Have you lost your ability to be inspired by your dreams?

 

I have gotten up in the morning and asked myself that question many times over the past 10 years ”What the heck am I doing?”

What am I fighting for?

If nothing seems to come to mind then that is a tell tale sign of depression and to be honest, it is running rampant in our world.

I believe that some kinds of depression could be caused by a lack of the ability to dream, because having exciting dreams sends out some kind of neural sparks that ignite the fires of faith, hope and love.

We all grow up with the born ability to dream and ”make believe” until over time we learn that it is childish to expect those dreams to come true, that life ”just doesn’t work that way.”

Grown-ups are children who have had the ”red licked off of their candy.” ”Reality” comes and disappoints us to the point where we cry inside, but ”Big Girls Don’t Cry.” To stop crying we stop dreaming and end the heartache of not getting what we want in life, and are somewhat content with what we have. 

Gratitude is of course the art of being grateful for what you have, it makes you realize that what you have today, right now is, in itself the fulfillment of many dreams when looked on through the eyes of past generations.

We take for granted the dreams that have been fulfilled that we experience on a regular basis like, running water, indoor toilets, electricity, light bulbs, radio, television, the internet and even a simple refrigerator or toaster. We live in a free society that wants you to get what you want. We can fly to the moon or dive to the bottom of the seas. We lived a blessed existence today.

Yet you have lost the excitement for your dreams and even when you have had dreams become fulfilled it turns out it isn’t nearly as exciting or beneficial to you as when you had the dream and worked towards it.

I think the most exciting thing I ever experienced in life was that feeling on Christmas morning, anticipating seeing what Santa Claus brought. Looking at that I wonder if it is immoral, or selfish or greedy to value you that or to want it as a grown up. But, I now think it is maybe the real truth about life and what actually makes the world go around.

Of course giving is the altruistic reward to be the most valued in life, but why? Giving means nothing if the receiving has no meaning to the recipient. This is what makes parents glow the most isn’t it? Seeing their children so excited and happy, if only for a few golden moments on Christmas morning is probably one of the most special times in anyone’s life.

So dreams are a very good thing. But, how do we get that childlike excitement back when we have lost the natural gift of dreaming? That literally is the million dollar question.

I think it has to do with being real with ourselves and the world and admitting that we are in fact self-centered and egoistic beings. It is healthy to be self-centered and egoistic because self-preservation is the number one responsibility we have in life, otherwise we just roll over and let others and the world have their way with us and we are left naked and hungry on the side of the road wondering what happened.

In fact I think the idea that we aren’t this way causes imbalance in some people and they react overtly to the notion and become damagingly greedy and covetous. Most dangerous is when overtly greedy and self-centered egoistic  people don’t get what they want, blame everyone else for the shattering of their dreams and act out in destructive ways taking the lives of innocent people in acts of violence.

When dreams are shattered people are in pain. To avoid this pain we stop dreaming and we get caught in a downward spiral of our standards for our lives…we become depressed and despondent and utterly hopeless and powerless to do any good at all for anyone.

But, possibly the most compelling thing about dreams are that they help us help others achieve their dreams.

“You can have whatever you want in life if you help others get what they want.” –

Zig Ziglar

Quotes like this become cliche, but it is true and this is why dreaming is so important, because if you don’t have powerful wants, your power to help others will dwindle and disappear.

You dreams is the source for your all famous ”why”.

Don’t ever let go of your dream and lose the power of them. It is devastating to you.

When I was a teen I was saving up to buy a car, but I didn’t want just any car, I wanted a Corvette, not because I necessarily liked Corvettes all that much, but getting one would symbolize my ability to have a dream and make it come true, by my own power.

I went with a friend to Nashville to look at one I had found in the newspaper, and it was beautiful, and very seventies, sky blue metallic T-Top with white leather interior. It was a very nice ride, and the price wasn’t out of reach really, but upon coming home and talking to my parents about it you got all of the prudent arguments against it, like, teenagers insurance premiums are high enough, with a car like that it would be ridiculous, it is too expensive and I couldn’t pay for it or the most famous of all, ”you don’t need a car like that” a modest car will get you from A to Z just as well.

So of course I didn’t get it, and I let that dream die instead of saving up for one some day in the future. I just gave up on doing the unreasonable.

This however didn’t mean that I never realized dreams as a kid. My parents did everything they could to give us what we wanted and I appreciate that. I had a very happy childhood and I am very grateful to them for it.

But everything was placed within the limits of the realistic and the realm of the unreasonable became forbidden territory. With this died my ability to dream, a little piece at a time. The tragedy is when you lose a connection between your dreams and your own ability to make those dreams come true.

It is this life of futility that crushes all ambition. The belief that ”You can’t get your dreams to come true, so it isn’t even right to have them and you don’t care to try because it won’t happen anyway. So just get real, give up on your dreams and settle and be grateful for what you have”

What you see in the world are the eyes of people that look like the puppy sitting by the side of the table, gazing up at you longing for a tiny morsel of steak and that shadow of disappointment in the eyes knowing they aren’t going to get any of it.

Eventually they stop longing, they stop dreaming and there is a bitterness in them that is angry at the world for not giving them what they want and even more so, depressed because they have lost the ability to feel the excitement of a dream for the rest of their lives.

Lets stop this, here and now.

Lets start dreaming and encourage dreaming.

Lets fill our minds with the neural sparks of energy that comes from the excitement created by our dreams and let those dreams be unreasonable and compelling enough to power us to serve others in getting their dreams fulfilled which will ultimately be the dearest gift we receive in the end and that is that we have lived our lives reaching for the mountain top and helped others get there too.

I have studied Zen and non-attachment to things and realize that this information and the techniques are valuable for us on the spiritual level. But, the spirit is only half of who we are and those spiritual gifts are indeed more important than the worldly, but that only makes our world half full.

The duality of a human, the ”Being” and the ”Ego”  both need to be nurtured and fulfilled. They are separate but one. To be 100% involved in life, we must also take care of the child who has dreams, for that is an intrinsic need given to us by nature and by God.

But, there is one more aspect about dreams that I want to bring forth here.

Dreams connect the spiritual world to the real world. Dreams are not ”real”, but are ideas, visions, hopes in our hearts otherwise known as the ultimate level of existence, which is love.

But these spiritual gifts remain locked in the spiritual world and never see the light of day in the real world unless they are made real in a physical sense. This is what dreams do, they carry us out of our minds and into our bodies, they transport the idea into reality and give us the intrinsic motivation or inspiration to manifest them in our lives and for others as well. 

So this is why it is often said that dreams are ”real” because it is sort of like something that beams into the world like the transporter on Star Trek, it is that in between stage where the dream is being ‘materialized’ into the real world that causes us to sense this state of ”spiritual reality.”

Ultimately, we as humans serve a variety of purposes. We are here to recognize the existence of God and the universe, because without us they don’t exist. We are here to do a job and serve others and get compensation for it. But, ultimately we are here to fulfill our highest calling and that is to fulfill the mission we have in our hearts to do, and that is have big, powerful and unreasonable dreams and turn them into reality, not only for our good, but also for the universal goal of realizing our potential as living beings in the world.