and on the stage of our night theatre we can never know whether we will see a horror movie, simulating threats and fears; an embarrassing porn film, showing repressed wishes, maybe?; a surrealistic play or an animal animation with talking horses.

The basic meaning of dreams is to extract meaning from tons of information, reveal the true emotions, often suppressed; to help us in coping with life’s challenges and to give us creative insights – in short; dreams are decisive in determining who we are and where we are heading.

It is my hope that we will devote more attention to our own dreams in our personal lives and while interacting with others; at work, at parties, in hardship, in prayers and in workshops; yes, every day; all the time.

Dreams, as gifts, only come to those who want to open parcels.

The hypercreative dreaming mind

In 1987 in Narcissus video; a company two others and I had started, we are a team who are dealing with sound, light, camera, acting, editing and production management; I am the director and the scriptwriter. In 1982 I had started the world's first female radio, radiOrakel, then I lead the great television series on the fly in the in the era of the state broadcasting-channel’s monopoly. Now is the ambition to perform behind the camera – dealing with a complex area; gender and education in natural sciences. In my studio apartment in Oslo I dream up the script. I'm writing, sleeping, thinking, squeezing out the essence of the dreamt messages, reading, writing, sleeping, drawing pictures, storyboard, dreaming, typing lines — and sleeping again.

The result is "Size 38, a footnote for female engineers", a film that later receives the first price both in Norway and in an international festival in Dublin in the class best educational film.

I choose Size 38 as an example for two reasons; it’s an example of dream as a source of creativity and spot on solution to challenges, second; the dreams sent me images, scenarios and metaphors to describe dilemmas in young women’s lives in the age of equal rights in a Scandinavian country.

Dream is a state of living, creative FLOW; and our consciousness - that is free from the EGO tyranny when we sleep – tries to create stories and make sense from the inner and outer impulses that reach the production centre for the dream. Signals from the reptile brain fires against our dreamy right brain and mingles with a myriad of other signals, memories and experiences. "Dream is more natural than the awake state," says Nobel Laureate Henri Bergson. Many great artists have used dream actively in their creative work, think of Luis Bunuel’s The Andalusian dog, Salvador Dali and his "hand-painted dream photos", Federico Fellini's 8 ½, Ingmar Bergman, Mark Twain, Coleridge, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Developed night vision and ear for the future — or "the time of the Otherworlds" - can change the world. Paul McCartney's Yesterday came in a dream.

"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"1

Dreams have given rise to myths, visions, frenzy, religions, predictions and boundless mis-interpretations; maybe also to visions, meeting with ghosts or aliens, out-of-body-experiences and the like. It's the way we use our knowledge and our imaginative talent that determine what

1 Les mer om ”briljante” drømmer her http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm

dreams becomes in our consciousness. I am only modestly interested in the many dream symbol encyclopedias on the market; at best, the "meaning" of dreams in terms of interpretation is of limited importance. I'm also careful not to “over-interpret” my own and others' dreams; the dream has first and foremost value in itself, secondly as food for our egos. They operate on their own surreal terms, within frames of an illogical logic, in a chaotic pattern, with a non-linear narrative style and in strange time/space dimensions we can only dream about in the awake state:-) A dream may have many possible interpretations, all valid – the most important aspect is that they contribute to reflection, insights, knowledge, astonishment and joy...

I like Pinks summary of the under-estimated right brain qualities in this context: not only function, but the design; not just the argumentation, but stories, not just the focus, but also Symphony (the whole, all the pieces together), not only logic but also empathy not only serious but also fun, not just accumulation, but also meaning. (Daniel H. Pink A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future)

To sum up: Dreams are a gift of God — or rather: nature's way to signify its hidden form, to in-form us; so that our knowledge could include more layers of wisdom than the frontal lobe alone can understand. Act and think double - and triple!

Open up to the otherworld, act and think double!

Dreams are a gift of God — or rather: nature's way to signify its hidden form, to in-form us

And triple..

Our brain is mindblowingly creative. The dream factory is inclusive, creative and superfast!

First and foremost the dream activity, which is extremely vital and awake, is a mental practice in essential creative method and process.

How do dreams contribute to create our mental constructions? The HUMAN MIND is OUR TIME'S MOST IMPORTANT ARENA; we live in a consciousness revolution that concerns us all, where our animal design conflicts with our mental constructions harder than before. Religious mindsets are forcing themselves into work-space and public space, nature speaks highly to us in a language we no longer can ignore and technologies are forced to play more in line with natural biological design.

