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1. WHO ARE YOU?
A $64 million dollar question. We are not who we think we are. We think we are the roles we play and the concepts we have learned about ourselves throughout life from numerous sources and experiences. This can result in stress, depression and / or addiction and a lost sense of spirituality.
Asking “Who am I” is one of the most powerful questions you can ask.
Our thinking is so deeply entrenched as a way of being that it is often very difficult to separate out what we have learned about who we are from what is really us. In fact, it can be downright scary to the ego mind to even contemplate “Who am I?” without that which our minds have come to believe.
Yet, if we are ever to connect with the dreams that come from our heart and live them, this is an essential step. Otherwise the ego will simply retain a hold on our identity as it sees it, and we will struggle to make our dreams come true. We are spiritual beings in a physical world.
There is a constant stream of thoughts running through our minds. Many people are unaware of this stream. Yet it is what drives our everyday moments. Our work, our personal growth pathway is to become aware of this thinking and learn how to disengage from it until we can also hear the voice of our Essence.
This is not to say you have to become aware of every thought, a pretty much impossible task, but rather that you pay attention to how you feel, to the results you are experiencing.
Whenever you experience a feeling or a result you would prefer not to have, you will find this can be an opening place of personal growth to explore thinking that is unconscious and based on old learned brain tracks. There are many methods to do this. I highly recommend Byron Katie’s The Work at www.thework.com. Also, go to Meet The Presence and practice this simple technique.
When we begin to be more conscious we are able to catch thought patterns in process and interrupt them. After a while, a sense of who you really are as Intelligence in a physical body will begin to emerge.
When you find yourself saying, “That’s not me, that’s my thinking” this Intelligence has an opportunity to emerge and to guide you in both discovering and living your own dreams.
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2. HAVE A DREAM!
There is a song from the musical South Pacific that has the line “Ya gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how ya gonna make a dream come true?”
If we just wish for happiness or love or to be out of pain, free of depression or addiction, those things are a little too nebulous.
What would give you happiness or create a feeling of love in you? What would it be like to be pain free? Who would you have to be to create those things in your life? Someone who ...? This is the commitment it takes to really get specific about what would cause your heart to sing with joy. It takes time and it takes really thinking these questions through thoroughly.
Without a dream that inspires and motivates you, your life will be a series of automatic reactions to the circumstances surrounding you. This creates stress and a loss of connection with your spirituality. A dream that comes from the soul gives your life focus and intention, both of which are necessary if you want to live a life that is fulfilling and happy.
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3. LET GO OF THE DREAM by Being the Dream
A contradiction it would appear. Have a dream and then let it go.
Yet it is our minds that can cause an obsession with a dream to the extent that the dream is no longer free to live and grow freely. Our minds create shoulds and shouldn’ts, have tos and need tos and on and on.
It is easy to lose ourselves in the mind’s need to control the dream. This arises out of fear. Am I good enough? This is too big for me? Who am I to ...? What if I am ridiculed, rejected, scorned ...? What if I fail?
Yet a dream has a life of its own that will bring us all the answers, solutions, help and inspiration we could ever need. It is a live, living thing that is seeking its expression through you. The tiny seed of the idea came to you and inherent in that tiny seed is the absolute possibility of its maturity. Just as the tiny acorn will surely become the mighty oak in time.
So get into the Essence of the Dream. Dream about how it is to be that dream, over and over until you can feel the sprouts pushing forth from the seed.
Become the dream and the dream can become you. Hold on lightly yet with all the passion and intensity that losing yourself in the dream can bring. Allow the dream to guide and inspire you. Let the dream be ‘in control’.
Don’t get caught in looking for the dream to be coming true. If you look to the future and look for signs and proof, you will most probably find none. The dream doesn’t exist in the future, there is no future. There is only the glorious and magnificent NOW.
The dream lives inside you, in it’s immature seed form all the way through to its fully mature form, which you can only imagine right now and your imaginings, necessary though they are, can be far short of the dream’s fully matured reality.
What can be seen outwardly and what can be seen inwardly do not have to match. It is the ability to see what is on the inner plane that creates what is on the outer plane.
Looking out into your world and seeing the lack of your dream is the first place you will get tripped up and is the place where your mind can run on automated brain tracks that will cause you to think “failure, lack, not good enough’ and a host of other untruths. Investigate these thoughts for their truth. www.thework.com is one of the best tools I know for this investigation.
Looking inward to the void of creation, just BEING in that space, is connecting with the Divine Essence you are, and also with those seeds of desire that spring from that Essence. You are the whole dream, from beginning to end, already. Nothing is missing, Nothing even has to be done. The doing happens when the dream is ready and your mind is open and willing.
Learn to be your dreams in the Present Moment and they will take root in you, in your mind, in your being in such a way that you can only marvel in gratitude for this process called Life that lives so magnificently through you.
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4. LET ACTION FLOW from BEING that Dream
Again it is about not allowing the mind to control but rather to be a servant. The mind is a wonderful and powerful thing, but not when it is our master. To give a dream life is to surrender to the dream.
This we do by giving ourselves the gift of quiet time, meditation, walking, breathing, journalling to name a few methods. When we give ourselves quiet time, the dream is able to emerge with inspiration and ideas.
Then we are taking action from that place of connection with the dream and the action is very different from action taken from the mind thinking we should do this and have to do that.
Inspired action is not only much easier to take, but is usually a lot more effective. There is a difference between the action of the dream and the action of the mind. Mind says should and have to and need to. Dream says let’s go.
Then there is procrastination which can be a call from a scared and frightened place within us that needs attention. Procrastination is one of the Obstacles covered in DreamQuest - How to Create Your Heart’s Desire.
There needs to be action but action in the right time at the right place from an inner connection.
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5. RECOGNIZE THE MIND MUD and Deal With It
Mind Mud! The endless ego mind chatter that arises from automated brain tracks learned through life.
I like the Mud Bucket theory. Whenever you place your focus on something new it is like pouring fresh clean water into a bucket already filled with both water and dirt that has been sitting for a while. The dirt settles to the bottom. It is the mud. While nothing is going on in the mind to disturb the mud, it stays there quite happily.
When you pour in fresh, clean water, the mud gets stirred up from the bottom. It can feel like all hell is breaking loose. Just when you are excited about a dream, the bottom falls out of your world. At least that’s how it feels.
Yet if you persevere pouring the fresh clean water into the bucket, eventually all the mud will be flushed out and you will be left with nothing but the fresh, clean water.
The mud is the learned thinking and ways of being. The fresh clean water is the dream you are focusing upon, the new you you want to create or invent.
Again, there are many ways of dealing with the old mud as it is flushed up from the bottom of the bucket. Awareness of what is taking place is a very good first step.
No matter what, when you move into new territories in your life you are going to feel uncomfortable to some degree. You have to teach your brain new ways of thinking and being and depending upon your mind’s resistance, it can take some time.
In DreamQuest - How to Create Your Heart’s Desire Mind Mud is addressed as obstacles we have to overcome such as self sabotage, decoys, procrastination, the void etc. Read more about these obstacles here.
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PERSEVERE! NEVER GIVE UP! EVER! The mud will be flushed out
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