Course · Online, live
A Vida como Sonho
Life as a Dream
A journey of enquiry into life as a dream, between philosophy and experience
Led by
Paulo Borges + Daniela Velho
When
Begins 28 October 2026
Time
One Wednesday a month, 19:00 – 22:00 (Lisbon time)
Place
Online, with sessions recorded in Espaço Visão Pura, our online space
Language
Portuguese
Over ten months we contemplate life as a dream, looking more deeply at what we take to be solid and real.
We often live from the stories we tell about ourselves, about others and about the world. Some become so familiar that we stop recognising them as constructions and simply take them for reality.
A Vida como Sonho grows out of the wish to explore this territory. What changes when we begin to look at experience as something less solid than it seems? What might we discover when we look more closely at the way we perceive, imagine and make sense of what we live?
Over ten months, the journey brings waking experience and night dreaming closer together and explores questions such as the forming of identity, the relationship between body and imagination, impermanence and death. Recognising life as a dream becomes here a possibility for enquiry and practice, a way of looking afresh at what we usually take to be fixed.
Philosophy, meditation and experience meet throughout this journey. There is room to encounter different perspectives and to explore them directly in one's own life.
An invitation to awaken within experience
The recognition of life as a dream runs through different philosophical and contemplative traditions, and also appears in literature and in contemporary reflection on consciousness.
What this journey seeks is to bring these perspectives closer to concrete experience. Exploring our night dreams can help us question the solidity of waking experience. Observing how we build an identity can reveal how far what we call ‘I’ is continually taking shape. The body offers another direct way in to perceiving how the world is lived before it is explained.
The invitation is to develop lucidity within experience itself, without seeking a single answer about what life is.
In each gathering
Each gathering is led by Paulo Borges and Daniela Velho, drawing on approaches that meet and complement each other.
Paulo starts from philosophy, spiritual traditions, literature and contemplative practice, bringing different ways of exploring life as a dream.
Daniela starts from direct experience, meditation and somatic enquiry, deepening our understanding of how perception, emotion and identity are built in the body and in everyday life.
The two approaches run through each gathering and enter into dialogue with one another. The final gathering is devoted to integrating the journey.
Programme
Ten monthly gatherings, on one Wednesday a month, from 19:00 to 22:00 (Lisbon time). Each gathering opens with a guiding question.
0128 OctoberLife as a dream: beginning to recognise the waking dream
Paulo Borges
What does it mean to see and experience Life as a Dream, and what follows from it? The unconscious construction of what we call “reality” through the concepts inherent in the languages in which we think. Narrative identity and the creation of the ego-self. Life as a “waking dream” (Nietzsche). The dream and Awakening.
Daniela Velho
Waking dreams: narratives, emotions, identity and perception
Experiential integration begins with the dreams we live while awake: inner narratives, emotional atmospheres, repeated patterns and old identities that shape the way we perceive and respond to life.
Which dreams am I taking for reality in my life?
0225 NovemberDreamtime: myth, origin, nature and metamorphosis
Paulo Borges
The Dreamtime in Indigenous Australian and American cultures. Identity, metamorphosis and the ritual re-enactment of the mythical time of origins. Amerindian perspectivism.
Daniela Velho
Eco-dream: nature as a living field of lucidity
Experiential integration opens the dream to the dimension of nature, inviting us to feel it as a field of relationship, symbol, mirror and consciousness.
What if nature were not outside us, but part of the living dream in which consciousness recognises itself?
0316 DecemberMaya: veil, divine play and the dream of perception
Paulo Borges
Reality, ignorance and illusion in the Indian Upanishads and Vedanta. Maya as divine play, lîla and metamorphosis; maya as the illusion of the mind and the senses. The world as the dream of Vishnu in Indian mythology.
Daniela Velho
Contemplative imagination and worlds created by the mind-body
Contemplative imagination as a deep faculty of consciousness: not escapist fantasy, but the capacity to create images, atmospheres, inner worlds and possibilities.
