The Power of Dreaming by Lynn Marie DePippo

by | May 14, 2020 | complex adaptive systems, sustainable investing

There are so many things I love about Permaculture principles. They are my North Star for the design of the systems-based investment principles at Pythia Capital. I knew nothing about them and the way they came into my life was as if I were suddenly a character in “The Celestine Prophecy” or a character in one of my dreams. I was in La Jolla, California, staying at a small hotel. I was having a very rough time in my life, personally and professionally. I man I never met before knocked on my door. Strangely, I answered. He told me he was a Buddhist Monk and that he knew I was struggling to make sense of things. He wrote on a piece of paper “permaculture” and then did some dance around me, saying a mantra I do not remember. I still have that piece of paper and I look at it when I am discouraged and frustrated. It always make me smile and fills me with hope. After that I took a weekend class at University of Massachusetts in Amherst on Permaculture (sustainable agriculture principles). I fell in love with the beautiful students and had a real “ah ha” moment in my life. It took me a long time after that to figure out what this all meant for me. Since then, I have added Chaos (Complexity) Theory into the mix for any of those people that need to see the validation of advanced math, science and computing power to believe anything. Permaculture is the Yin and Chaos Theory is the Yang of my business and finance ideas. Where does this all lead to? I have realized along the way, it leads to a new set of systems-based design principles that are new models for how to restructure finance, to save capitalism, not replace it. It is a framework to move from linear, reductionist business and finance principles (all or nothing, win/lose principles that are unfair, non-diverse, extractive principles that destroy the environment and destroy lives…) to the world of non-linear and win/win finance and economics (to create a world of diverse, empowered, highly creative people, an thriving communities full of vitality). This framework leads to quantum physics, alternative energy, regenerative medicine, regenerative agriculture, true preventative healthcare, better education principles, healthier food, a healthier environment, a more humanistic artificial intelligence. It leads to more cooperation, more community spirit, healthier and more diverse, creative and vibrant local ecosystems.

As much as I have always loved the investment business, I felt like a misfit for a long time. I love the entrepreneurs, especially the passionate ones. Yes, they want to see their companies succeed, but there is an extra inner fire in eyes of the ones that are truly motivated and inspired from the heart. Although my abilities to see investment trends, picking out winning investments and spot early signs of risks are all strong personal skills, my main motivation has always been to be a positive catalyst in helping these special entrepreneurs turn their vision into a reality. I always did the best I could, but I noticed, more and more that the majority of companies, both public and private, that made investors the most money had nothing to do with passion. I felt more and more dead inside as the years went on, as if my own fire died along with the dying of dreams of countless would be entrepreneurs around the world that could not attract the same attention as graduates of elite schools with all the right connections. They did not have the money, what was considered the right education, the human resources to succeed. Even if they did, what was often the case is that their ideas did not often fit the existing investment structures very well. The perception, often misperception, is that they were worth less money. Investors would think their ideas could not scale (that is a whole other story for another time, but that is not really true). I could see and feel the potential, but in those days I was as disempowered and as disillusioned as they were. I was a woman in a sea full of men. I came from a working class family. I was shy and introverted and not interested in networking with power players in the business. I was doubled over in pain from the stress and anxiety of wondering how I was going to pay back the $80,000 in loans at 9% in interest after getting my Columbia Business School MBA. People were always interested in my insights and stock picking abilities, as admittedly, I have always had more than my fair share of intelligence. I was high school valedictorian and graduated with high honors in college and at business school. I could usually see what others were missing very quickly in the analysis, reading between the lines. When I would spot one of these special people, with the beautiful dreams, I would say, isn’t it wonderful? Do you see the potential of this? I would get dead stares and comments like “Oh, Lynn, there you go again on your passionate soap box trying to save the world.” It was as if they were saying to me you could not invest well and be passionate at the same time.

