Holding the Vision

Stepping past the point of wishing and into dreaming and creating requires focus...
That is true enough. But it also requires vision. Without a guiding vision to lead us toward what we are seeking we have no map to achieve it.

But holding a vision of something not yet attained can be tricky business.

After all. We have all this evidence around us of what we have not achieved. It is, quite literally, in our face. Every day we live, we are surrounded by whatever our current level of focus brings us. And even more powerfully, what our focus up until now has been, which forms the foundation of our perspective.

So how do we step out of that "what is" and into our dreams? We practice, bit by bit, expanding our ability to envision where we long to go.

In the beginning it feels false, if we are really good at perceiving the "what is" and going along with the world's point of view. We no longer even notice the subtle shifts in our physical, emotional, and mental bodies as we step into the space of looking from the outside rather than feeling and sensing from within.

One way to begin to explore these two perspectives of our being, is to pay very close attention to how we feel as we move from a space of solitude into spaces inhabited by others. But even this is difficult for many of us to achieve as our lives are so full of others we find no space to engage ourselves outside of the presence of observers, and hence, our split awareness.

Walking in nature can often shift our perspective back to that clearer, inner awareness that flows from us effortlessly. Indeed, a chance encounter with another when walking in solitude is an excellent opportunity to observe this inner and outer shift of our perspective. First we are expanded, being drawn through our senses outward into the natural environment. We are basking in the beauty of the scenery, the feel of the air on our skin, the color of the sky... Then we are yanked back into our bodies, as our encounter with another human brings our own body awareness into sharp perspectives - and often our awareness of their awareness of us is even more powerful than our own sense of our selves in that moment. We "shift".

Have you ever watched children who were in their own inner space? They are content, involved, engaged. Busy. Their imaginations are gallivanting across the landscape of their interior and exterior worlds freely. No boundaries.

We, on the other hand, have become split. Or perhaps better stated our world has become split. Our world is "what is real" and "what is pretend, or imagined" and we have relegated all our power to the reality and left the imagined out of the equation. From the time we are little we are told "don't make things up" and "Tell the truth" as if our outer experience were the only relevant and reliable source for information. When we invent imaginary friends we are told to remember that they are "pretend" and "not real". When we encounter fairy tales or stories we are reminded that they are stories, not the stuff of real life...

It is no wonder that most of us have trouble when it comes to holding a vision.

Unless we have some clear, defined and strategically aligned outer world road map to take us to what we want, we are told that we are "dreaming" if we think we'll get there. But we cannot find that map if we think we have to create it out of the "what is" of our present experiences; because the place we want to go is not contained in the place we are. It is not available to us from there. From our limiting beliefs and thoughts we are unable to escape the "real world" and move into the larger expanded version of ourselves we dream of.

It is only from our inner vision and imagination that we can access such power.

Of Manifesting Bread Machines... and Other Things...

This afternoon as I put together the dough for fresh bread rolls to go with tonight's dinner, I couldn't help but ponder the manifestation of my bread machine...

I usually use it to make the dough for me... from there, I take my work to the oven where my rack with eight bricks serves to bake me up something more exciting than the squared up loaf the machine has to offer.

Since it has a setting for this, bread making now consists of throwing everything in the machine, setting the buttons and coming back an hour and a half later to make the bread. Cool.

Bread machines.

So I have wanted a bread machine for a while... one of those things you want but never really get so involved in as to buy... I've made bread since college and no matter in what household I was living, fresh bread made everyone my best friend...

From college room mates to young children, to adult children and spouses... everyone to a man will take fresh baked bread whenever he or she can get it. :)

So this skill can make you popular.

And being as big a fan of the stuff as any of them, I actually took the time to hand knead and make the dough, for going on 30 years! WOW.

You can see why I didn't do it so often. Being as it takes a whole afternoon to make bread by hand, and is, no matter how you slice it, a messy proposition. Bread making is INVOLVED when you have to have a solid flat surface and two hands connected to strong arms to make it happen!

So I had always wanted a bread machine... but I had never really "gotten around to it" to get one...

Last Spring my son was in a high school production of Grease. He needed some kind of funky clothing for his part, and we went off and outfitted him from various locations around town. One stop was the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Gilroy; which, frankly, is one of my favorite places to find cool stuff like baskets, new forms for pottery molds, and all sorts of other cool things.

On that day, as we came in to the store, I just happened to notice a large basket right away that was exactly what I needed for a project I needed a basket for. So I snatched that right up. :)

Then I looked around and saw ... not one bread machine, but two!

Huh. I thought...

Upon closer investigation, one was an Oster, and even had the instruction and recipe book along with it. Price 7 dollars and something.
I smiled.

I had my son tote it to the counter to be plugged in and make sure the little lights came on and so on... yup. Turned out there was a store wide discount that day, so my bread machine only ended up costing 5 dollars. LOL

Can we just say, it ROCKS?!

It is down there right now as I type this, happily churning away and making me a lovely dough to form into rolls. How cool is that?

What strikes me about these kinds of manifestations, is that for the most part in life, we don't really take them in. We don't consider how cool it is to have just what we want show up without any effort on our part and simply cross our path.

When compared to manifesting your life partner or a house, we think "oh this is just the small stuff" it doesn't really "count"...

But in the end, the larger manifestations have a different level of commensurate responsibility tied to their outcome that the smaller ones do not...

In other words, you have to live up to being ready to handle being in a relationship for the life partner to really show up; and with a bread machine, well, it's okay either way... use it or not... it was only 5 dollars, after all!

So when we think about what was fun, and what is fun in life, often it is these smaller less dramatic moments or events. There are different levels of satisfaction that can be achieve through finding the perfect sized tray for your stove top and manifesting the purchase of a home.

Not because the energy of creation is different, it isn't. But because our own involvement and engagement with the end result requires us to step in to a more expanded version of our self in order to accomplish, or achieve or maintain that new larger thing.

"Oh," you may say. "I don't have to be ready to really live in that relationship for it to show up in my life. I'll learn how to do that after we meet." But the truth is, that if you are not ready, willing and able to stretch and grow in all the ways that a relationship will stretch and grow you the chances of that relationship being the long lasting one are slim to nil.

Even if that was your "soul mate" or whatever.

I think I had as much fun this afternoon remembering how that bread maker showed up in my life as I did using it. Which is the whole point, isn't it? If we can't figure out how to enjoy the journey (usually because we are so busy trying to figure out how to either "get it right" or "be right") then we've really missed the whole thing.

The other interesting thing about the larger manifestations is that they continue to change over time. Even the relationships we create change. Not that we grow apart, necessarily, but that the depth and breadth and scope of the relationship expands and changes.

The perfect house eight years ago is no longer the perfect house. Experience has added huge and vast amounts of information which have changed a lot of our original ideas as we interact with the house... So maybe we fix it up, or sell it and get another one. Whatever we do, we are now in a long term relationship with the manifested object/relationship/circumstance.

So our larger creations, being larger, tend to change is in ways that are larger than we may sometimes anticipate. Their meanings and our experience of them produce results we are, quite literally, unable to contemplate before we have moved somewhat along the continuum of the expierence. Whereas our smaller, simpler creations are free to answer anything along the entire spectrum of any number of fun, interesting, exciting or simply personally meaningful possibilities.

And now, it's time to make the bread!