Dreaming Peace

Eirene, goddess of Peace , daughter of Themis and Zeus

The Mountaineers Building, 300 Third Avenue West, Seattle, WA
November 12-14, 2004

Purpose:
– To strengthen contact with inner sources of thinking, sensing and feeling
– To understand peace as an action accessible to us from within and through each other
– To amplify the current of meaning making in ourselves and society
– To find our way out of the labyrinth

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you

Gospel of Thomas

Our theme is that peace may be truly served by allowing ourselves to ‘dream’ it. If we cannot imagine peace, we cannot make it happen. Violence, state oppression and general fear and anxiety have radically shrunk the ‘doors of perception’ and human imagination has been withering through lack of nourishment. When mind and imagination are marginalized and disparaged, everyone suffers, mistakes are repeated and we live needlessly constricted lives.
The creative and transforming dreaming we seek depends on safety and containment, disciplines of engagement and a microculture that values and supports dialogue ‘on the level’. Under these conditions, images and their allied feelings and thoughts can come forward out of the unconscious or ‘unthought’ realms of experience. These realms probably contain a vast web of interconnected meaning we barely glimpse in our verbal explanations and conceptual models. They can be a true resource – re-source, or springing up of what is new – remembering that wellsprings were always revered in ancient times.

Seminar – Dialogue – Inner worlds

The legend of the labyrinth represents our inability to find peaceful solutions

– Pierre Levy

Since 1996, the DuVersity has run a series of seminar-dialogues to bring people together to participate in unfolding new meanings. In this event we venture further into bridging between the conscious and unconscious worlds.The key facilitator in Dreaming Peace will be Gordon Lawrence, who has pioneered the Social Dreaming Matrix in which people share dreams through association and amplification. Gordon discovered Social Dreaming at the Tavistock Institute in the late 1970s and early ’80s. He works in organizations as diverse as Catholic orders, government bodies, industry and commercial organizations.

Author of Social Dreaming @ Work, and Tongued with Fire, Lawrence’s Roots in a Northern Landscape describe childhood memories of Scotland. He is now at the University of Northumberland and the New University in Bulgaria. The world of dreams is an access to the unconscious that has a different logic to our conceptual minds. Unless we can ‘dream together’ it is likely that we will remain subject to the dreams or nightmares that presently seem to rule our world.

The work of Patrick de Mare on the ‘median group’ is also to be used. His concern is with how people can attain a state of ‘koinonia’ or ‘impersonal fellowship’ by transforming frustration and hate. Karen Stefano, co-founder of the DuVersity is a close student of Patrick and will act as convener for the dialogue sessions together with Anthony Blake.

Music is the epitome of contact with the muse and will be represented by Robert Fripp, leading avant garde musician and founder of King Crimson, who will make unique Soundscapes for us. Throughout his career, guitarist Robert Fripp has continually pushed the boundaries of pop music, as well as pursuing many avant-garde and experimental musical ideas. He created the bands King Crimson and League of Gentlemen and taught Guitar Craft In his words “Soundscapes are based on delay, repetition, and hazard” and are “improvised and largely governed by the time, place, audience and the performer’s response to them”.

Phyllis Molline Laursen is a practicing healer and clairvoyant. She works with both humans and animals. For the past 20 years the focus of her work has been centered on differentiating fact from feeling and developing her own system of transmuting chaos in our world. She works with artists, musicians, writers and healers developing new forms of symbology in language. She also specializes in vertical communication as well as interspecies communication. Most recently jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and writer Carl Vigeland have dedicated their book Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life to her..

Participants will make collages under the direction of Karen Stefano. Karen is an artist and practicing psychotherapist. She worked with Jungian analyst Dr. Edith Wallace on the tissue paper collage method for many years. Karen has worked with groups in a variety of settings, which include Gurdjieff/Fourth way, psychodynamic and Median approaches. Karen is co-founder of the DuVersity and organizes its educational events.

Anthony Blake has a background in physics and philosophy. He studied with the systems thinker and mystic John Bennett as well as with the physicist David Bohm and other innovators and pioneers. He has followed the principle of integration without rejection, proposed by Bennett, and focuses on how to make this possible in real life. He is the author of several books – on the Enneagram symbol of Gurdjieff, the meaning of time, intelligence, dialogue, globalization, systematics, etc. Co-founder of the DuVersity, of which he is Director of Studies, Anthony facilitates seminars and lectures on methodology.

Location and Check In Time:
The Mountaineers Building, 300 Third Avenue West, Seattle, WA
6 pm Friday til 4 pm Sunday, November 12-14, 2004. Starts 9 am, Saturday and Sunday.
Ends 9.30 pm Friday and Saturday

Cost:
$495, including buffet lunches

Make checks payable in US Currency or international money order to: DUVERSITY SEMINARS. We can also accept Visa or Mastercard
Mail to Karen Stefano, Registrar, 25 Homewood Court, Charles Town, WV 25414

Lodging is not included in seminar fee. Here are some local hotels which are offering a discount to attendees of the Dreaming Peace seminar. You must mention the Dreaming peace promotion when booking rooms. Please contact Cyrena Stefano for more information.

Cyrena Stefano
2227 5th Ave
Seattle, WA 98121
(206) 448-2181

1) Hotel Andra
2000 Fourth Ave
Seattle, WA 98121
800-448-8601
Andra Room : $139 +%15.6 tax
Suite: $159 + %15.6 tax

2) Ramada Inn
2200 Fifth Ave
Seattle, WA 98121
206-441-9785
Standard: $89.99