We all have dreams. We cherish them and we chase them, and eventually we reach them (some of them, at least). When you are on your way to your dreams, it often seems like you’re running towards a standing, static goal. As if you can almost see how many laps you still have to run, and you can clearly see the finish line.
Once you cross, you can stop running. Right? I mean, that’s it and we’re done! Dream – CHECK and life can settle into happily ever after between you and your dream. The longer you have been running, the more you are expecting this happy ending to swoop you off your tired feet. Finally – you can stop running now.
The victory lap
Depending on the size of your dream you do the happy dance and run the victory lap for a while. Then as your pulse settles, you gather yourself, and inevitably find yourself in a moment of and-now-what?! This can come as quite a shocker, especially if you have been plotting your dream for some time. Because dreams should make you happy, and they do, but we tend to forget that it’s not the end station. As long as we are alive, we keep evolving and changing.
I seem to fall for it every time. Thinking that if I just achieve my wild, crazy dreams, I’m set for life. As if I would magically stop growing, developing and learning more, as if I would magically want to stop dreaming.
And while reaching my crazy dreams surely makes me happy, don’t get me wrong, I tend to forget the impermanence of things. After my latest major life-overhaul I thought blissfully that I was finally on track, life was going to be smooth sailing and all I needed to do was to drink mango shakes and stare at the ocean.
So when new dreams started to surface after some years, I grew anxious. Why was I dreaming again? Why did I feel the need to move on, I had already FOUND my dream, I had already changed everything around for this new life I was enjoying. Was I even allowed to dream anymore, and how many major life changes and over-hauls was one person allowed to do in life?
String your beads and be happy
I forgot the simple and delicious fact that life is a not a static race to the goal, simply because there is no goal. Life is like those colorful Mala beads, where the string travels in the middle and the 108 beads are woven into it like the dreams and events of life. One bead starts, and one bead ends.
I forgot that life is movement and growth, a cycle that never stops.
I forgot that I am allowed to continue dreaming, continue chasing and running. That my heart will form new desires from the basis of my continuously improving base-line.
I forgot that dreams are delicious, and we should never stop acquiring more of them.
I forgot that just because my beads may seem random, with their different colors and shapes, they are all connected by the same thread. And at the end of days they will form a beautiful, unique jewelry that I get to call my life.
Some accompanying thoughts from the Universe
“Coincidentally”, I found the following passage in the book I’m reading, Conversations with God Vol.3 by Neale Donald Walsch (or as I like to think of it – Conversations with the Universe).
ENJOY:
Stick to your beliefs, if that serves you. Hold tight. Do not waiver. For your ideas about “right and wrong” are your definitions of Who You Are. Yet do not require that others define themselves according to your terms. And do not stay so stuck in your present beliefs and customs that you halt the process of evolution itself.
Actually, you could not do that if you wanted to, for life goes on, with you or without you. Nothing stays the same, nor can anything remain unchanged. To be unchanged is to not move. And to not move is to die.
All of life is motion. Even rocks are filled with motion. Everything moves. Everything. There is nothing that is not in motion. Therefore, by the very fact of motion, nothing is the same from one moment to the next. Nothing.
Remaining the same, or seeking to, moves against the laws of life. This is foolish, because in this struggle, life will always win.
So change! Yes, change! Change your ideas of “right” and “wrong.” Change your notions of this and that. Change your structures, your constructions, your models, your theories.
Allow your deepest truths to be altered. Alter them yourself, for goodness’ sake! Because your new idea of Who You Are is where the growth is. Your new idea of What Is So is where evolution accelerates. Your new idea of the Who, What, Where, When, How and Why of it is where the mystery gets solved, the plot unravels, the story ends. Then you can begin a new story, and a grander one.
No matter how “good” you think things have been, they can be better. No matter how wonderful your theologies, your ideologies, your cosmologies, they can be full of even more wonder. For there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Be open, therefore. Be OPEN. Don’t close off the possibility of new truth because you have been comfortable with an old one. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
***This article first appeared on Reconnect Inspire***
