HOLD FAST TO YOUR DREAMS

I have never forgotten two poems by Langston Hughes that I first encountered in a high school segment in my English class about the Harlem Renaissance movement in literature. Both these poems are about the importance of having and realizing your Dreams.  Whether you relate these poems to your personal LIFE DREAM or to a more political notion such as in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream!” speech, the value of holding to your dreams and to your collective Dream is the same.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore, and then run?

Maybe it just stinks, like rotten meat…

Or crusts and sugars over, like a syrupy sweet.

Maybe it just sags, like a heavy load…

Or does it explode?

The importance of having a Dream, of being a Dreamer, is fundamental in all approaches to self-development and to spiritual practices, isn’t it? Our imagination, the ability to creatively envision a ‘better ending’ to any situation you are in or that we face in society, is our greatest strength. To dream is to transcend, to free yourself from undue self-limitations, to soar.

So here’s the second reminder from Langston Hughes  (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dreams-2/) :

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

images from pixabay.com

 

Life Is… Your Golden Opportunity!

Welcome to Year Two of Life Paths for Better Endings.Here we explore approaches to Life Mapping and other self-help modalities to help you enhance your Life Path by envisioning and manifesting “better endings”.  Two key concepts that are helpful for establishing a positively oriented Life Path–i.e.one that will empower you to realize your Life Dream–are Better Endings Life Path Metaphors, on one hand, and active imagination to harness the strengths of your own unconscious archetypal character strengths associated with the Life Themes you have already developed in your life experience.

This year, I will be inviting you to creatively explore these two elements of anyone’s Life Path in some depth. Each month we will explore one Life Path Metaphor that frames a positive orientation, and each month we will encounter and get to know one  of 12 Universal Archetypes that were first introduced into Archetypal Psychology by Dr.Charles Bebeau–along with his wife Nin and co-teacher Debra J. Breazzano–at the former Archetypal Academy in Boulder, Colorado. These Twelve universal archetypal character figures exist at least unconsciously in everyone, though the form and prominence of these twelve will vary from person to person.

As we experience recurring Life Themes, or KINDS of life events in our lives, we develop strengths–or, sometimes, challenges or inhibitions–with regard to specific aspects of these 12 primary archetypal character modes. For example, if you are aMother, you may be strengthening your Nurturer archetypal character traits; or if you are a teacher, the Teacher archetype may help you to enact this role in the classroom.According to CHarles Bebeau there are also astrological associations with these Twelve that derive from Sumerian mythology and astrology. So, we will focus on the Archetype each month that corresponds mainly with that astrological period.

So, let’s get started!

Our first Better Endings Life Path Metaphor, that we will focus on from now until December, is:

Life Is...Your Golden Opportunity

So allow me to introduce this metaphor by reference to a very meaningful envisioning experience in my own life, one that propelled me to develop the entire approach that this blog–and the book, Life Paths, that it serves to introduce–represents.  Some fourteen years ago, while I was experiencing what I called at the time a “mid-life crisis,” I went seriously inward for several months, asking for inner guidance.  Was I to remain in an academic career (I’m a professor of cultural anthropology and linguistics in Colorado), or should I quit to focus entirely on my creative writing “calling”?  One morning the answer came through in the form of a clear “wake-up call”.  Plastered before my eyes inwardly was a square white sign with bold black letters, that said:

YOU HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY

TO REALIZE YOUR DREAMS

NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY

What a gift! This inner message changed my life.  It told me that I have an OPPORTUNITY to realize my dreams, and that I should aim always to fulfill that opportunity; YOU, TOO!

So, what is YOUR Golden Opportunity? What are you here to REALIZE or to FULFILL that will meet this responsibility to manifest your LIFE PURPOSE, your LIFE MISSION, your LIFE DREAM? How can you establish a LIFE PATH that will keep you true to this Responsibility to REALIZE YOUR DREAMS?

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This week, I invite you to actively CONTEMPLATE, TALK ABOUT, and/or to JOURNAL about your Golden Opportunity in this life. What IS IT? What are YOU here to Realize? How does this relate to your current life context (job, relationships, spirituality, vocational activities, etcetera), and how can you adjust your life to focus more and more on realizing your Dreams? 

I welcome and will share your Insights (please Comment below) and your Stories!

Later this week, we will continue to explore how your life is a Golden Opportunity! Then, stay tuned  as next week I will introduce our monthly Archetype Ally for November: The Descender. How might these two be related?

Sail Past Your Threshold Guardians: Do It for Love!

So how CAN we/ you/ I  get past a Threshold Guardian or Gatekeeper to reach our goals, anyway?

Writers deal with this question a lot, as does anyone whose “next step” appears to depend on someone or some process beyond their immediate control.

A few years ago I attended a writers conference in South Carolina. While I was mainly there to advance with my life mapping book, for a lark I entered a “slush pile” event for science fiction. Everyone submitted just their first page of a scifi manuscript, and two well-known scifi editors then gave their evaluative response as if they might be sloshing through their daily Slush Pile of unsolicited manuscript submissions. Forty people attended. The editors liked only ONE of these forty submissions. Typically they would read no further than a phrase or a word in  the first sentence and they would reject the whole work for some minor ‘pet peeve,’ dismissing the value of the entire manuscript on the basis of a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to some very minor apparent blemish or weakness.

 

“This one opens with a Prologue!” (reject.)

“I can’t pronounce the main character’s name.” (reject.)

“Too wordy.” (reject.)

“Too sparse.” (reject.)

“Too colorful.” (reject.)

“Not colorful enough!” (reject.)

So, what can a writer or an applicant for a desired job or a promotion, etcetera, DO when you encounter one of these sorts of Guardians of the Threshold?

Just keep on doing what YOU do best. Cultivate your passion. Do it for Love.

Sure, we can always learn from our travails, and will persistently, so as to improve our approach. The Guardian Gatekeepers, after all, represent accepted standards, genre conventions, well established popular forms. They are experienced as experts in knowing what will “sell” or what the Public needs, wants and expects. And yet innovative artists, by definition, strive to push past the boundaries of convention and aim to advance beyond established norms with their unique insights and contribution of new forms.

So, do it anyway! Keep on writing or composing or applying for and redefining that job you really want. Claim your dreams and go for them with absolute faith that your process bears fruit even just in the doing! Then when you are really ready—on all levels, outwardly and inwardly—the obstacles will dissolve, and you may find your Gatekeepers will turn out to have been among your greatest of Archetypal Allies, after all!

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I welcome your Comments and Stories!