To Dream
February 17, 2007 at 11:09 pm (activism, appreciative Inquiry, communication, community, creative visualisation, creativity, education, inspiration, inspirational, leadership, life coaching, meditation, personal power, philosophy, psychology, spiritual, spiritual journey, spirituality, transformation)
To dream means to create in your imagination. Our wishes and wants are dreams. Our prayers are dreams. Even our fears are dreams. To dream is to enter the realm where the Divine Creator turns the atoms and quarks and particle waves into the world that streams by us as space and time.
By grounding our dreams in the reality of our life, and intentionally envisioning a practical and plausible means of channeling our vision into our world, our dreams become our world. Dreams become the organising structure of things.
In Appreciative Inquiry, the questions we ask are a means to discover our hidden best potential. We look at our peak moments, our best times, and what had gone right regarding a specific challenge we desire to change. The second step is to dream, which means to create a clear, results-oriented vision that is grounded in what we have already discovered to be possible. This stage of dreaming also requires us to asks, “what is the world calling us to become?”
Energy flows from the mental or conceptual realm into our everyday reality when we believe in a possibility. By looking to our own past, our own known successes and those of others, the possibility is grounded. We are creating with materials already on hand. We are creating as a continuum of our own past.
By asking, “what is the world calling us to become?” we acknowledge that we are aligned with Divine, life- sustaining intentions. We acknowledge our place in the web of life. When we ask for change, we accept that we are often a thing that could use some change! For the world to be the best possible place, you and I need to be our best possible selves. We need to bring forth and use our own potentials, talents, and gifts. I have found that all the good stuff like love, deep joy, and happiness come from our willingness to be an instrument of Divine healing and evolution. It makes using my creative powers to get a free car uninteresting.
“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. It lies in having no goal to reach. It is not a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace not to have any stars to reach. Not failure, but low aim, is the real sin.”
-Benjamin Mays
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
-Anais Nin
When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.
-Dom Helder Camara
Do you make time in your day to dream?
in2l said,
February 18, 2007 at 4:00 am
I am starting to once again. To follow with the theme from your previous post, when I look at what worked for me in the past, it was having a vision of what I wanted in the world and for the world.
I think I have the beginning of a new dream for myself and for those I cherish around me. From my despair over an inability to affect change in the world, in seeing the world moving closer and closer to the brink of irreversible disaster, I am coming to a new sense of hope and a way to beginning dreaming again of a better now and future for us all.
Peace and love! Keep informing and leading, you say it so well!
I’m so glad that you have found hope and an ability to dream. Even if I never succeed, the quality of living into my dreams makes my life so much richer. I wish this for you, too.
Fluid said,
February 18, 2007 at 6:20 am
Whoa Naturalhigh! Talk about synchronicity
Don’t you love it!
knightofswords said,
February 18, 2007 at 8:03 am
Dreams that include others are so much stronger than dreams for self alone. Including others is a natural–if not intuitive, from society’s perspective–next step after asking “what is right here.” I see your dream in these pages.
Thanks for looking and noticing.
purefnevyl said,
February 18, 2007 at 8:34 am
I try living in a dream of my on design and not in the nightmares of others.
Me, too. There has been some nasty doo doo dreamed into being . I know that I can do better than that!
ggwfung said,
February 18, 2007 at 12:08 pm
these images are wonderfully inspiring and varied.
to dream is to have a constant destination, a path ahead of the difficult times.
ggw
thank you
spasmicallyperfect said,
February 18, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I smile as I read this. It’s a reinforcement of a lesson I am trying to relearn. I used to be a big dreamer, I think in many ways, we are all born dreamers, kids have big and bold dreams. Then “you’re a dreamer” turned into something negative. Rather then teaching me how to move from a dream into reality, the dreams got locked up and buried and I was told that only the ones living in reality would survive the harshness of reality. Which might still be true, but that reality is someone else’s reality and I want more of life than to just survive it, by the sidelines so to speak.
Frightfully enough, at first all I could keep saying was ‘but I don’t know what I wan’t’. All I knew is what I didn’t wan’t and as we all know that’s just an invitation to land exactly there.
Thanks for your post NH. I might not use the same books and teachings you do, but the underlying message is the same. And yes, I do make time for my dreams, not only for having them in my head and body, but to venture them out onto paper, colour them…… it’s work, but it’s so satisfying it doesn’t feel like it at all - and hope comes free with it.I am so glad I finally understand that lesson……
I understand what you are saying all too well. If you don’t dream and create intentionally, you end up creating by default. All the fear, resignation, and desire to escape and hide from life, to disconnect from people, will create a life for you. I see many- too many- lives lead in this way. The emptiness is palpable.
Grace said,
February 18, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Using affirmations is so powerfully reinforcing for me, when it comes to creating the life of my dream. I write them and speak them….as a means to keep my focus on what I want rather than what I don’t want. Beautiful piece once again, NaturalHigh!
Affirmations are incredibly powerful! Thanks for bringing that to this discussion.
Gregor said,
February 20, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I think I dream too much.
There have been times in my life when I thought that. Now I see it as dreaming too ineffectively. Not dreaming in tandem with reasoned action and deep commitment.
whig said,
February 21, 2007 at 1:20 am
It is important to ground your dreams in the practicality of accomplishment, to go beyond the first imaginings to take the steps to bring it into reality. We do this by sharing our dreams with one another and asking how we can help everyone to achieve what we want together, for one of us acting alone can perceive and accomplish but one aspect of a grand design which unifies our consciousness.
Will you go beyond words and pictures to speak of actions?
Yes. There are 2 more steps in the process, and I will cover them all.
Desiree said,
February 21, 2007 at 2:19 am
Sometimes too much I think
I was going to say the dream is only as good as the action or reaction to the dream however then I thought further and realized that sometimes dreams make you understand what you don’t want to do too…
It shifts things when you learn to dream from a hopeful and positive ground of being.
Greenwoman said,
February 21, 2007 at 10:34 pm
My goodness, I enjoy your blog!
Rudi Cahyono said,
May 8, 2007 at 10:00 pm
nice nice nice nice nice
nice pictures
iman kurniadi said,
May 9, 2007 at 7:38 pm
awesome and outstanding, great….
Great boys said,
February 1, 2008 at 7:09 am
Great boys95f98f88217f972043b235e6a9a5c48b