Building the Ground Floor

I find comfort dreaming about the way I want my life to be and imagining the kinds of moments that I wish to have more of in my life. These dreams are generally brief characterizations, simple moments, sometimes colorless snapshots in time, always with a sound or smell highlighting the important emotional aspect of the moment. This practice reminds me of why I try and why I don't let myself down and why I am on my Path and what it is in life that is truly important to me. It is an important ingredient in that mortar that I've described in the past. That mortar that keeps my foundation strong.

Sometimes these dreams are as simple as the thought of cuddling into my wife's neck and the sweet smell that is her. Or the hugging smell of a summer day pool in the hair of one of my daughters. Or seeing my three beautiful girls, smiling faces shining, all staring at me with love in there eyes. Or the sound of the wind through late summer grass in the evening on a hill somewhere familiar but unnamed. Or the soothing smell of baking cookies waking me from a midday nap on a calm but rainy Sunday afternoon. Or just the pure happiness of my dog's gaze.

There is a wonderful quote by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and poet Carl Sandburg that seems fitting to this practice.

"Nothing happens unless first we dream."

I believe that the future is only limited by the creativity of our imaginations and the limits we put on our own desires. If you can imagine it, it is possible. And if you imagine it with desire, you can attract more of it into your life. I only believe it because I've experienced it many times in my life. The believing has become easy so the practicing comes naturally. It's a self-fulfilling practice as long as you stick to it.

Of course the dreams I've mentioned are simple, everyday pleasures that make me happy in the moment-to-moment on my Path. They aren't necessarily the kind of dreams that I believe Mr. Sandburg was more likely referring to. The broader, life changing dreams that we all have for our lives. In my opinion, the practice is no different when it comes to achieving these types of dreams. To achieve your dreams, you have to dream them first and dreams dreamt with enough desire come to fruition if you have faith, visualize, take action when prompted by the Universe and then wash and repeat.

One thing I've learned about this practice is that the emotional foundation of the dream is the most important factor in how successfully I activate the dream in my life. If that foundation is weak, the dream will be weak in it's activation. When I say weak, I mean lacking truth or not being natural or unwholesome (none of which are exactly right but those are as close as I can come to describing this). The more naturally good the emotion, the more strongly the dream is activated in my life. This has made me really evaluate my dreams whenever I have them. And in so doing it has made me able to see the types of dreams and feelings that the Universe values and therefore that I value.

The more I focus on those values, the more I flow through life. And the more I flow, the more I realize that I am slowly building the ground floor of this spiritual house that I know someday this Path will reach.