In a world rife with global crises, from political turmoil to humanitarian disasters, there’s a growing realisation that traditional approaches may no longer suffice. As we witness the stark divide between the comforts of our immediate surroundings and the harsh realities beyond, there’s a pressing need for change.

Public voices of discontent are important to shake up political action. But change cannot stem solely from the conventional avenues of political activism or policy reform. There are other ways too, to change the world in a direction of peace, stability and sustainability.

One way is to be engaged in what we call Planetary Dreaming, as described on this website. It’s a novel concept that transcends the confines of conventional problem-solving,

The project brings together people from academia, the corporate world, artists, designers​ and changemakers to dream up real alternatives to the state of the world.

‘Dreaming it up’ does not mean escaping into a world of fantasy and wishful thinking. It’s a recognition of the fact that we can’t solve the problems we’re facing from the same level of consciousness which created it. We need to lift our perspective and evolve the way we think.

We mean this in a very literal way. ‘Evolving the way, we think’ means applying different tools to our thinking process. Or rather, adding some new tools to the existing ones; the tools of feeling, intuition and imagination. This means that we have to expand the way we think from being driven by ‘mind’ to being informed by a greater awareness of what’s beyond the known limitations of our conscious mind.

That’s a creative process. In essence an artistic process. Real creativity is about calling into existence the ‘not yet known’. That is why art has the ability to radically touch us and shift our perspectives and values.

The time is finally ready to merge the explorations in consciousness of ‘the alternative world’ with the rational, materialistic, ‘real world’ of academia and business. Alternative is the new Real. New solutions to existing problems will emerge when we expand our consciousness from the known to the not-yet-known.

This shift of perspective allows us to access dreams and visions that are not available to our conscious mind. We have to enter the realm of the subconscious to break through to a new paradigm. This shift is absolutely essential to move us out of the current state of global, collective crisis.

New solutions are possible if we dare to look where we haven’t gone before, in our own, subconscious, collective mind. There are many ways to do that, and they all come back to bypassing the rational, default mode of the thinking mind. This requires us to slow down and work with consciousness in a new way. Acknowledging that by embracing tools and techniques from mindfulness, meditation and consciousness practices, we find the missing key to our human evolution.

We might very well come up with radical, new perceptions of seemingly unsolvable situations. Alterative is the new Real.

Photo:

Photo from a tower block at the Barbican, London. It was a post-war vision, literally built on the ruins of blitzed away buildings. It was a powerful attempt to create a positive future out of the rubbles of war and destruction. These are the visionary forces we now need to draw on again, personally and collectively.