Gary likes to remind me that I’m a dreamer. My response is always the same: “But I’m not the only one.” (Thank you, John.)
We dream about what might be. Something captures us, and we begin picturing ourselves there, living inside a life that does not yet exist.
Lately, I’ve been wondering less about the dream itself and more about the dream beneath the dream.
What is it about the life we imagine that calls to us?
Something I believed would support a larger dream began absorbing my attention and energy. Over time, I noticed that what was meant to support that dream had begun taking me away from it.
I wasn’t living my deeper dream. I was busy arranging the conditions around it.
That realization made me wonder how often we confuse the shape of a dream with its heart.
Who Are You in the Dream?
Look beyond what you hope to have or accomplish and see yourself inside the dream.
Who are you there?
Stay there for a moment. Notice what is alive in you, what is being fully expressed, what you are giving and receiving.
Is that what you’ve really been dreaming of all along?
The dream we imagine may be one expression of something deeper. Its form may change many times over a lifetime while the longing beneath it remains remarkably familiar.
Children often understand this without explanation. A child doesn’t wait to become the person in the dream. For an afternoon, she simply becomes her. Imagination opens the door, and she walks through.
Somewhere along the way, we become skilled at preparing for the lives we want. We plan, build, acquire, organize, and work toward what we imagine will make those lives possible. Much of that is necessary.
What Longs for Expression?
But some longings cannot be satisfied by acquisition because they are asking for expression. They ask to be lived, and this is where devotion enters the dream.
Devotion carries what we love beyond imagination and into participation. We breathe life into it by giving ourselves to it, and somehow, it breathes life back into us.
Gary and I can share a dream, bringing entirely different gifts. Our devotion meets there.
What part of your dream requires waiting?
What we imagine may take time to unfold, but the deeper dream is already ours to live. The dream beneath the dream isn’t about what I hope to have someday. It’s about how fully I am willing to live today. Outcome is not my department. Devotion is.
The Dream Beneath the Dream
What I love can receive my attention now. What longs for expression can have my hands, my imagination, my participation.
Maybe that’s what we’re searching for beneath all our dreaming: not only the life we hope to have, but the self who comes fully alive while living it.
We don’t have to wait to meet that self. The dream is already asking for us.
Here. Now.