Lessons From My Dreams

Copyright© By Nicholas Grimshawe

We are what we perceive ourselves to be. What a powerful, yet simple statement of a fundamental truth about human nature. If you believe you are ugly, you will be ugly even when you go to great lengths to change your appearance through plastic surgery or cosmetic means. Nothing changes on the outside until something changes on the inside.

I use my father to illustrate the point. My father grew up with the psychology of the workingman. I grew up listening to my father expound on politics always with some statement similar to “What can the little guy do?” “I’m just a little man, somebody has to look out for the little man.”

I remember being really annoyed with him, angry even, that he would view himself that way. I couldn’t articulate those thoughts the way I can now, I just knew I would never apply that phrase to myself.

My father became a victim of his own paradigm unable to strive higher than his perceived station in life.

The irony is that we can all get trapped in the images we assemble of ourselves as we grow up. We become what we hear others claim we are. Our parents have a huge impact on our self-image. Unless you are blessed with some driving sense of who you are, you soon begin to accept the role others paint for you.

Change your perceptions change yourself.

What does all this have to do with dreams?

I’ll explain in a minute.

Over my lifetime, there have been two very consistent basics to my life.

1 I have carried a love of writing from my first memories right though to the current moment.
2 I have aspired to reach higher than my station, and to use what I learned to help others do the same through my writing.

I have not been able to use these tools to achieve my boundless ambitions.

Let us say I have been dogged along the way by my perceived image of myself. I escaped the little man syndrome only to find myself caught tightly in my own trap of self- doubt and negativity. I am, have always been, I believed, a positive person. Most of my friends would probably agree.

Over a year ago, I accidentally stumbled upon my mission in life. I have talked about this before and will probably talk about his again, because this discovery is the key to the changes that began to transform my life.

Be The Weaver not the Weaved

I believe that everyone needs to discover his personal mission statement ( http://beautifulsummermorning.com/2006/05/08/personal-mission-statement/}

I firmly believe this is the most important single thing that you can do if you wish to change the direction of your life. Your mission statement anchors you to your actions. When you have a direction, a purpose, a mission, everything you do is measured against that mission statement.

I have talked as well about threads. At any one time, I believe there are threads running through your life. Occasionally those threads weave a pattern that results in sudden revelation.

As you begin to change your perception of your self through reading, taking a course, modifying your self talk, you have an opportunity to develop a sense of how to manipulate those threads so you become a weaver, directing the cloth of your own life rather than rather than just a thread in someone else’s grand design.

My Dream Experiences

Since I have been listening more to my inner voice my awareness of the “negatives” in my life have astounded me. I engaged in a lot of negative chatter about myself: how I look, how I sabotaged successes as a kind of twisted proof that I couldn’t succeed, and therefore lower others’ and my own expectations of me.

I came face to face with that struggle recently. It was as if I could stand exterior to myself witness to a fascinating battle of wills. As I struggled to justify failure by literally falling on a wet floor so that I could claim injury and go home, to the silent mantra to myself,
“I am successful and I am doing well,” over, and over, to actual success, I felt the forces within me vying for control.

That day, I knew one thing; if I was to live my mission statement, I had to win.

I won that battle only to come face to face with my nightmares.

The Evil in the Night.

I think it is the nature of the beast that when changes are extant within you, the lions roar.
The beasts will not go down without a fight.

Hither comes the darkness.

I have a sister who has remarkably vivid dreams in full Technicolor. She can relate these dreams in incredible detail. They are not usually disturbing.

My dreams are like the dark forces attempting to seduce me away from the light. Until recently, I accepted them as part of life. I’d brush it off, as just another bad dream. However, with my awareness increasing through listening to my inner voice I began to pay far more attention to these bad dreams.

That’s when I discovered the dreams were negative energy. They usually involved bad things happening to me or around me. I would wake up disturbed, unsettled. I felt like a child afraid of the dark.

A few days ago, as I write, I began to remember those dreams in that sort of half sleep limbo you drift in just before you wake up. My first awareness was to recognize just how negative they where.

The next morning while still in that drifting state, I began to restate the dream in a positive. I didn’t plan to do this: it just began to happen. I would take what ever the negative was and then restate it as a positive. This went on for a couple of days. I began to enjoy the process.

Then one morning I woke up from one of the most positive dreams I have ever had. I managed to extend the dream for about ten minutes. I woke with a powerful feeling of wellbeing, and contentment.

However, the change did not stop there. When I wake in the mornings now, I find myself at the height of creativity. My diary is filled with my waking notes. This morning I composed a song in my head as I came out of my dream state. I reached for my diary and let the muse flow through me.

While I have written poetry, I have never been able to write the words to a song.

Well I have now. Because I believe that things happen for a reason, I will pass the words on to a friend of mine to see what can be done with them.

So, if you are driving in your car some day in the near future and you hear a song going something like this;

… in my blue, blue car,
in the afternoon,
goin’ for a ride,
in the countryside…

You will be listening to my song, a creation born from the lessons of my dreams.

Joy in the Moment,

Nicholas Grimshawe

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