Become a Dream Activist
It feels like every moment there is more bad news. Disasters, scandals, death, and destruction live-streamed in our little pocket computers 24/7. An American politician recently said it was “God’s will” that the flooding happened in Texas hill country with no mention of climate change or the gutting of the National Weather Service, and liberals, who are rightly furious with the current administration, are saying Texans who voted for 47 deserved to lose their homes and children. Gazans face starvation and genocide backed by the US. We are truly in the worst timeline.
A friend of mine jokes that we jumped to this hellfire timeline when Prince and Bowie died. But we know that America was built to work exactly like this. And we also know that pandemics lead to fascism…there are numerous studies of this. As every single item in Project 2025 gets ticked off systematically, it can feel like anything we do wouldn’t make a dent.
But it’s not true. We can all make a difference and we are especially effective when we band together and find the area we can focus on instead of trying to put out every single fire ourselves.
Even so, many of us, especially those of us on the margins, are tired, burned out, depressed, anxious, and lacking hope. I get it. I can descend into those depths pretty easily myself as a chronically ill, disabled, queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent person. However, I see things every day that give me hope that we are going to make it through. I truly think we will.
Maybe it’s my intuition, maybe it’s that I’m practicing active hope (RIP, Joanna Macy), but I still believe we have a chance to dismantle oppressive systems and build a better world. It won’t be pretty, and it will likely be extremely challenging. And many of us may not see the outcome before we die, but that potential good outcome is worth fighting for.
In May, I taught the first cohort of the Social Justice Dreaming workshop at the Dream Portal, and I learned a lot from compiling the material and working with the students. I saw that when we tap into the forces greater than us, including our benevolent ancestors, Nature, Spirit/the Divine/the Universe, our intuition, and our invisible guides, we can access a well of hope and power that just might help us turn this damn thing around.
One thing you can do right now is use your imagination to envision things getting better, especially if you are someone with a vivid imagination who usually uses it to ruminate on terrible outcomes (I’m looking at myself here, by the way). Take 5 to 10 minutes to picture the best outcome you can imagine for one thing you care about. Really get into the feeling of it, tap into all of your senses, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t picture things in vivid detail. Make this a regular practice and do it as often as you can. What makes this practice even more powerful is doing it with others, especially eight people.
There is another cohort of my Social Justice Dreaming workshop starting August 8, where you will learn different intuitive practices that can help deepen and strengthen your activism. We will participate in at least one session where we will do the intention setting I described above as a group. One participant from the last cohort said she “went through a sea change as a result of this workshop. [It was] a rich and inspiring course which will resonate for months to come.”
If this sounds like a good fit for you, you can register here. I’d love to see you there!