Recently, I was reading a couple of blogs from Paul Levy. I love his blogs. He is an artist. He is also a special kind of healer that understands the power of dreams to change reality. In one of his recents blogs he was discussing the recent dream of a client regarding the Covid 19 virus. This was highly interesting to me as this client had a dream about how this virus was going to lead to a complete take over of our society by oligarchs and monopolists with no more free will or independent thought. Admittedly, I am very preoccupied by those things as well. Losing personally liberties, the ability to express independent thought, and what already seems like a handful of companies taking over the world scare me more than the virus itself. It is all very Orwellian. More and more it is harder to tell our reality from our dreams. In a moment in time, our lives have turned into some dystopian nightmare. Again, it is time again for me to pull out that piece of paper from my dancing Monk friend and relearn a lesson. At the worst of times, when you least expect it, hope finds a way to communicate with you and remind of you of who you really are, to remind you of your own creative magic and power. One person at a time that is how the world changes. It changes from the inside out. One of the most amazing things I see happening is that more and more people, especially the younger people gravitate to these permaculture principles as a way to create things in their life, as a way to lift up one another, and help each other find their inner light again. As these are natural creative principles (Thanks Mother Nature!!!), people tend to use them whether they know it or not. When they are motivated from the heart and look for a way to turn their new desires into reality, these principles are a guiding light. At a time when so many people are scared and disillusioned, there are countless beautiful souls out there letting their hope rise and their creative energies flow to come together and help each other.

“Doing dreamwork with my client, I began to associate, which helps me to get out of my (rational) mind and to more deeply connect with my unconscious. I remembered that I had, synchronistically, just written something that seemed to address his dream. I was quickly able to find what I had written, and read it aloud to him: “When we are not in touch with our intrinsic creative power, the external power of the state is more than happy to pick up our unconscious agency for us and use it against us for its own ends. If we marginalize our own internal authority, we dream up external totalitarian forces to limit our freedom and create our experience for us, as we see throughout the world today.”

He seemed startled by my words. He immediately says “That’s it.” He then tells me that the gnawing feeling he had when he woke up from the dream was that he wasn’t in touch with a part of himself, and he is having the dawning realization that this missing part was his creative power and agency. As he said this, it was like I was watching a lightbulb being turned on inside of his head. He was beginning to realize that the dream was reflecting back to him the part of himself that was pre-emptively shutting himself down—silencing himself—for a variety of different reasons.” 

Here is a link to the first article: https://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/covid-19-wetiko-pnbwr

In another one of Paul Levy’s articles, he discusses the recent dark times as a catalyst for rediscovering our creative potential. I hope you are inspired by both of these articles as much as I was.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the second article:

“Dark times are usually times of great revelation. “Revelation,” to quote C. G. Jung, “is an ‘unveiling’ of the depth of the human soul first and foremost.”1Oftentimes humanity is not saved from a crisis by what we consciously think, but rather, the saving grace comes from something being revealed to us that emerges unexpectedly as a result of the crisis. Revelations—which can be likened to timeless treasures waiting to be discovered in time—come in many forms and in many ways. Sometimes they first emerge seemingly outside of ourselves through—or are triggered by—some external event in the world like the coronavirus outbreak, for example. Ultimately speaking, however, the deepest revelation is something that lies hidden within the creative nature of our soul awaiting discovery. 

There are treasures literally buried within us, concealed within our unconscious. These hidden treasures are like precious jewels or diamonds in the rough that are encoded within the fabric of the unconscious psyche. They can be conceived of as existing in a higher-dimension relative to our conscious mind, and as such, are typically invisible to our conscious intellect. These treasures, having lain buried and dormant in the collective unconscious of our species from time immemorial, are typically awakened in times of great need. When the time is ripe, our intuition—due to its connection to our unconscious—divines and begins to “see” the heretofore formless creative revelation that is brewing in the cauldron of the unconscious. Our task then becomes how to bring forth and creatively express the revelation in a form that helps it come to fruition as we realize it more clearly within ourselves. To quote Jungian scholar Erich Neumann, “These images, ideas, values, and potentialities of the treasure hidden in the unconscious are brought to birth and realized by the hero [the creative individual] in his various guises.”2

Here is a link to the second article: https://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/revelation-our-creative-nature-goes-viral