March 6, 2005

Samuel: How are you?

Better.

Good.

S: Good. Better.

Ditto.

S: Do you feel the approach of spring?

Yes.

S: Do you feel the same transition your particular climate here is in? Transition. Hopeful. Aye. Some. That’s good. That’s good. Better to feel that than the other options, yes? Transition, not hopeful.

I’m going to be talking to you tonight about dreams, so let me ask, how are your dreams?

Great.

S: Great.

Crazy.

S: Crazy.

Interesting. They’re interesting.

S: Did someone say busy? Busy.

Yes.

S: Busy.

Yes.

S: Busy? Dreams are busy. What do you mean, busy.

A lot of activity.

S: In the dream?

Yes. Trying to sort things out, I think.

S: Interesting, aye. In your life there are, more or less, three sorts of dreams, and this is a good time, a very good time generally in the energy of the world right now, for dreams to be particularly effective, right now. And that’s because—anybody got an idea in there?

The creation energy that’s coming in.

S: Right the first time, right there. Because the focus of energy right now is very creation-oriented. Creation energy does not mean creative energy, although creation energy is about you being creative with it. But it is, it’s that’s creation energy that works through—for—dreams.

Now, tell me about dreams. Marion.

Well, there are some kinds of dreams that are basically your brain sorting out all the stuff that you experienced and took in during the day, or if you haven’t been able to sleep properly, maybe for the week, and trying to take things and put them into the lake of the known, as you would say.

And then there are other kinds of dreams. And there are kinds of dreams . . . for me in particular, there are kinds of dreams where I am meeting other people and remember sometimes afterwards and sometimes I don’t, but it’s almost as if I would wake up convinced that I had talked to that person. And occasionally I didn’t realize it was a dream and I’ll say something to them, and they’ll go “I didn’t see you last week.” And I’m like “Oh, my gosh.”

S: I knew that.

And then there’s another kind of dream that I have that’s what you would probably call a true dream where I know that it’s very, very real while it’s happening, and it has to do with the bigger picture of what I’m here to do.

S: Nice. Nice. Very, very nice work there.

When you go to sleep at night, your brain and your spirit get busy. When your brain is getting busy, what that does—well, hopefully. Hopefully you’re not so stressed that you’re not dreaming, because that does happen, and you’ve got to be very careful about that. I’ll mention that in a moment. But your brain says, “All right, this is a good time. They’re not talking anymore.” Most of you, anyway. “They’re not listening anymore.” More or less, because of course parts of you are. “This is going to be a good time to try to sort out all of the things that have been going on.” The things that are on your mind, weighing on your heart, things that you had for dinner, things that you watched on television. All of that sort of mixes together and gives you an opportunity to have the pieces put together into what is, hopefully—some sort of pie.

[Oma starts racing around the room.] Go, big Oma, go! Cindy says, “She guides me around.” Aye, well I think, darling, that maybe she’s telling you you need to move a little faster. I love it. There are few things in this world that are as beautiful to watch as a healthy and loved creature, be it a dog or a cat, or a bird or a rat, whatever. It happens. And particularly one with her sort of intelligence. She talks to Cindy all the time. And when she comes here she talks to you. Tell ‘em!

So I was somewhere around dreams, right? Your brain starts getting the opportunity to have it all put together, and that’s a good thing.

And then there are those dreams, true dreams, real dreams, dreams in which you know there’s a part of you just watching it. Perhaps you’re in the dream doing something or you’re somewhere outside of it watching the things go on, but those dreams have a beginning and they have a middle and they have an end. It’s almost as if you’ve been watching a film. And because of that you have more opportunity to remember and learn from those dreams. So there are also those.

And then finally there are the dreams in which it’s as if you are a student somewhere. Sometimes it actually puts you in a classroom situation. Now that’s brains doing a lot of work to set that up for you, but it’s one of those in which the situation is just enough outside of you that you can tell “I’m learning something here. This is something for me to pay attention to.” Those dreams I will discuss a little bit tonight. But there’s other dreams than the ones you have at sleep.

