Everyone has dreams.  Whether waking or sleeping, conscious or unconscious, we all have imaginings of what our lives could be.  Some deeply internal, some that take the shape of goals, some the pull and tug at the sensual.  Dreams can be practical (like planting a garden), or phantasmagorical (like running away to a faraway place or writing a novel).  Dreams take the shape of our desires and they are different from goals.  They create a feeling of hope inside of us, they are a salve to our overwhelm.  Dreams can stretch us well beyond resource or reality, and they can bring inspiration back into our lives.  In the dreaming stage, we aren’t making checklists or plans.  Dreams aren’t oriented toward action, but instead soften us inward, to the tender blossoming of our soul.

Sure, dreams can turn into goals.  After the initial spark turns into a flame, it may grow into something that demands our attention and action.  But before that happens, it’s important to allow ourselves to spend time with our dreams, the expressions that bubble up from beneath our conscious control, our hopes, our wishes.  We must take care not to be too quick to extinguish them with the firehose of reality, or dismiss them as fantasy.  Our dreams need to be nurtured, our dreams need to be acknowledged, our dreams need to be given space to sprout or to putter out.  Giving our dreams space is a practice of Resilience.  Allowing ourselves to imagine beyond our current capabilities helps us to stretch our perception.  Not so different than a Yoga asana, dreams take us right up to the edge of our capacity and then ask us to linger there, to observe how we feel, to get curious about what’s possible.  The seed of pure potential lives in our dreams, and without them, we can feel stuck, uninspired, lost, and even hopeless.

Resilience is fed by our dreams, which might be gestating inside of us without words to describe them.  But you know they are there, because there is a murmur within, a gnawing feeling that there is MORE.  Our dreams are NOT universal.  They are as unique as we are, and just as individual.  Our dreams are not reactions to our external wants and needs, they effervesce up from the deepest parts of ourselves.  We must train ourselves to listen for these tiny bubbles when they appear, or else we run the risk of casting them off as triviality or childishness.  Dreams need to be felt, seen, heard.  They need to be allowed.  Dreams need room, they need to matter.  In Tantra, we are born of desire.  We are the creation of the unmanifest dreaming of experiencing itself.  We are the unmanifest dreaming itself into being. Dreams are the force of creation, dreaming is the action.  

Giving voice to our dreams is a practice of resilience, but I don’t mean to imply that you have to tell every person you see what your dreams and aspirations are.  Some dreams are so sacred they must be held close.  Some dreams are so early in their formation that they are fragile and can be easily wounded when not fully understood.  So we, as the caretakers of our dreams, most hold them with care and choose to share them only when the time is right.  No, giving our dreams a voice doesn’t require sharing them with others.  Instead, it is a practice of landing in your dreams from time to time, staying long enough to feel them from the inside out, voicing them (in verse, or song, or with paint or clay), giving them tone and texture, shape and dimension.  Our dreams are our souls’ deepest longings tapping at the window of our lives.  We don’t have to let them in, but if we are to continue to expand and evolve, we MUST take a look.  

So, I ask you, what are your dreams?  How do you feel when you let your mind and energy wander into the unmanifest force of creation?

I have been dreaming a lot these days. Dreaming new futures for Vira Bhava Yoga, dreaming myself into new spaces and places. I have been walking with my dreams, sitting with them, expanding them from my center. Some of them are ready to be shared, and some are still taking shape. If you want to keep up with me, and what I’m dreaming into being, check out kellygoldenyoga.com.

If you want to see what dreams I’ve been working for the last 2 years to manifest, you can pre-order my new book, Yoga of Resilience: Embodying a Practice to Thrive Through Hardship, by clicking on the button.

Stay tuned…