The notion of objective truth that’s still ruling most of the academic world should be supplemented with an acceptance that we are governed by dynamic forces that are both deeper and higher than the ones we dare to acknowledge, that governs us whether we know it or will it, both in politics, work and private life. Dreams challenge our anthropocentric egos and give us a free entry to an extended type of consciousness and cognition.

Dreams are decisive in constructing our mental maps, our cogno-scripts – and thereby influences how we navigate in our conscious world.

Some words about the BATTLE for SPACE in the brain

The reptile brain, mammalian brain and neocortical brain cooperate and compete for space in the human mind. There are many different forms of knowledge and emotions conveyed and managed in the brain. Stimuli and impression must be sorted and processed and stored for us to survive. Processing and storage is perhaps not precise terms, for the mind is not a computer. Brain archives are much more fluid, spatial and more dynamically organized than a computer.

Man is the smartest and most cruel eco-system created. That's basically why human beings — and other smart terrible mammals - dream. The brain is developed, the head is large and it is impossible at the present level of development to handle all of the information necessary to keep up survival. The price other species have had to pay in the development cycle is death and extinction. Humans survive — for now. The brain needs to hold and find knowledge and experiences in context; when it is needed. Dreams help sorting, processing and storing, and is a kind of emergency preparedness nature has equipped our big brains with.

Life is superior intelligence, a biological riddle and dynamic natural chemistry. Life as we know it is also threatened by human activities. We might need more of the dream way of processing info in the years to come!

CREATION and DESTRUCTION are INEXTRICABLY CONNECTED:

The disruptive element is essential, both in dreams and creative work. The bizarre and crazy is the key to development and mastery; no creation takes place without destruction.

Everyone's brain is as we know, divided into two hemispheres, although the brain simply doesn't work as simple and predictable as a lot of left and right-brain- reports have suggested.

Of all internal organs the brain is the most vulnerable and complex. My second favorite organ; Woody Allen has called it.

James Watson (who contributed to the DNA detection) says about the brain that it is "the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe."

• Dreams – a cognitive style of our times

What is the language of dreams? Dreams are a form of basic body-bio-language, cryptic ancient eco-knowledge; nature’s own visualized night tales to us from the Otherworlds, the more-than-us-intelligent realms we are immersed in. Secrets from the otherly darkness enter our minds as wonderful, surprising and often weird narrative forms. Dreams are whistleblowers on behalf of life itself, telling us what our awake mind need to know; helping us to de-learn and re-learn, create, solve problems and receive vital knowledge and health. What characterizes the narrative and cognitive style of dreams? It's surreal, visual, without linear logic, without the ordinary drama-curved composition, emotionally charged and with a personal gallery that fluctuate. Something more-than-us dream in us and there is no single creator of dream narratives. Dream is first and foremost a creative process, which includes non-linear principles of construction and deconstruction, perhaps chaotic by nature. A dream(s) jumps right into action modus, in medias res, as we call it - and often hits the spot with surgical precision when dealing with emotional themes. Dreams are often, maybe always, right on spot. So the story develops according to principles of selection we yet don't know, but what might be connected to our associative capacity. That a person or a location transforms to another is perfectly natural and correct – as seen from the dream’s point of view. It is from this point of view, the dreams OWN, dreams in essence should be understood, as I see it. But of course, it is impossible to distinguish between unconscious and conscious state of mind, as it also is impossible to clearly define when we are asleep or not.

THE DREAM IS A DYNAMICALLY CREATED VISUAL STRUCTURE, A NIGHT VISION IN A STATE OF FORMATION AND BECOMING, sometimes reaching our conscious mind.

Here are my theses in short: Dreams give nourishment to myths. Myths are food for Soul - soul understood as our personally experienced psychic reality – or if you like, our mental constructions.

I suggest that dreams are to the soul what oxygen is to the body; the lifeblood of our earthly – and maybe eternal? - existence. We live in times of a consciousness and relational revolution, connecting in social networks and dynamic eco-systems that surround us and define us. Dreaming is a basic life-supporting biological brain activity in all mammals. Dreaming is a truly creative process. Human imaginative powers are immense. What controls our minds control the development. To my mind dreams are an underestimated source of knowledge, creativity and evolution in our time.

Dreams do not have just one specific function. They include, like all brain activity, a wide range of healing, learning, memorizing, innovating and creative activities.

