These dreaming rituals were inspired during a 1986 interview I did, for a Boulder Colorado newspaper, with Australian aborigine elder Guboo Ted Thomas (and republished in my book, Towards an Archeology of the Soul). As time passed, it grew clear that this was no ordinary interview as much as some kind of dreamtime initiation disguised as a "newspaper interview". We sat, we sang, we prayed; I also listened to him play his didjeridoo. Guboo didn’t really tell me anything specific about dreams per se nor did he disclose anything specific about dreaming techniques. What he did impart, and what I received, was a tangible spirit of mystery surrounding alternative uses of "mind" and the unfathomable powers innate to dreams themselves.

"When the mind cannot see beyond itself, the mind is trapped by the mind;
not everything is mind."

There is also the dreaming and according to Guboo, the dreaming and this planet are one and the same; know one and you know the other. At the time, my own mind was fortunately open enough to permit this paradox: something as "ephemeral" as dreams could be synonymous with something as "solid" as the planet. What really blew my mind open, however, was Guboo’s question:

GUBOO TED THOMAS
YUIN TRIBAL ELDER (1909-2002)
click image for details

Do you know what trees really are ?

No, Guboo, I don’t. What are trees, really ? Guboo told me, trees are like your telephones and in my land, my people use them to speak with each other over thousands of miles. I walked away from that meeting altered. I felt that if I did not rearrange and adjust my beliefs and ideas to better serve the confounding new truths experienced in this Aboriginal elder’s presence, I would lose the use of my mind.

How to integrate this. Over the next sixteen years I devised, tested and developed a dreaming ritual as a non-interpretive form of kinetic dreamwork. During this period, the dreaming ritual was executed four times with four different groups in four different locales: indoors at a dance sudio in Boulder (CO), outdoors in the Veedavoo wilderness (WY), outdoors on Orcas Island (Pacific Northwest) and outdoors on the Olympic peninsula (WA). This fifth (Winter 2000) paratheatrical dreaming ritual occured indoors between a dance studio and my home in Berkeley CA.

DREAMING LAB REPORT
by Antero Alli

THE DREAMING RITES (dance studio) Sunday Nights. This dreaming lab is the most vertically-oriented and the least group interactive of any paratheatrical lab I’ve participated in. The approach to dreams here is decidedly non-interpretive and kinetic. Rather than pursue any search for meaning, these rituals are designed and presented to "prime" the physical/emotional bodies for greater receptivity to the innate essences, forces and purposes inside the dream/dreambody/dreamtime itself. The goal: to amplify the overlay between dreamtime and daytime as a portal for initiatic ritual. Initiation to the dream. Neither workshop, class, performance nor video-mediated product, this paratheatrical experiment remains devoted to accessing dreamtime sources for the purpose of animating movement and evoking spiritual presence.

THE DREAM COUNCIL (director’s home) Wednesday Nights. The non-interpretive spirit embodied in the dreaming rites continues here with the sharing of stories, struggles, skills and insights unearthed in the rituals, our dream recall and the dreams themselves. We all realize the unique and somewhat strange nature of what we are attempting to accomplish and find solace in the dream council, which provides a forum for languaging our emerging perceptions. Here we can try new ways of thinking and talking about dreams. This can be especially useful when it minimizes the psychological projection of meaning that tends to trivialize the innate power and autonomy of the dreams themselves. What is the true purpose of dreaming ? Perhaps, only the dream itself can show us this. If our dreams are attempting to communicate with us, a certain humility may be required to listen and to respond truthfully.

PARATHEATRICAL DREAMING RITUAL
The Principles and the Techniques of this Ceremony

DREAMING RITUAL JOURNAL
Notes & Impressions by Antero Alli