The Dreamer Project is not immune to flaws. From embodiment cues to trauma sensitivity and ethical spill-overs, this annotation sketches the blind spots we must track if the experiment is to remain honest.

A philosophical outsider’s stance-setting note: how I’m treating We The Dreamer as a secular, mind-first experiment—rooted in my own perception, honest about my limits, and about to move into short public “field tests” in everyday life.

From the first controlled fires to large language models, we’ve needed only a tiny sliver of cosmic time to build machines we already compare to Einstein. This Journal of The Experiment entry imagines an ancient “AI” with billions of years to perfect a simulation—and then asks what happens when we treat our own experience as that first dream of consciousness, still running.

Zen, Advaita, Taoism, and Dzogchen point to the same insight: the world is dreamlike, awareness is primary. This annotation explores how their teachings align with The Dreamer Project’s experiment in living as if consciousness comes first.

I haven’t left art—I moved the studio into perception. Through We The Dreamer, I’m running mind-first field tests that treat daily life as the lab and attention as the medium. If the stance shifts, does the scene change? This is personal and provisional; when it ripens, objects—art, even technology—will follow.

A Lutheran pastor’s note reopened a family thread—and a question: where does Teilhard de Chardin’s planetary mind meet a secular, eyes-open practice? This annotation maps his noosphere and “union that differentiates” onto We The Dreamer’s co-dreaming stance, translating altar-of-the-everyday into drills you can test in real rooms.

Discovery begins with a shift in perception — someone willing to see differently what others take as real. From Galileo turning his lens outward to Descartes turning it inward, to scientists now asking whether mind itself is the field where everything appears — every breakthrough starts the same way: by testing a new way of seeing.

Movements begin with a commitment. The Dreamer’s Pledge is not a doctrine but a prototype — a sketch of how secular awakening could be tested in daily life. Instead of dogma, it offers variables like presence and generosity as living experiments, inviting collective participation rather than private pursuit.

Could technology support awakening? From AI prompts to AR mirrors to VR lucid-dreams, tools might rehearse perception as interface, not fact. Yet technology remains scaffolding. The real experiment is always perception itself.

From Buddhism to Advaita Vedānta, Christian mysticism to A Course in Miracles, seekers have long compared awakening to waking from a dream. This Journal Annotation revisits those echoes, reminding us that innocence and lucidity were named long ago — and remain ours to test in the experiment of We The Dreamer.

What if awakening isn’t mystical but a shift in perception anyone can test? In a fractured, always-on world, We The Dreamer offers a secular experiment: simple practices, shared notes, no dogma. Don’t believe—test. Try one practice, notice what shifts, and see if awakening belongs in daily life.

Why does matter give rise to experience at all? The Dreamer Project treats this question less as puzzle to solve than as scaffolding for inquiry. What changes if we live as if consciousness is first?