Daydreams.

S: Well, there are daydreams, that’s right. That’s right. What’s a daydream about? No one knows?

It’s kind of a slightly altered state of where your mind is imagining or thinking about something that you are doing or want to do. You’re slightly, not quite, present but you’re off a little bit with your thoughts.

S: And your brain is sort of super-multi-tasking. You’re managing to remain in the grocery line, you’re managing to keep putting your food out on to the . . .

Conveyer.

S: Thank you, that, and at the same time you are back in high school with your mind sort of floating, and you’re thinking about what that was like yesterday that was like then that’s reminding of you of that now. So, daydream. Anybody like that feeling? Remind me to come back to that later, because you can use that for your own enjoyment. And should it work out there’s time, remind me. All right.

Well, the big difference for me for daydreams versus night dreams is that I direct the daydreams. I mean I choose the topic I’m going to daydream on. If I don’t like it, I restart it, shift what I’m thinking about.

S: Did you hear that? He’s able to determine the topic of the daydream, whereas at night he’s not able to do that with his other dreams. That’s nice. That’s nice.

Do you know how important dreaming is for you?

Yes.

S: What happens if you are in a situation in which you are robbed of your dream states.

You get kind of crazy.

S: Say again.

You get kind of crazy.

S: You sort of lose track of which world you’re in, that’s what you do. You sort of forget what it is that keeps you attached here, because your dreams have a lot to do with your being attached here. Any of those dreams. And when you are at a time in your life in which everything is crazy, life is hectic, things are difficult, perhaps it’s one of those times in which you are spread too thin, you’re really stressed out, and the opportunity presents itself that we are together, and I say after you have given that recitation, “Are you dreaming?” And if you say yes I will assure you that you’re okay. But if you’re not dreaming, I will start pushing your buttons, because your dream states are the means by which your mind is able to heal. Your dream states are also the way in which your heart can learn to heal. But most important of all, your dream states are the means by which your spirit learns to function in the body you’re offering it. And that is why you must dream.

Sallie.

I thought you always dreamed, even though sometimes you didn’t remember them, but you always dreamed.

S: Well, I suppose that you always have periods of activated brain frequency, measurable brain frequency, and that would be true. But I honestly don’t consider that dreaming. In fact—and this is what causes so many of you to start into the tedious task of dream journaling—I don’t consider it dreaming if you’re not remembering  it.

“Whoa, Samuel, just a moment there! I don’t remember my dreams.” So how is it you know you’re dreaming?

At one time or another in your life, you have probably had that very same statement. “I don’t dream.” Or “I don’t remember my dreams.” So what is the dream journal? Aye.

A dream journal is something where when you do remember fragments, anything, you write it down, and that process of writing it down helps you to create a process where your brain’s going “Oh! You’re writing things down.” And more and more of it can be remembered. So it’s kind of a process, it’s not like you just sit down and you’re remembering the whole dream and you write it down. It’s usually the most helpful—I’ve found it to be—is to develop that awareness of remembering my dreams, it helps me remember more and more and more.

S: Good. Anybody want to add to that?

I’ve started something in the last year of trying to decide what I wanted to do in a dream, to ask . . . 

S: Taking it to the next level.

Yes. To ask for information, and so in my dream journal, because if I wake up in the morning I might forget what I asked for in the dream, so I’ll write that down before I go to sleep, and then that way I’ll look at that the next morning and try to see what was given to me in the night that will give me information about that.

S: Nice.

And to keep that focus, because I truly have had so many experiences and believe that that’s actually happening. Can I give an experience from this last week with that?

S: Sure.