We dream at an average 104 380 dreams per life. It is reasonable to assume that dreams have a significant meaning in human life and all life. Nature does not waste energy.

The transpersonal psychologist and author Ken Wilber explores a wide range of fields and issues, from cosmic events to gender roles - and dreams, and hurray to him for that. In the book A Brief History of Everything he discusses the symbolic meaning of dreams to our inner universe and recommends dialogue-based cures to explore the emotional content of a dream. We can observe surfaces, but our inner depths we need to interpret. “You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it's your dream.”

Dreaming is our "storytelling time", says Rosalind Carteright "- to help us know who we are, where we're going and how we're going to get there".

Storytelling is the dreamform, albeit in a somewhat surreal form. We express our experiences through storytelling; dreams are true stories about the Self. Dream is according to Bert O. States, professor of Dramatic Art at UCLA, Santa Barbara, an UR-FORM of ALL fiction. He says:

"What became more and more apparent to me in writing that book was that dreaming is the ur-form of all fiction."

In our dreams past and future meet. I think that's why I love to be there; it is the only true now, purely phenomenological; the dream is in you, in the NOW, in the story – until you wake up enriched with new stories of your life. Dreamt stories and RLstories are equally valid to me. They only unfold on different energy and consciousness-levels. Dreamt drama is an experienced reality. Dreamland is the Soul ‘s favorite place. Dreamland is also the destination connecting us to the realms of death. There we practice turning the ego off and on and pure mental being. To dream is to practice dying as much as an exercise for life. All living systems are designed to die, sooner or later.

There is a God living in you, which is the same God that lives in me. God is looking through both of our eyes, gazing at Her own ubiquitous splendor. There is nothing that is not God. Everything is God. Which means, in a very real sense, that you are God.2

Ken Wilber (holistic integral theory)

”The ultimate mystical goal is to be united with one’s god”, says Joseph Campbell in a chapter called Masks of Eternity (Power of Myth 1991), telling that while he was in a gathering talking about living out the sense of Christ in you " a priest in the audience turned to the woman at his side and whispered; "it is blasphemy."”

In the book Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women's Lives, gestalt and Jungpsychologists Jennifer Barker Jung-Woolger and Roger J. Woolger argues that old mythology’s goddesses represent eternal feminine qualities that our sick, violent and contaminated culture need to lift up and honor. They refer to the Hopi-Indian’s term Koyaanisqatsi, which means "the crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living" when describing our contemporary time. We're missing the feminine dimension of our spiritual and psychological life, argues the two; 2 April 02, 2010 17:21 http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/602

the deep and mystical experience of being associated with the Earth and the forces that make up our everyone's great mother.

Summing up; dreams are the essence/ur-form of storytelling; stories are the essence of myths, myths are the essential food for souls – dream language is the cognitive style of our times to address our world’s huge challenges. How can we build bridges between night and day? How can we best understand and exchange dream language? Every dreamer dreams in a context. YOU are the expert. Can dreams help us communicate across cultural, geographical and gender borders? Can dreams be the VIA REGIA to

Unity and Honouring Diversity in times of major challenges and change?

What controls our minds control the

development.

VIA REGIA

My final remarks are as follows:

Dream language is connected to the INTELLIGENCE of the HEART. Dreams have rarely simple explanations, even though there may be an exact discipline to interpret them, both one’s own and others'. Some indigenous people dream together in preparation for the ceremonies and as part of rituals. In their consciousness it is the heart that dreams and it must build bridges between the heart and mind, between what is felt and what is thought the felt and the thought. Jung says that interpreting dreams require psychological coordination, empathy,

intuition, knowledge about the world and the people and, above all, a special "canniness" based on a broad understanding, but also on a very special heart intelligence, "intelligence du coeur". Nature itself - or the creator if you like - talk to their creatures in our dreams. Therefore, some say that dreams are God’s language, while Freud uses the term Royal Road to consciousness (King’s road in Norwegian translation), I call it the Queen road, or the VIA REGIA. Without dreams, no life. Whether you remember them or not is not decisive; the crucial aspect is that dreams are deep biological processes that is a natural and necessary part of life itself. Neglecting dreaming messages and information might be dangerous to a culture in terms of survival. My dream is to establish a Serapeum, a dream tempel, inspired by the old Egyptians, or a ”demios oneiron”, a dream village suitable for our present and future needs.

Dream on! Thank you for watching and listening.