Dreams are fantastic! I love a good dream. (Especially when lucid.) I find myself in a world where getting across the room is as easy as blinking, and traveling from my backyard to London is as easy as hopping on a blue dragon. Everything is awesome, and everything is awesome right now.
It makes perfect sense to me, then, that in my regular waking life-hours, I would describe that thing that I really want, really really want, right now, as a dream. As fanciful as I want it to be. No matter how improbable to my current circumstance, my dream is something that I get to legitimately muse upon anytime I please. Why? Because it could be my reality someday. If I am clear on what I want, believe in my abilities, commit to the pursuit, and keep at it everyday, my dream should become my reality. Yes?
But you know what this does? Keeps me going after something that I picture in my mind, while I am zoning out of the present. Knowing that whatever I am doing in the meantime is in the great service of building that dream that I will live in...eventually. Being responsibly contented with the process of getting there while feasting my eyes upon the finish line.
There’s nothing wrong with knowing what I want and doing what I need to do to achieve that. Clarity, focus, muscle, and persistence are critical pieces of the plot that brings you places. And when my current environment is not directly conducive to dream-building (could be home, work, other commitments) I have to maintain that internal mind space, that mental dream zone, whilst I go about grown-up things. Because we’re talking about my dream here.
Need I say more? You’ve been there. I don’t need to unpack it all. This is the place that we dream-seekers find ourselves often. Jumbled up in the chaotic realm of confused, discordant feelings, triggered by words like dedication, sacrifice, tradeoffs, realistic, need, responsibility, prerogative, priorities, desire, delay, true self, emergence and i-have-the-right-to-do-this-...-don’t-I? Feels more like a nightmare sometimes, doesn’t it?
So let’s cut the cord for a second. Release the tension attaching us to the dream, but also to the reality of our work-life world.
Assessment: We’ve unintentionally, and perhaps unknowingly tucked ourselves into the familiar (and dare I say, comfortable) dichotomy of what-I-have-now vs. what-I-want-now. We’ve taken sleep as the model for the best-lived life and its spoils as our treasure.
What if we go after our awakening? That wistful moment of semi-consciousness where we feel feather-light, and present, and pure, refreshed potential? The place where it’s not so clear where the dreaming ended and the reality began? Because what if they aren’t really separate at all?
There is that within you that knows this: the seed of whatever you want is within you right now, loaded and encoded with right-now instructions to make it happen, ready to interact right now with whatever environment you find yourself in, to allow itself (and yourself) to grow into its full potential, starting right now. Your job is not to shield yourself and a fragile dream from surroundings that seem to be set up to crush it. Your job is to recognize the (very-real) seed that is present and powerful in you, and let it come to life through your daily adventures.
Know this. Embrace the seed. Go after your awakening.
