Beyond Our Dreams... A Season of Lucid Living (Part 3)

“In my dreams I walk the winds, 
I climb the stairs of open space;
In my dreams I float …Unfettered By myths of connectedness that limit…”

(Excerpt from the poem “Surreality” by the author)

Beyond Our Surrealism…

“In my dreams I walk the winds… I climb the stairs of open space… “. So goes the opening lines in the first verse of my poem “Surreality”. It is possible to accomplish the impossible in our dreams. We fly. I walk on air in my dreams. I float around unencumbered by the force of gravity. In my dreams I use the power of my thoughts to rearrange objects …and objectionables. I face and conquer great adversaries with the skill of a well practiced master. In my lucid dreams I take risks that I dared not take in my wakened state. And then I wake up…

Gravity is real. In “real life” one does not just wish the obstacles away. The challenges we face in our wakened state require abilities that we do not always possess. Mastering our circumstances, while not impossible, requires the kind of effort and dedication that few cultivate the will to do. Our dreams are at times frightful, and we may wake up sweating profusely from an awe-full surreal event. Mastering ourselves and our circumstances in reality takes some sweat, and tears… and substantial bruising sometimes. That. Is. Life.

In the immediate absence of the means to realize the kind of life we desire, we sometimes find ourselves daydreaming. Ultimately, beyond our daydreaming we come to a place of resolve. This is a place of cliched truisms… Where there is a will, there is a way. Nothing is impossible… If I can think it, I can accomplish it. Descartes’ myth becomes our mantra… Cogito ergo sum! I think therefore I am. I adopt to myself, and to my aspirations, the power of the ideas in the Gospel of John… “In the beginning was the Word (Thought), and the (Thought) was God… Everything that was created was created by the Thought”. My thoughts thus become the reality in which I live and move and have my being. My words/thoughts become flesh and live in my life/world.

In the absence of an enabling vision of our lives, we remain in the bed of complacency. We live there. We sleep there. We dream there. In the presence of a viable vision of Life, we hear the voice that says to us… Wake up! “Take up thy bed and walk!” Rising up from the bed of complacency is the expressed commitment of those possessed of an empowering vision of the future. It is the act of persons who no longer perceive themselves in terms of the crippling disability that afflicts those who think of themselves as the victims of a life imposed upon. We create our own symbols.

Ultimately it is up to us to reinterpret our possibilities in terms that empower us. In the place of the chained feet of a burdened existence, we can grow wings… We can fly unfettered, leaving behind us the superimposed connections to those realities that chain us to the nowhere of a severely limited existence. “In my dreams I walk the winds, I climb the stairs of open space; In my dreams I float unfettered … By myths of connectedness that limit… In my dreams I am one with my thoughts… And know only as a remembrance … The obstacle of my consciousness…”

Beyond our dreams we are challenged to live our lives in a season of clarity. This season is ushered in by the vision we develop from a place of lucid living. Begin by determining to be the primary actor in the life that is yours. Claim your life with all the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and industrial energy you can muster. Live with the certainty that your life can be whatever you determine it to be.