PowerSwitch

I have always found it difficult to get in touch with the spiritual notion that the world we experience is nothing more than a dream.

I can understand the concept that we create the world in our own image and that when we change our mind, the world around us changes also.

But as I get older, I feel this on a fundamental level. My first experience of this sense of unreality in which we live was walking through London's Canary Wharf several years ago, watching the thousands of bankers and finance workers walking purposefully from one meeting to the next.

It felt like a scene out of the film, The Matrix. The whole place smelt of power and longevity, but I had the strong feeling that the world had already moved on and it was only the belief of the people who worked there that kept this financial powerhouse intact. Then came the financial crash.

My most recent experience of the dreams we create for ourselves came at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego. I salute those executives who are working tirelessly within major corporations to raise awareness among their colleagues of the need to respond to key challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and slave labour.

And yet, I also see how easy it is for them, within their frame of reality, to come to the false conclusion that they are driving radical change.