Dreaming the Future Into Being

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Where love is deep
much can be accomplished.
--Shinichi Suzuki

It is an amazing thing about being human that we can feel something inside and then build it in the world. It seems we have this inborn need to love and to create. At their deepest, these drives of spirit appear to be the same.

I'm a creative person and have always been a creative person, and at around age ten that creativity manifested itself in the words that came from my heart and my imagination.

Here I am 33 years later, still filled with the same wordy creativity – only hampered by my ability not to be able to do so many things at once. I have work to do, a life to move to the correct side of the Atlantic Ocean, a family to create and books to write, publish and sell... and it's an intriguing set of dominoes where any one of them could lead to the toppling of the others into place.

I meditate and vision quest these things into my hands and out into the world on a daily basis, and even as I'm still working on them all, pray that the Universe will also bend and ear to the song of my creativity, and lend a hand. Perhaps it already has been helping, and I just haven't figured out how yet... because I've been too busy working on thing by myself.

We all have dreams... things that we envision for our lives. They aren't always practical, they aren't always what others would envision for us, but that doesn't mean that we should give up on them entirely. We might adjust them to fit in with our current realities and practicalities, but even as we do, should we not 'dream' them into our hand and into our vision of the world in their pure state... in what we hope for them – how can we empower ourselves, and our dreams if we are constantly downgrading ourselves and our dreams so that they will fit? What is the difference between 'ambition' and 'dream?'

Cynicism

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

I tried so hard to please
that I never realized
no one is watching.

I imagined, like everyone else at school, that my parents were sitting just out of view like those quiet doctors behind clean mirrors, watching and reprimanding my every move. As I reached adulthood, the habit continued. I walked around constantly troubled by what others must be thinking of what I was or was not doing. In this, we are burdened with the seeds of self-consciousness. From this, we trouble our spontaneity and the possibility of joy by watching ourselves too closely, nervously unsure if this or that is a mistake.

It's true... every single word, and even when I manage to break out of the cycle of self consciousness, someone or something always comes along to grab me up and drag me back inside.

When I was little, and by little, I mean very small, I was made the chief angel among the angels of the nativity, simply because it was my birthday. I argued with my teacher when she graded my story as being no good. A little older and I sought the approval of my peers (never got it, I was too much of a geek/swot for that), and my parents (by doing well in school – I was going to be a doctor!)

At some point late in my primary school, I auditioned for, and was accepted to the County School of Dance – but gave it up some time soon afterwards, as puberty made my body the wrong shape for ballet, and in any case, my school work was priority... and continued to be the priority, in spite of my suddenly growing and burgeoning creativity... which was a shift in direction, albeit only slight. I excelled, I strove to be the best I could be... I kept on track to be the doctor that I was going to be when I left school...

But was I happy?

I realised way too late that I was working so hard for everyone else's happiness and approval rather than my own. I'm not saying that I had a miserable childhood, because that would be a lie, I didn't. I had a good childhood, just that it was one dominated by striving to do well academically in preparation for a future that I came to realise I didn't really want. I wanted to be creative.

On the first day of the school year in which I would have begun my studies that would allow me to prepare for university and med school, I walked into my mentor's office and declared that I wanted to drop Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, and take English, French and Theatre Studies instead. You can imagine the expression on the teacher's face, I'm sure. To be fair, my parents didn't appear to mind overmuch... and were very supportive of my efforts to try and get into acting. As I was auditioning for various drama schools, my mum was saying that it was okay if I didn't get it, and had I considered teaching.

And yes, I have ended up as a teacher, but by choice, not by the need for anyone else's approval...but then here's where bitter irony rears its ugly head. Teaching when I qualified and got my first job was no longer the profession it was when I decided it was what I wanted to do... and it has become less so during the 15+ years that I've now been a teacher. Teaching now-a-days is dominated by... yep, you guessed it – jumping through hoops and satisfying someone else's criteria for approval. Now... I realise that in any job the employee is going to get an appraisal or two... maybe a yearly review, whatever... but in teaching it's gone to the extreme. Teaching isn't about teaching children any more – it's about hitting government check boxes against standards set, not by the individual needs of the individual children in one's class, but against... 'this is what a child that age should be able to do.'

They're CHILDREN, no robots!

Pardon my frustration, but something I wanted to do for so long has had the joy leeched from it for me by this enforced expectation of seeking approval. It's not enough to want to be a good class teacher these days, and teach children what they can learn and how best they can achieve their potential. Teachers are expected to want to become leaders, specialists, and advisors... all those things that take them away from the classroom where good teachers are sorely needed. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, and our children in the heads – metaphorically speaking.

I don't want to be insecure and self conscious – not in this, not in anything... but society has become a place where those in power want to keep up that way in order to maintain their own security, and yes... I have become cynical and jaded.

Let All the World Sing

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

What lies behind us
and what lies before us
are tiny matters
compared to
what lies within us.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

regardless of the words or the melody, this effort to sing is a way to open passageways, between what is growing within and what is growing without.

I love to sing, and I do it a lot... singing or humming... or listening to music. I do it consciously and unconsciously... there's nothing like it. It affects mood, it affects breathing, it affects mind and body and spirit.

It's no coincidence that our ancestors celebrated moments in a day with song – a waking song, a working song, songs of thanks, of joy of sorrow. Songs and chants are within us and all around us... and too many of us don't use them.

I used to have a whole repertoire of 'pagan' songs and chants (including some from native America, from Africa and so on). I've lost many of the recordings and forgotten far too many of the ones that were inside of me. Some of them I've been able to 'find' again thanks to sites such as YouTube and so on... but it's a loss I feel greatly.

Using chant during ritual is a great way to control the flow of breath and the flow of power through one's body, but it works just as well with the progress of daily living... intent too. How many parents have sung a soothing song as a lullaby to a child resisting sleep? The so called 'negro spiritual' songs – were they not working songs, meant to help keep rhythm for work that needed it? Why don't we sing any more as a matter of course?

I remember once (and for a very short time I might add) I had a job working in the office of a recruitment consultant. It was run by two elderly ladies, and on one occasion not long before I told them it wasn't working out for me, one of them asked me to stop humming as I worked. I couldn't do it then... it made my working day miserable to not be able to express myself in that way. And yet, along with the other changes that happened to me of a sudden, I lost my 'gift of song.'

Perhaps it's a sign of my healing that I've suddenly realised I miss singing my day, singing the changes of the day, the year, and all that goes with it.

Walk With A Child's Step

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Walker, there is no path,
you make the path as you walk.
--Antonio Machado

Isn't balance, in reality, the ability to step quite naturally... without too much thought into everything larger than our fear?

Does this mean that we overthink things and that in overthinking and second guessing each and every decision, or moment in life, we cause ourselves to become unbalanced?

I think that I second guess myself too much, and at the times that I do, those are the times that I stumble and fall, or lose balance, or lose sight of what is important. Sometimes I catch myself, and manage to right my balance again before I do or say something that causes distress. Too often I don't.

It's when I surrender to doing and saying things without reservation, trusting in my footsteps to carry me onward rather than have me trip and fall on my ass that I am most at peace and most successful in my endeavours... or indeed where I learn the most, or something happens to show me something I need to see. I think it's about listening to the Universe more and imposing my own narrow view upon the Universe; living with humility rather than in arrogance.

And sometimes... sometimes it take watching a child take a first step (or watching a young child do anything) to make you see all of that.