Visionaries Are Realists, too

To have a vision means you can see possibilities not yet notably in play in your outer world....but....

if you're seeing it, it IS already happening WITHIN you....

That seed of possibility is sprouting into life....

I can't count the number of times I've been in conversations where the participants resisted being open to other possibilities--especially hopeful ones. People like to commiserate over perceived wrongs in the world for some odd reason, and they seldom go to the extent of offering up solutions to the problem, much less acting on them.

I'd throw in some idea of a potential outcome that wasn't loaded with doom and gloom, and it would often get poo-pooed as being unrealistic. "Penny, that's just not gonna happen. That's just not the way people are. You're just dreaming."

And then we all go our separate ways, dragging with the burden of "that's just the way it is." Well, maybe not me....

The Dream: Me, a Crane, a Duck and a Chicken

One morning in late August of 2005, I was packing for a trip home to visit my sister and brothers in South and North Dakota.

My husband, just waking up, says, "Pen, I had a dream, and I was so mad at you. You were on the Big Hill operating this huge crane that you had no idea how to run, and the arm was flying every which way, smashing the barn--everything--to pieces. You mortally wounded a duck and a chicken--I was so mad at you." 

My husband seemed to have a lot of dreams where I made him mad. Ha-Ha!

I remembered this particular dream because the symbolism of the duck and chicken was so amusingly obvious to me. The duck represented avoidance, and the chicken represented fear. This dream took place two years after my dad's death, when I'd pretty much come fully awake to the idea that I was, we humans were, so much more than the stories and identities we played out together. I was diving into the things I feared most (like losing loved ones to death) and finally facing my own demons within--things I had avoided for fear of not looking so good. 

The chicken and the duck were definitely goners in my world....and....yeah, things got messy because I was going beyond the mental and stepping out of the box into the intuitive--my mind had no idea what I was doing. I was just feeling my way through things. Linearity, cause-effect, and organization were being replaced by quantum dynamics. Like the swinging, out-of-control-appearing arm of the crane--life was coming to me from all different directions, within and without....and the old life was coming apart at the seams....

What does being realistic about life look like?

Is it being realistic to expect someone like a distant politician or a celebrity--neither of whom knows you from Adam--to really actually give a fig about you? Most of the time, they are more concerned with their image of caring and being intelligent and "in the right" than what is happening with Joe and Jane Doe.

Is it realistic to expect even those closest to you--like your family, your parents, your mate, or your children--to be responsible for you after you've reached adulthood? Do you want someone sacrificing living their own best life in order to take care of you? Do you want to let even a loved one choose for you how your life unfolds? Or do you want to be sovereign over your own life?

Is it realistic to expect systems of belief (often driven these days by making profits first or getting power and control over the masses) like businesses, governments, religions, sciences, the media, to know what is best for you, a unique individual--and, more importantly, as I see it--the perceiver and creator of your own realities? Do you really want someone to tell you what to do and how to be? Isn't that rather boring? Isn't it suffocating?

Are you so afraid of who you might be and what you might do that you'll accept whatever limitations someone else doles out? Then keep those metaphorical and literal masks on and keep breathing that stale, vision-squelching air. That's your choice.

I've been allowing the ripping off of those stifling layers of so-called, status quo "protections" for many years now, and my life has gotten way more interesting. I flow much easier than those days when I lived in fear of being and doing wrong, terrified of the next shoe dropping.

Let's get "Real" and sow Seeds of Possibility starting with our daily conversations together....

Of course, an idea can't become real if it isn't even placed into awareness that it has a potential of being....you've got to talk about it.

But before you can talk about a new concept you have to be open and flexible, willing to shift your awareness around to include other points of view. I realized I had to let go of a need to always be right, no matter the cost. I had to allow myself to imagine and feel into other perspectives--something that's not hard to do if I let myself quit identifying with being a certain way. 

One of the worst cop-outs I hear is when someone says to me, "This is just how I am." I feel all energies of an open exchange just drop to nil. All it does is tell me they are unwilling to consider other potentials, so I'm inclined to tune them out, not listen to them or waste my breath.

