What follows is a combination of passages written many years ago and my current reflections on the topic of dream manifestation.
As human beings, we are endowed with
creative power. Quantum physics now
confirms what indigenous cultures have known for ages: whether we consciously
exercise our power or not, we are creating our personal and collective
realities. The circumstances we are
currently faced with, favorable and distasteful, are all a result of dreams
sent out into the universe. It’s easy to
resist this idea of dreaming our reality by thinking there is no way you would
have dreamed of certain circumstances in your life, and no way that we
collectively would have dreamed of certain circumstances in our world, but
dreams can encompass even things not intended or not consciously wished to
happen.
Some dreams are coveted wishes for
hopeful future outcomes, but other dreams are born in deep-seated fears,
entertainment, or fantasies. Things we
fear in detailed imaginings can surely direct our creative force toward those
feared outcomes. Attention given to movies,
music, and games is attention that we feed into those possibilities of
manifestation, in our own lives and the world in which we live. Elaborate fantasies that we may not actually
want to happen may turn into reality if we feed them enough of our life force. I use the word dream to refer to all these
dreams, whether they are things we actually wish to happen or not. In my view, it is not just important to watch
what you wish for; it’s as important, if not more important, to watch the
things you fill your mind with but do not wish to happen. To truly know your thoughts, even the most
hidden ones, is to truly understand what you are creating.
The idea of dreaming our reality
implies an amount of creative control that seems to conflict with the idea of
fate. This paradox between a view of
humans as powerful creators of their own circumstances and helpless beings
thrown by the currents of destiny has always baffled me. Both concepts have a ring of truth, but they
had always seemed so incompatible, until it occurred to me that dreams
themselves could be part of a higher plan.
As we become more and more conscious, our free will becomes more and
more aligned with our own fate. Our free
will has more power the more we are tapping into a glimpse of our fate, and our
free will has less power the less we are aligning with our fate.
Cultivating the ability to be
conscious of what you are dreaming is not a process to make you a master of the
universe and able to get anything you want.
But rather, it is a process to make you a master of yourself. It simply allows you to tap into who you are
and your purpose at any moment by deciphering exactly what you do want to
create. As you ask yourself the question
of what you would create if you could create anything, you strip away the
layers of false desires and wants to arrive at a more authentic version of
yourself. Each step further, you find
that your life, your choices, and your current circumstances are steps on a
path that does feel destined. Although
you make the choices of a moment, you can increasingly see that the immensity
of how these choices weave together into the tapestry of your life
circumstances is beyond what your mind can understand. Assuming the role of conscious creator simply
lifts a veil and allows you to witness this magical process of dreams
transforming into reality that has been unfolding from the beginning.
We are in constant relationship with
one another. We create the open doorways for someone else’s dreams to happen, but we also can shut the doors preventing something
from happening for someone else. And
just the same, it is other people that open doorways and shut windows on our
dreams. We are one miraculous and
mysterious movement of interconnectedness bringing the world into being, one
moment at a time.
There is just one mind with many
outlets feeding into it. All our
thoughts combine in mysterious ways to lead to the various outcomes we
encounter in every moment. Some teenage
kid playing a violent video game and filling his consciousness with thoughts of
blood, gore, and desensitized aggression feeds those energies into the mind
that manifests the world all around us.
And conversely, a Buddhist monk spending his day in prayers for peace
and unity feeds those energies into the one mind manifesting around us. Although our separate physical bodies create
the impression that we are distinct entities, totally independent from one
another, this illusion of separateness dissolves in the awareness of how our connections
necessarily influence what manifests in the world.
There are
dynamics, like secrecy of dreams and dream competition, that we can understand and use to influence dream
manifestation, but there is a much greater mysterious element of manifestation. We do have free
choice, but in the end, we do not have the final say. There is the veto power of the universe. There are those situations when what we wish
is not aligned with the true direction of our life, and in those situations, no
amount of insight into the nature of manifestation will make something happen
that just is not meant to happen.
There have been those few times when my will has arm-wrestled the universe into giving me what I want, but then, I often realized that what I wanted was much more of a curse than blessing. And for all the work I’ve done to avoid those things that were uncomfortable, challenging, and downright embarrassing, they still happened, and I’m glad. They’ve shaped my strength, my courage, and my sense of humor. For all the chasing down fantasies that I was so sure would make me happy, many have still eluded me, and I’m glad. I’ve matured into the knowledge of just how different those fantasies would have been as reality.
There have been those few times when my will has arm-wrestled the universe into giving me what I want, but then, I often realized that what I wanted was much more of a curse than blessing. And for all the work I’ve done to avoid those things that were uncomfortable, challenging, and downright embarrassing, they still happened, and I’m glad. They’ve shaped my strength, my courage, and my sense of humor. For all the chasing down fantasies that I was so sure would make me happy, many have still eluded me, and I’m glad. I’ve matured into the knowledge of just how different those fantasies would have been as reality.
And so, it is
surrender, not control, that I’ve discovered to be the most important aspect of
understanding the manifestation of dreams.
Years ago, a wise teacher told me that when you are holding a dream that
you hope to manifest, vision it in your mind’s eye as a ball. Let go of the ball and watch it roll out to
the edge of universe. Lose track of it,
forget it, and know that if it is meant to be, it will come back in its own
time.
I’ve returned to this visualization
time and time again when reflecting on the manifestation of my dreams. My graduation at the top of my law school
class was one such treasured ball, and also, the dream of my marriage and the
one of my daughter. When it comes to
those milestones at the biggest crossroads of my life, the pattern has been
fairly consistent. First, a dream enters
my mind. Then, I feel a sense of wanting
the dream to manifest, quickly followed by a chaotic mix of excitement,
anticipation, and fear. And then, I let
it go. I resign myself to not knowing
what’s really best, and not knowing whether I can or want to handle the challenges
inherent in the dream becoming a reality.
Closing my eyes and watching the dream roll off to the edge of the
universe is the liberation of both the fears stirred and attachments created by
the dream.
It has been in those spaces of
surrender that I’ve witnessed the greatest magic of my life taking place. The most real and fantastic dreams have
always arisen out of a space of not knowing, a space of letting go, a space of accepting however fate
might write the next moment.
