I will never forget walking into my new friend’s hip New York apartment and seeing a humongous banner draped across the entire wall of his place. It read in big bold capital letters: LOVE FOR REALITY CONQUERS LOVE FOR FANTASY!
I knew then, as I know now, that there was good reason for my friend to have this saying be his mantra pulsating through his consciousness from morning to night. There is nothing greater than creating your life to be so rich that it is better than fantasy. And nothing is greater than loving your own life. If you think about it, all of our dreams are about our desire to love our lives more. What if we could do that right now by opening to the possibility of this attitude being available to us this moment?
In order to love our lives with zest, with passion, and the juice that is often only reserved for hopes and dreams, we must be able to believe that our reality is this good — if we truly opened to it and really received it. Some of what it takes is giving ourselves permission to embrace our lives exactly as they are.This calls upon us to make it a practice to receive what is already beautiful in our lives. Our minds often want to focus on the negative and what is lacking. Instead, let’s turn it around and invite ourselves into noticing how much we are already living a good life.
Bottom line, can we allow ourselves to not only taste the vision of our lives feeling this good to us, but rather, to feast on how good our lives actually already are? When we receive that our lives are already rich, then we naturally experience gratitude. This gratitude attracts more to be grateful for. Remember, it is the lens that we look through that makes the difference. If we look through the lens of lack, we will experience lack. If we look through the lens of abundance, we will experience richness.
My teacher for this lesson was Rheumatoid Arthritis at the age of fourteen when it interrupted my “normal” childhood with a rude awakening. I found myself unable to walk or lift my arms to brush my own hair. It seemed to happen overnight. Of course, it was a major bummer but I found my way to paying attention and being grateful for what I could move instead of what I couldn’t move. Mayo Clinic sent me home with a two-hour physical therapy program and my Mom and I worked the program. This gave me intensive training in gratitude, fortitude, determination and surrender as I accepted my changed life. I did the program, not knowing if it would give me back movement or not, but I showed up fully as if it would. In retrospect, I believe this was the key — to show up fully as if….
Manifesting our dreams into realities calls upon a sense of abundance, not lack. The key is to cultivate the feeling in our bodies in present time that we believe our dreams will bring to us.
What are you hoping for in your life? What is one of your dreams you want to manifest? What feeling about yourself and life do you believe actualizing this dream would bring to you? Let’s focus on this feeling, for after all, the very reason you want the realization of this dream is so that you can experience this feeling! Give permission to breathe into and invoke this feeling within you now… for if you pay deep attention you will find that the feeling you are longing to feel is already alive within you now.
For example, if your dream is to manifest a primary loving relationship, ask yourself “What is the feeling in life I believe having a partner would bring to me? Is it a feeling of being in connection and not alone? Now, notice all the ways you are already in connection and not alone. You can also invoke a sense of already having this relationship. Somewhere in space – time, you are connected to your beloved. Allow yourself to experience the feelings in the present moment that you believe being in loving relationship will bring to you. Tune into these feelings by expanding your concept of primary relationship, allowing it to include being in quality relationship with yourself, with those you value in your life, and with the immense company you have all around you — not only human beings but also nature… the trees, the squirrels, the birds, the insects…. so much company that we are actually in relationship with all the time (but usually don’t pay attention to.) Notice what feeling comes with awareness of being connected. Take your time. Tune into the sensations in your body. Notice what words come to you to describe this experience. E.g. I feel love. Part of. Connected. Full. Warm in my heart, Relaxed in my body. Open. Fluid.
Now, from this feeling experience, invoke your dream in present tense. E.g. “I am in primary loving relationship with my beloved.” Connect your own circuit to this concept that you are wanting to actualize. Have it be part of your being as your inner wiring hooks up to what you are wanting to experience, even if it is not right in front of you yet. By doing this, what you want to actualize is already part of your being, here and now; not outside of you as a concept but rather part of your inner thought and feeling reality in the present moment.
This may sound woo-woo but why not try it? It sure beats feeling lack and longing for something that you think will make you happy but is not happening in your life right now. Our inclinations are to define ourselves though the lens of feeling lack and longing and this probably bleeds into self-condemnation. It’s an actual addiction for many people to feel lack and not enough in oneself or one’s life. To turn this around, it takes great effort and actual conviction to make the shift away from lack to abundance.
“I commit to loving my life as it is. I allow myself to receive the abundance of what is already so. From this space, I expand my feeling state to include the sense of fullness that I have believed would only come through actualizing this or that. These feelings are accessible to me now.”If you struggle with biochemical clinical depression, this may be too far of a leap. But it is your birthright. So, do whatever you need to in order to make the shift.What if we all loved our lives more as they are? We might truly have more harmony and less violence. We may all take a leap together into “the more” of actualizing a dream many of us hold for humanity, for example for all of us to be kinder and more respectful as a species to each other and all beings.
What changes for you in your life if you focus on LOVE FOR REALITY CONQUERS LOVE FOR FANTASY?