Dec '00 / Jan 2001
A
Gift Given, A Gift Received: Water
to Iraq
By Edilith Eckart
Election Analysis Progressive
Directions?
By Bill Thomson
Modernizing Our Electoral Rules
&
Practices
By Rob Richie
Democracy 101
By Blair Bobier
Clean Money: Campaign Finance
Reform
By John Moyers
Book Review: The Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray & Sherry Ruth
Anderson Reviewed by
Peter Montague
Remembrance: Robert Theobald
By Bob Stilger
Transforming Our Dreaming
By José Stevens
Democracy and the Airwaves
By Suzi Aufderheide
StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins
The US Is Warned "Wake Up
To Global Warming Threat"
By Environmental News Service
U.S. Position Threatens to
Derail Climate Change Negotiations
By Cat Lazaroff
Martin Luther King, Jr: Global and
Social Shaman
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore
A Pagan Speak to Jesus
By John Darling
Cosmic Calendar
By Salina Rain
(continued)
Transforming Our Dreaming
By José Stevens
How you perceive yourself, your dreams and the dreams of others strongly affects
how you dream. If you perceive yourself to be powerless, then your dreams
will reflect that. If you perceive yourself to be a lucky person with strongly
attractive features then your dreams will reflect that. If you are afraid
of what others have manifested then you may feel so intimidated by their dream
that you give your power away to it. On the other hand if you perceive that
their dream, no matter how fearsome is simply a dream creation and nothing
more, you can feel the courage to change that dream or replace it with a dream
of your own.
Healers and shamans become proficient at dreaming of healing for others. They
use breath to propel intense intent into the harmonious integration of a person
who has fallen out of balance, become ill, or developed a dysfunction. They
learn to dream of wholeness and this dream matches the deeper wholeness of
the sick person. Their dream of wholeness breathed into the patient reminds
the sick person to dream of recovery themselves and they are healed through
faith. Thus faith is extremely important in the dreaming process. Consider
fire walking for a moment: The fire walk is successful if the person conducting
the ceremony can effectively bring each person to firmly believe they will
not be burned by walking on the hot coals. The greater the faith, the more
successful the event. People with great faith in themselves, in their ideas,
and in their support teams are people whose dreams rapidly and intensively
come about. By contrast those with little faith are not effective dreamers.
They can spend years of their life with doubt and skepticism not manifesting
very much of what they want at all. When it comes to dreaming, faith is everything.
Unfortunately faith in anything can be sold and sometimes the faith is in
something that results in harm. The reason that the collective dream is so
successful is that it has been and is being sold exceptionally effectively
by individuals, universities, corporations, societies, and cultures that have
absolute faith in it. Younger souls have successfully sold the idea that more
is better, that in amassing and consuming material things lies happiness,
that in science lies all answers, that controlling nature is desirable, and
that winning is what is important. These concepts are spread twenty four hours
a day through a media that is completely caught in the dream itself and doesn't
know it. Anyone at odds with these concepts is invalidated including all those
societies of the world labeled third world because they are not producers
and consumers at the same level as the big guys. They are seething in anger
at being invalidated so they fantasize destroying the first world countries
and at the same time they buy into the dream by wanting to emigrate there
to make their fortunes. This second desire has more power and intensity so
it more often becomes their dream.
Power and Intent
So now we have raised the concept of power, another important ingredient in
dreaming. It takes more than faith to propel an idea into a dream that manifests.
It takes power, the energy to manifest it, and it takes the focus of intent.
The curious thing is that power is something that is dreamed up just like
everything else. So you have to have the power to dream and you have to dream
up the power needed to dream effectively. This is like the age-old chicken
and the egg dilemma on the surface but really it is just like growing up.
You have to do it by yourself but you can't do it without help. In other words
both are entwined or inseparable and there is no one source. The original
power to dream came from spirit or the Tao and of course spirit dreamed it
all up anyway.
Local dreams take enough power to manifest in a limited environment. With
enough power behind it a single person's dream can spread out to affect thousands,
millions, even billions of people. There is no limit to the power of one personal
dream. Therefore dreams penetrate everything everywhere just like lubricating
oil. You cannot dream and keep it from influencing the rest of the universe.
Before you know it, it will be everywhere so watch what you dream.
Where do you get the power to dream? You get it by first stopping up the power
leaks in your life, the negative thoughts, the fearful worries, the depressions
and anxieties, and the distractions of false personality. Next you take care
of yourself and honor your body and your health with good food and exercise.
Then you follow practices that magnetize power to you-meditation, service,
teaching what you know, contemplation, silence, prayer, being in nature, practicing
true rest, true play, true work, true study, and discovering the exalted forms
of your true home, your true path, and your true teacher.
How do you dream effectively? First you have to know what you want, not just
what you want to avoid. In order to know what you truly want you may need
help from sources of inner guidance to help you realize what is important.
You may vision quest, journey within, meditate, or practice any number of
personal guidance techniques readily available through transpersonal teachers,
books, tapes, and seminars. Then you need to empower the dream you want to
manifest by:
- Strongly intending
it.
- Focusing on
it often and intently.
- Writing about
it.
- Contemplating
it.
- Meditating
on it.
- Sharing it
with trusted others.
- Visualizing
it and sensing with all the senses.
- Feeling it
is already happening.
- Giving gratitude
for its existence.
- Acting as
if it is true.
- Enlisting
support from your inner totems, guides, and helpers.
- Talking to
nature about what you want including trees, plants, animals, mountains,
deserts, lakes, streams, oceans, clouds, etc. and asking for their support
of your dream.
- Breathing
your dream consciously into all of the above.
- Enlisting people who are powerful, support your dream, and will help you manifest it.
A good guideline
to follow is to ask yourself these questions about your dream: Is this what
essence wants? Will this serve my higher purpose? Will this serve the health
and happiness of the planet? Will this support long term satisfaction or is
it a temporary whim? If the answers are yes, your dream is an excellent one
and you can count on getting major help with it but you have to have the humility
and the courage to ask for the help consciously. Hope doesn't get you there.
Wishing doesn't either. Fearing that you won't get it nor have it is even
worse. Remember that your dream is not something you do in isolation. In some
way it will affect everyone and everything. Will it be food for the tired
old dream enslaving the planet or will it support the waking up to a fresh
satisfaction for all? You choose.
*The seven roles being referred to are warrior, scholar, priest, king, artisan,
server, sage. Each human being perceives the world through one of these seven
essential roles, and although these are not the usual career definitions,
they do assist in describing how we as individuals structure our environment.
Reprinted by permission from the Pivotal Resources Inc. summer and fall
newsletters provided by Jose Stevens Ph.D. and Lena Stevens, internationally
known authors, teachers and corporate trainers with Power Path Seminarsú.
In addition to providing group and personal retreats in Santa Fe, they make
regular trips to the San Francisco Bay area for personal consulting and public
lectures. To subscribe to their newsletter for timely, practical and informative
articles please contact Pivotal Resources Inc., PO Box 272, Santa Fe, New
Mexico, 87504-0272, (505) 982-8732, fax (505) 989-4626; pivotal@pivres.com;
www.pivotal@pivres.com.
In addition to other quality articles, the Winter issue for 2001will include
information on the specific influences that will support and challenge us
in the year 2001.
