The Thin Line Between Dreams and Reality

A grade school friend recently posted photos from our high school yearbook on Facebook. Under the photo of me at age 16 is a quote I wrote that in many ways has been the tagline of my life: "A thin line stands between dream and reality and only the heart knows the characteristics that correspond to either side." Isn't it amazing that we are who we are from the very beginning. Over time, the threads of our core identity are woven together in a magical web. There can be different chapters and different expressions, but the same underlying message.

The quote evolved into my signature song, written in my early 20's, which evolved into my first book, which was published on my 30th birthday. Learning the art of creating from the heart has involved two critical and inter-related skill sets: 1. developing the capacity tap into deep dreams and 2. breaking down dreams into a series of action steps, building a pathway to bring dreams into reality. Yet even more fundamentally, learning to hold the space between dream and reality, allowing for vision to become real, is a profound point of power.

I think I first became aware of the thin line that stands between dream and reality in a grammar school science class. We did an experiment "bending light" with a magnifying glass at just the right angle to burn a hole in a piece of white paper. It really felt like magic. Without discovering the "thin line,"in this case just the right position for the magnifying glass, nothing would happen on the paper. Yet, discovering the right position allowed a kind of alchemy to occur.

The creative process requires and invites this kind of alchemy. Attuning to deeper feelings, thoughts and intuition through meditation, journaling, movement and introspection allows dreams to germinate and be captured tangibly in images, feelings, and words. By revisiting an image, a feeling, a thought or words, we can bring our conscious energy to the dream or vision. Our conscious energy allows the dream or vision to evolve and become clearer. Increased clarity allows us to translate the dream or vision into actionable steps we can take. Taking action steps and evolving vision become an integrated feedback loop. Each step we take clarifies what comes next. What results from each step helps us refine our vision.

Learning to hold vision lightly and with a heartfelt commitment is another kind of thin line. Human beings are often scared of the unknown and the unseen. And making dreams real involves starting with the unseen and the unknown. If we are scared, we hold onto vision tightly. This tightness can leave no breathing room for a creative process to unfold. Faith is a critical ingredient in giving vision space to breathe and unfold.

When we are afraid, it is hard to have faith. Learning to sit with an open space, patiently, quietly and faithfully is a kind of emotional or spiritual "muscle building." Initially it might hurt. With practice, we become stronger and better able to gently hold vision faithfully.

Over the years, I have had many opportunities to practice working with the thin line between dreams and reality. As a songwriter, I sit in an open space and a state of receptivity, never knowing when inspiration will strike. When I am struck and a song starts to come through my creative channel, it is my work to then sit with it, listen to it, receive it, and go to the piano to capture it. Making notes about chords and lyrics, and recording an emerging melody help me birth a song. Sometimes it comes all at once. Sometimes it comes in fragments. Keeping my mind open to how it will come through and when keeps my creative process fertile.

When I paint, sometimes I have a clear image I want to make real...and other times I am called by particular colors, both on their own and in combination. Working with acrylics in a pouring medium includes opening to the magic of what the medium itself creates. There is a divine magic at work, and the end result is surprise.

Starting a new project, bringing people together to build community, writing an article or a book, or developing a personal growth workshop all have elements of working with this thin line. When to listen and when to speak, when to apply oneself and when to step back, when to ask outwardly and when to ask inwardly....there are fine lines between each of these dualities.

Becoming comfortable and familiar with polarities and the balanced middle ground is all part of this thin line dance. Right brain and body wisdom can be a fine conductor of the creative journey.

Making Our Dreams Come True

"A thin line stands between dream and reality. And only the heart knows the characteristics that correspond to either side." --Linda Marks, age 16 It seems my entire life has been about living with vision and living from the heart. As a child, I wrote poems about these two topics. They were in separately interrelated. When I was 20, I wrote a song called "When Dreams Suffer," which became my signature song. And the message of this song was at the heart of my first book, Living With Vision: Reclaiming the Power of the Heart, which came out in 1988.

We all have dreams. What is often the hard part is turning dreams into reality. What can we do to make our dreams come true?

Some of the messages in "When Dreams Suffer" are:

1. When dreams suffer, there must be fear in our way.

Believing in our dreams is a magical thing. If we keep putting positive, heartful, visionary energy into our dreams, and taking actions steps one by one, we are unstoppable. When we are afraid, we freeze, stop, give up and sometimes even crumble. Finding ways to find safety, support, rooting and faith are critical to making our dreams real.

2. We need to learn to both hold on to our dreams, yet let go.

If we hold on to our dreams too tightly, we can suffocate the life blood out of them. We remove the breathing room that allows life's energies to move and flow. On the other hand, if we don't hold fast to our dreams, they can die, as a beautiful Langston Hughes poem notes. We need to hold them in our hearts, yet trust that God will be our co-pilot.

3. We must both give space, and believe, even while nothing supports our beliefs.

Perhaps this is another way to talk about having faith. Faith is a kind of heartfelt, spiritually rooted sense of belief. Yet, it also acknowledges that we do not create in a vacuum. There is a powerful creative force in the universe that gives life in many ways, including to our dreams. Having faith in that creative force is critical.