What world am I creating with what I believe, imagine and nourish?
0420 JanuaryBuddhism, dream yoga and lucidity at night
Paulo Borges
Awakened consciousness and ignorance in Indian Buddhism. The dream as one of the eight metaphors of illusion. A theoretical introduction to lucid sleep and lucid dreaming.
Daniela Velho
Lucid dreaming as training in recognition
In the night dream, the practice is to recognise: “I am dreaming.” In daily life, the practice becomes similar: recognising that we are inside an emotion, a narrative, a character or a constructed experience.
How can we train lucidity in dreams so as to live more lucidly while awake?
0517 FebruaryThe cave: shadows, forgetting and the dream of separation
Paulo Borges
Knowledge and forgetting in Greek culture. The human being as the “dream of a shadow” in Pindar and the allegory of the Cave in Plato. Ulysses’ return to his homeland and the return of consciousness to itself, overcoming the seductive song of the sirens.
Daniela Velho
The inner caves: old dreams we mistake for truth
Old beliefs, self-images, forms of protection, shame, invisible loyalties and repeated stories, recognised with lucidity and compassion.
What shadow have I been taking for reality?
0624 MarchLife as dream theatre: character, mask and performance
Paulo Borges
The person as mask, prosopon, persona and stage character in classical Greco-Roman culture. Life as dream theatre in Western literature: Calderón de la Barca, Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Daniela Velho
The dreamed characters: who steps onto the stage within us?
The proposal is not to reject our inner characters, but to recognise them with lucidity and compassion. When a character becomes rigid, it stops being an expression and becomes a prison.
What character have I been dreaming of being?
0721 AprilWaking dream, poetry and the creation of reality
Paulo Borges
Life as a carnival dance, dream and illusion in Teixeira de Pascoaes. Life as a waking, creative dream in Bernardo Soares. The “nothing that is everything” in Agostinho da Silva. An exercise in creative presence.
Daniela Velho
Dreaming life: creativity, vision and inner responsibility
Recognising how we take part in the dream of life: through the attention we offer, the images we nourish, the gestures we repeat and the choices that gradually shape our path.
What dream do I want to nourish with my attention, my gestures and my choices?
0826 MayNeuroscience, perception and the constructed dream
Paulo Borges
Perception, illusion and lucid dreaming in neuroscience and contemporary philosophy of mind: Stephen LaBerge, Donald Hoffman, Evan Thompson and Thomas Metzinger. The playful, therapeutic and spiritual possibilities of lucid dreaming.
Daniela Velho
The body that dreams the world: perception, emotion and felt reality
We do not see the world with our eyes alone. We see it through the whole body: breath, memory, emotion, the nervous system and the inner states that shape perception.
What world is my body dreaming right now?
0923 JuneDream, death and awakening: living lucidly at the threshold
Paulo Borges
The philosophy of the six bardos, or intermediate states, in Tibetan Buddhism: life, dream, meditation, the moment of death, reality and becoming. The ever-present possibility of Awakening.
Daniela Velho
Dying within the dream: disidentification, freedom and love of impermanence
The practice of lucidity (in night dreams, in meditation and in everyday life) becomes an intimate preparation for recognising transitions, losses, changes of identity, thresholds and small deaths.
What might die in me so that I can live more awake within the dream?
1014 JulyFinal integration: awakening within the dream of life
A gathering to integrate the journey we have lived, recognise what has been discovered along the way, and share the experiences, resonances and transformations that have arisen over the months.
How do I want to go on living this recognition in my life?
What is included
- One live online gathering each month for each module
- Recordings of the gatherings, kept in Espaço Visão Pura for later review
- PDF support materials for each module, with suggestions for reflection, contemplation, writing and inner enquiry
- Guided reflective or meditative practices to deepen each module
- A group for sharing, questions and integration among participants throughout the course