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The Dream Creators
Dream
by William Whitecloud
Best selling
author and creative development
master William Whitecloud argues that daring to dream is not the same
as thinking big, but more about thinking differently…
If I had created human beings I think I would have
designed them a
little more kindly. As Colin Wilson, the eminent occult commentator,
so dryly observed, there is something wrong with the human make up.
It might sound like a negative note to strike when contributing to a
theme as uplifting as Dare to Dream, but reality
isn’t
something that should be abandoned when addressing human potential;
if anything, it is the point from which we should proceed.
One of the
unfortunate myths
perpetuated by well intentioned “success” advocates
is the notion
of positive thinking. The philosophy of Positive Thinking is that to
manifest desired end results one must be free of any negative
attitudes relating to the desired results. The implication is that
success depends on an unchallenged faith that one can achieve it. In
my opinion, the only short coming of the otherwise excellent
motivational DVD, The Secret, is how adamantly its
panel of
experts insists that the universal laws of attraction apply only to
those who can conquer their negative emotions.
There can be no
question that to
intentionally create end results it helps if one’s energy is
predominantly focused on whatever you are going for, but it is just
not true that it is necessary to eliminate all reservations, along
with their emotional and mental correspondents. The pioneering
psychologist, Rollo May, who wrote The Courage to Create,
was
personally acquainted with the great creators of his time, including
such luminaries as Picasso and Einstein. What he could report on
first hand was the fear great creators embrace when embarking on
their creations. A contemporary example of this creative
vulnerability is Bill Clinton, former American president and one of
the most respected and sought after speakers of our time, who has
freely admitted that in spite of his colossal status and vast
experience, he still suffers severe anxiety before giving a speech.
Paranoia never
stopped Howard Hughes
from acquiring one of the world’s largest fortunes, while at
the
same time making some of the biggest block buster movies of his
generation and designing America’s best World War Two fighter
planes. Insanity did not get in the way of Vincent van Gogh painting
his sublime sunflowers. And our own Rene Rivkin became one of
Australia’s most successful speculators in spite of his very
public
battle with manic depression. Not that you would wish these
conditions on anyone, least of all yourself, but it demonstrates how
wrong it is to contend that good intention, perfect health and
brimming optimism are prerequisites for creating. The stupid, the
greedy, the insecure, and the evil are all capable of getting what
they want.
As a
philosophy, Positive Thinking is a
very limiting belief system on several counts. One of the most
debilitating aspects of this philosophy, in my experience, is that
people who subscribe to it only take action or go for what they want
when they feel ready. Instead of throwing themselves into the river
of life, they sideline themselves in an eternal preparation to live.
All their energy goes into psyching themselves up and/or eliminating
their negativity, which only serves to feed and give power to the
negative. Curiously, positive thinkers see no irony in the fact that
most of them are enthusiastic proponents of the maxim that what you
resist persists.
The most
insidious facet of Positive
Thinking, though, is its enthusiasm for disregarding the truth, both
in terms of the reality of a situation or the truth of what someone
is feeling. Positive affirmations are a prime example of this kind of
willful delusion. Only my poorest friends have fridge magnets
affirming that the abundance of the universe is constantly flowing in
their well deserved direction. Truth be told, the abundance of the
universe is assiduously avoiding them. In fact, they are the suckers
who are continually fleeced by the latest get rich quick pyramid
scheme and too good to be true multi-level marketing product.
I do not make a
stand for the truth on
moral grounds. To me the truth is a creative imperative. The Truth is
one of the three virtues, along with Love and Wisdom, espoused by
Hermetic Philosophy, the purest strand of Alchemy. What the
philosophers of antiquity understood, and contemporary creative
masters like Rollo May and Robert Fritz have rediscovered, is that a
healthy acknowledgement of one’s circumstances and
disposition sets
up a tension that subconsciously motivates our creative faculties to
begin working towards us having things the way we would love them to
be.
Positive
thinking generally fails to
harness the kind of creative tension that May observed so many great
creators use to compel their extraordinary accomplishments. Positive
affirmations can lull the mind into a false sense of complacency,
unintentionally de-motivating its natural inclination to
subconsciously resolve problems and elevate us to preferred states of
being. People who are broke or sick or in a loveless relationship
often let their subconscious off the hook by kidding themselves that
“it’s all good!”
So back to
Colin Wilson’s observation
that there is something wrong with the human make up. As I mentioned,
it is where we must begin if we mean to develop our own potential.