4. We can't throw our dreams away. Instead, they can be our life guidance system.

Without our dreams, our life will be can "a barren field frozen with snow," to return to Langston Hughes' poem. Our dreams enliven our days and our entire lives. Yet when we don't the steps to take to make our dreams real, or when it seems like our dreams are not manifesting soon enough, it is far too easy to abandon ship. Learning how to frame our dreams as our life guidance system makes it easier to stay with them and follow them over time.

Another important principal in bringing our dreams to life is to take immediate action. If you feel inspired, capture the energy of the moment. Take even a small action step. Every step we take moves our dreams forward. When we wait, tell ourselves we can do it later or even worse, procrastinate, we deflate the energy and fail to take advantage of the power of inspired moments. Telling someone else about your dream and inviting them to team with you are two other ways to ground your dreams. I learned early on that when another person co-held a dream with me and/or partnered with me to work on a dream, the path was easier, more unexpected doors opened, and the dream took flight much more effortlessly and faster than when I tried to do it all alone. Taking action and involving others are two ways of committing to our dreams. Commitment moves our energy forward and opens up all kinds of divine energy to support us in realizing our goals. When we fear commitment, we diffuse the very things we desire that commitment can bring.

Learning to make our dreams real is like learning dance steps. We need to get a sense of the rhythm. We need to get used to the music. We need to gain a sense of the dance floor. We need to get our footing, so we know how it feels. In many ways, we use all our senses, even if we focus on our hands or feet to take action. And the heart is the ultimate compass, at the center of the entire process.

The Power of the Heart and Neural Buddhism

Today, I chaperoned my 14 year old son, Alex's, Coming of Age class on a field trip to the Shambhala Meditation Center in Brookline, MA. In the Coming of Age program, the kids spend a year doing community service, learning about different faiths and belief systems, take a class about relationships, love, intimacy and sexuality, work with a same gender mentor, and write a statement of their own beliefs and values (a credo) for the graduation ceremony at the end of the year. Today's field trip was a journey into Buddhist practice.

In an interesting confluence of events (or what we can call synchronicity), my friend Steven Otero asked me if I had heard of "neurobuddhism." My response was initially, "no," but within a matter of moments, I had googled the term and quickly started getting up to speed about this interesting thread that might be injecting some spirituality into the hard core materialism of brain science.

I was fortunate enough to come across a wonderful essay by NY Times Op-Ed columnist, David Brooks, dated May 13 2008 and entitled, "The Neural Buddhists." One section of the article grabbed my attention. Having been a vocal advocate and educator for the literal power of the heart, since the heart generates the strongest electromagnetic field in the body, and heart waves can entrain brain waves, some of the sentiments of neurobuddhism, as Brooks explained it, seem to speak of properties I associate with "the power of the heart."

Brooks writes, "First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships."
In a workshop, a support group or even a business meeting, our heart fields reflect a dance of "the dynamic process of relationships," even without our conscious knowledge that this is actually taking place. In spite of the many way we feel isolated in today's compartmentalized world, when we are to face with others, our hearts are wired to participate in a dynamic relational dance. Even if intellectually, we may feel alone, when gathered in a real-time group, our hearts know we are interconnected and not alone.

"Second," continues Brooks, "underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions." Qualities of heart transcend culture, geography and religion. What the heart knows to be true is very basic and human. Loving one another, respecting the natural world and caring for our children are core to our cardiac fiber and our emotional DNA. While religions can get us into political battles, heart-deep values can bridge most any divide.

"Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when the transcend boundaries and overflow with love," adds Brooks. This is the very experience I create in heart-based workshops, be they "healing the traumatized heart," "healing and nurturing the heart," "keeping the vital heart" or even "integrating sexuality and spirituality.
When our heartfields interact, we create a profound, deep and powerful container, where healing is exponential to what we could do just 1-on-1.

When we learn to slow down and focus through the heart (which is its own form of meditation, and perhaps a variation of the Buddhist practice we were guided through today), we are present to ourselves and others, and the moment's experiences and sensations flow through us with ease.
We lose the limitations of our often-busy and ever-thinking mind. We feel the energy of those gathered around us. There is a spiritual richness in the air that we can both breathe in and often touch.

If we proceed to Brooks' fourth point, "God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is," we could say that journeying deep into the heart allows us a sacred, God-full experience, and a sense of interconnection with all that is.
The nature of the heart is pure, spiritual and sacred. The energy of love is universal energy generated and received by the heart.

Often, people have asked me if my work as a heart-centered body psychotherapist wears me out. I have always answered, "No!" Working from a heart space is actually nourishing, enlivening and inspiring. Call it a kind of living meditation-- a relational meditation in the moment and over time. Even when someone's heart space is blocked or inaccessible due to trauma and the anger or wall that often protect the traumatized heart, the act of creating the emotional safety to let the person open and heal, is itself a sacred act.

I would be willing to bet that is a research scientist studied the brain wave patterns that took place between therapist and client doing heart work, they would find some very interesting data that helped bridge the gap between science and spirituality.