My biggest complaints these days are that all of my dreams haven’t happened yet. If I’m looking ahead and consider all things I want to happen, all the things I haven't experienced, all the things I haven't achieved, and all the work I need to do to get there, I get pissed. I get impatient. I get discouraged and consider giving up.
The pursuit of your dreams can be tiring. And disheartening. Within Joseph Campbell's framework of the monomyth, he considers this stage the Initiation. This is where trials, failures, temptations to stay within your comfort zone take place; they are eventually transcended and lead to greater understanding. Honestly, ain't nobody got that time for any of that. Give me my three-day weekend, with my new Netflix shows, all the sugary sweets I've been avoiding all week and leave me alone. I don't want transcendence or enlightenment. I don't want hardship. Sometimes, I just want to give up and rest in my cocoon. I've got a house, money is good, my kids are healthy and wonderful and my wife is smokin hot. What more could I want? Leave me alone, dreams.
But, if you're like me, you know they won't right? They'll keep calling. They'll keep nudging. The Essential never imposes, but ever-so-gently and lovingly, they'll whisper like the wind; calling us to walk the path paved only for us.
Richard Rohr, in Falling Upward, provides his own take on this whisper of the wind.
"The ancients rightly called this internal longing for wholeness ‘fate’ or ‘destiny,’ the ‘inner voice’ or the ‘call of the gods.’ It has an inevitability, authority, and finality to it, and was at the heart of almost all mythology. Almost all heroes heard an inner voice that spoke to them. In fact, their heroism was in their ability to hear that voice and to risk following it—wherever!”
Ugh. Again. Stop inspiring me, dreams. Leave me alone. I want to be comfortable.
But those of us who dare answer the call know that deep inside, we can't maintain the status quo can we?
The clients that I work best with are those that are in pursuit of something big, something different and something new. They’re aligned with their greatest gifts and they are in pursuit of their dreams. Dreams of a new career, a deeper relationship, a new relationship, moving to a new place, making more money with greater ease, or finally executing on that thing you’ve been talking about for years.
The first step is admitting to yourself that there is a dream. A call to destiny. The inner voice. Getting drastically clear on that dream. What it is and who it's about. Once we get clear, these questions always seem to be next.
What if it amounts to nothing?
What if I go for it and I fail?
What if I pour my complete heart into this and my heart is broken?
Here's what I've experienced so far...
It only amounts to nothing if you decide it does. The pursuit of your dreams is essentially a dance with you and the universe. You have zero control over the outcomes, but once you go for it, there are all sorts of new experiences, realities and possibilities that would have never existed had your dreams only stayed in your head.
You will fail. You will fail a lot. Campbell says, “If your bliss is just fun and excitement, then you are on the wrong path. Sometimes pain is bliss.”
Your heart will break. It will be painful sometimes. It will be sad. You will suffer. C.S. Lewis had this to say about having your heart broken.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
My friends, in the quiet, what's been gently nudging at you?
Follow this voice. Trust it. Yes, there are challenges but there is also bliss, freedom and light. An expansiveness that can't be fully articulated, only experienced. And once you say yes, you won't go at it alone.
In The Power of Myth interview series with Bill Moyer and Joseph Campbell, they discuss supernatural aid that seem to come from nowhere when you say yes to yourself and answer the call.
Moyers: “Do you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands?”
Campbell: “All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
I've experienced these invisible supernatural hands. Doors have mysteriously been opened, as if from nowhere. Honestly, I believe they are angels, guiding us, gently nudging us, never forcing us into the path, but giving us what we need once we walk the path.
May you answer your call, my friends.
May you make friends with fear.
May you be vulnerable and allow your heart to possibly break.
Like the acorn's metamorphosis into an oak tree, may you allow the seed of your dreams to become reality.
And if you want help, get help.
Reach out to me for a complimentary session.
Find a trusted friend that you can have a deeper conversation and develop accountability with.
Take the step. Rest. Take another. Celebrate. Fail. Learn. Rest. Repeat.
Fiercely loving you,
Jomar
Photo by eleonora on Unsplash
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