What is wrong with us stems from the fact that, fundamentally, we are
made up of two distinct natures. On the one hand we have an ego, the
part of us that is charged with our survival, and on the other hand
we have a soul, which is the part of us that plays with the universe.
The ego is very
single mindedly focused
on the task of satisfactory survival. It uses personal experience to
make up rules about what life is about and how it works. These rules
end up as a world view – an intelligent cage that
won’t let us
discover life beyond its parameters for fear that we are not safe
outside of the rules we made up.
The soul is
something else altogether.
It is a free spirit, bound by no rules, psychically in touch with
every possibility and way. While it may take survival into account,
the soul chiefly seeks to celebrate its own existence. Connected to
everything through all time and space, its focus is on expressing its
divine nature – it exists to know wonder and create marvels.
One could argue
that both of these
natures are valid, but the problem is that the ego develops in a way
that monopolizes our attention to the point that we actually forget
we have a soul. The call of our soul, if it gets through to us at
all, comes across as an alien, flaky voice in our heads, so different
from the certain rules we live by that we regard it as a flaw within
ourselves. While we believe we live diverse lives in a kaleidoscopic
world, really we are more like electricity routed along the same
narrow circuitry in a microchip. And the tragedy is that when we
operate on the auto pilot of ego, we not only cut ourselves off from
the richness of soul, we shut down the creative faculties that can
lead us way beyond our dumbed down reality.
The creative
faculties – which Colin
Wilson dubbed Faculty X – allow us to see things in a new
light,
they refresh and invigorate the mind, inspire us, make us more
inventive and tune us in to the language of the universe.
It’s not
very difficult to spot the people tuned into Faculty X: Richard
Branson, Madonna, Bill Gates, and all the others who are clearly not
plugged into the same matrix as ninety eight percent of the
world’s
population. And we subconsciously admire them, maybe even envy them,
because deep down we know that more than wealth and fame, what they
truly have is the freedom to follow their hearts rather than the
rules.
Had I been the
designer, I would not
have given the ego so much power; I would have turned the soul up a
lot more in the mix. As it happens, it falls to each of us to tame
our tyrannical ego and restore our soul to its rightful place as
ruler of our consciousness. Even though it is easier said than done
there is one weapon against which the ego is no match –
Moonlight!
Where the sun
represents the harsh,
magnifying-glass focus of the rational mind that melted
Icarus’s
wings, the moon represents the diffuse, non literal quality of the
subconscious. One is the ego, the other is the soul. And we tame the
ego by softening our focus on survival. We allow ourselves to dream,
to be open to ideas, images and intuitions that do not fit
comfortably into our rational sense of order. This might include a
vision of a life far removed from where we are now, full of all the
things we wished we had, but that’s not the most important
element
of dreaming.
You have to
remember that there is
something wrong with your own make up. You are ruled by the limited
aspect of your dual nature. What good does it do you if your big
dreams are actually driven by your ego? For a time you might think
you’re moving up in the world, but then one day
you’ll realize
that you are more stuck in your intelligent cage than ever and that,
really, you are still following the rules, not your heart.
No, if you want
to operate in the
territory where you can know wonder and create marvels, then daring
to dream has to mean something other than seeing yourself with more
of all the things you believe make you safe. It means having the
courage to not take your world view so seriously, to not attend to it
so slavishly, even though it threatens to destroy you for your
disloyalty.
To
live from soul, we must, as
Fred Allan Wolf advises us in What The Bleep, be in
the
mystery, not the know. We must empty ourselves of our assumptions and
fixations to the point that we can begin to let in the secrets the
universe is trying to share with us. If this is something you want,
if you want to be tuned in to Faculty X like Madonna or Branson or
Gates, then you must begin to imagine something very special. You
must imagine what it would be like to be truly free, to live beyond
the limits set by our unconscious rules. You must begin to wonder
what it would be like to play in the universe rather than merely
survive in it. And you must hold that vision above all else you
aspire to. You must make it your foremost value. I dare you to do
that, because if you do, the world as you now know it will begin to
crumble and you truly will be born again, this time as a true master
of the universe.
Oh, and if you
feel a fear coming on,
don’t worry. That’s normal. If you embrace it, it
will speed you
on your journey.
William
Whitecloud is author of Australia’s best selling metaphysical
book,
The Magician’s Way, and founder of the year-long
self-transformation training of the same name.
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