The Power of the Dream

Leaving the traffic and congestion of Sao Paulo, we are on a journey to meet with a local shaman. The bus stops to pick up our spiritual guide who we simply call Kaka. I am not sure what we expect from a spiritual leader but as he gets on the bus he seems really grounded and really normal. Not someone whose spirituality distances them from everyday people. Kaka connects with the bus driver and we are on our way. At this point I ahve to admit that my biggest concern was whether the rain would make it cold in the forest. As I sent as many emails to my family while I had phone service, I was not sure exactly we what to expect.

As we continue to drive, we hit a point where it suddenly feels like we have passed from a city into a rural place and within minutes we are driving in a full-blown rainforest. The bus continues to drive into the rainforest up some pretty steep hills until it stops at a a point where it can go no further. We get out to walk the rest of the way up a dirt road and see the sign for Instituto Arapoty. From there we walk another 7 min up a hill that overlooks an amazing valley and we can see that we are in the midst of an amazing place.

After getting a little settled, Kaka leads us to a large domed hut with a grass-thatched roof and just being in there makes you feel as though you have stepped back into a time when even your house came totally from the land without need for manufactured shingles and Benjamin Moore paints. We each took our seats on upright logs and Kaka began to tell the story of hte place. He share that the land we were on was part of the Matatlantico Forest which had once been part of a large forest range that covered the entire coast of Brazil. Now only 8% of that land remains and he is part of a network of people working to protect what remains of the rain forests - not only for environmental reasons, but because of our human need to reconnect with the land.

There is no way for me to share everything that Kaka shared with us or all of the thoughts that have come to me since, but the most powerful thing that he talked about was the importance of having "the dream." He explained that there are three kinds of dreams. First, the dreams that come to us in the night. They are the dreams that speak often of what has happened and they are placed in our minds by the spirits. We don't really control those dreams even thought they might have something to tell us. Second, there are the dreams that we have while we are awake. The dream of one person to be a doctor or to win a basketball game. Then there are the dreams we have together - the dreams that communities dare to dream.

He said that before we come up with any plans for how to move we must figure out how to unite our individual dream into a collective dream. When we have done that we are able to be united in our purpose and only after we have done that can we begin to create a plan.

So often we start our plan by figuring out what we need and the focus turns to all of the things that we do not have. Communities that consider themselves "poor" come to this part of the process and often believe that they cannot realize there dreams - yet Kaka said that when it comes to actualizing our dreams we need 80% relationships and only 20% financial resources. It is in our relationships that we often discover that we have far more resources then we think we do. When we unite our collective resources we find that if we connect our different resources we have everything that we need.

It led me to one simple question - What if I did my work believing that we have 80% of what we need?