It does the whole show a great service when the actor can not only convincingly perform his role in relationship with the other cast members, but is also able to view the entire performance as a member of the audience, as the director, as the writer. And as the producer and the financier--as the one who actually invests her energies into its manifestation or real-ization.

Walking out in nature or doing anything involving water, on my own, is often when inspiration strikes....

To allow new concepts to come into my awareness, I discovered I had to literally open myself up--that's it. Just take some deep-into-me breaths, close my eyes, RELAX, and open up my sense of being--the field of energies within and around me....to something other than what I had going....

I literally let go of hanging onto the worries and their stories cycling around in my head and body. I let go of my identity as Penny. I just set them all aside and go to that place where I am nothing but a simple pinpoint of awareness that only knows it exists....

The ideas for the posts I write often come when I am out walking or gardening. Often I get ah-ha's while in or near water--while in the bathroom (bathing or otherwise, if you know what I mean) or while washing dishes or watering plants. Cleaning and getting rid of stuff also has a tendency to make room for new things to flow into my awareness. Sometimes it happens when I'm relaxed and napping with a cat or two or more on my lap or chest. I think of all of it as simply acting out allowing my energies to flow....

At first it felt very vulnerable--to be all open to just anything. I wasn't used to laying it all out there on the table for everyone to see. But then, one by one, the burdens and layers of protection I had hauled around most of my life began to fall away--just because I decided to take another look at things I had tried so hard to bury away within myself. Away from the possible judgment and condemnation of others, as well.

Only this time, I did it choosing to have self-compassion and giving myself the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't out to rationalize or excuse away my actions of the past--I just allowed myself to be honest about how I perceived and felt about myself and life at that specific period in my life. Always--the worst things I felt I'd done, when I looked back, I realized I'd done so out of a very limited idea of who I was and what my life was about. I thought some other god out there in the ethers was controlling my life. Limited awareness brings in limited experiences--and limited reactions to those experiences.

"Are you unpoopular?...Do you pop out at parties?"

Lucy Ricardo's iconic, messed up lines after several botched takes (and several spoon-fulls of product) for a commercial promoting the Vitameatavegamin elixir, the content of which was mostly alcohol, actually pretty much fits me these days. I'm generally more "unpoopular" than popular.

For instance, when in the midst of people discussing politics and I drop in with choosing to be sovereign and not playing the game at all--I kind of lose popularity. There's generally an uncomfortable halt in the conversation, eyes looking anywhere but at me, and then the interaction continues on as if I didn't say a word.

When people are commiserating over the grimness in the world and how bad it is out there and how bad it's going to get, and I "pop up" with the idea that it may well be a chaotic mess out there....and....it's just all the old being shaken up and cleared out for something new, possibly even freer, for everyone--well, things get quiet for a moment then, too. Then off it all goes back to focusing on all that's dramatic and "wrong" out there.

People don't like me throwing out a bit of sunshine on their rainy parades. And they don't like being reminded that if it's in your life, you--and only you--put it all there, just as it is. No matter what the issue is: health, politics, government, finances, education, medicine, religion, etc. When a person takes full responsibility for putting into play whatever situation they are experiencing it blows those old victimhood conversations apart at their foundations.

Just because it is so now doesn't mean it has to stay that way....

I anticipate the best out of people I meet--I know that potential is within all of us. Do I necessarily get it all the time? No, but that is on that individual, not me....

I'd rather live my life as a hopeful visionary who acts out my best life with better possibilities as my focus--and later discover I was totally wrong--than be a grim perpetuator of the idea of "this reality is all there is....just deal with it."

I will always keep loving and looking for the good in all of us, no matter what....

I know none of us needs a watchdog or babysitter--we're all capable of choosing to DO NO HARM, especially when we're awake to who we truly are....

I will focus my conversations on hope and the very REAL possibility of living out a life more spectacular than the one conceived by my limited Little Human mind--the part of me that could only envision future possibilities based on what happened in the past. I am not my past. I am NOW....

And....I'm going to keep popping out and talking about openness, freedom, sovereignty, and compassionate, all-accepting self-responsibility....even if it makes me unpoopular at parties....