I had actually asked our Group of 12 to send me energy, because I was planning to take three days in which to get some information about a decision I was trying to make. And I also asked for confirmation during the day of information that would relate to that particular activity with the dreams. I didn’t have to go through the three days. It was really interesting because that afternoon I got the confirmation of the information that I was looking for in the dreams. But it doesn’t always happen that way. Oftentimes the information  . . . it will take two or three days, or it may take one night, or something like that, and I’ll get the information I’m asking for. So this was a big switch in that pattern for that actually to have bypassed the dream state.

S: And where was the big switch?

The big switch was the recognition that I had, was being given, the information.

S: Good. That’s right. That’s right.

One of the things I like so much about dreams is that it’s just enough outside of your day-to-day experience, just enough over there, that you don’t put all the same sorts of twists and binds and force it into little hoops like you do so many other parts of your life. Dreams: you might laugh them off, you might enjoy them now and again, you might try to train yourself to remember them, you might train yourself to get more information from them, but you don’t load them with a lot of heavy beliefs and expectations. They’re dreams. You consider them flighty. And because of that, you don’t stop yourself from them, because dreams are . . . they’re a big pond in which everything that has happened in your day, everything floating around your brain, everything about you is what fills that pond. And you throw in the breadcrumbs that bring those things to the surface, and you pull them out and make use of them. Dreams are wonderful for that.

If you don’t dream, you tend toward psychic break. If you don’t remember your dreams, I think that I would say you can tend toward spiritual break. Your dreams are a means for you to get the information that is out there for you all the time.

“Just a moment again, Samuel. Out there all the time? I don’t think so. If it was out there all the time, I would have a better way to make decisions, and feel better about which direction to go in this journey that I’m on. How could it be that it’s information out there all the time?” But it’s a whole lot like Oma. Oma is trained to do what?

Pay attention.

S: Pay attention. Say it again.

Service dog.

S: She’s a service dog. She’s trained to pay attention to traffic, to guide, to watch Cindy, to know what’s going on with her. She’s trained to have an eye on most everything, just in case there is something that needs to be walked around, or stopped.

Shepherd.

S: Say again.

Shepherd.

S: Aye, I like that.

German shepherd.

S: A shepherd. Cindy, I think he’s calling you a sheep.

But in the very same sort of way, your body is absorbing all kinds of information, and your brain is doing everything it can to process it. The thing is your brain is processing on several different layers, and the one—the only one—that you consider reality most of the time is the one in which you see other people that look like you and colors, and trees and flowers and houses, and all of this stuff that makes up your world, that’s the one that matters, so the information that comes on some of the more subtle levels gets pushed aside and the dreams push them back up.

The dream journal—as several had discussed—is a means by which you can learn to remember your dreams and then to harness them. And it’s worth doing. And the easiest way to do it is to start. You go to bed tonight and you say to yourself before you go to sleep, “I want to remember my dreams.”

Now, mind you, if you have built up resistance to the thought [point] that you can never remember your dreams, it’s going to take a while before your brain says, “Oh, you know what? It really means it. I’m going to remember my dreams.” You go to bed. Eventually you wake up—that’s always a good thing—and when you wake up, you think, Nothing there. No dream. Don’t remember a thing. And you might have a few nights, maybe even a few weeks of that. Don’t give up. Don’t stop. Have your pen and your paper ready just in case you wake up one morning and “I remember the color blue. That’s it. That’s all I remember.” Or, “I remember that it was in another country. I don’t know what. It was just that.” Write it down.

Consistently doing that eventually opens that door. You’ve spent years not paying attention, so your brain has built up for you a very nice wall, keeping you from paying attention, so it might take a while to break that down.

Your dreams are worth paying attention to, and eventually the time will come that you’re writing more than blue, more than landscape; you’re writing pages. Just to show, those of you who have done this exercise and found that you went from “I don’t remember” to a lot, just do this. There. Because it makes a difference and it works. And you move into using your dreams, exactly as Lillibeth said; you find yourself thinking “I want to make use of this information coming my way in order to better make decisions. I have these decisions about doing this. What should I look at?”

Now, remember that your dreams are filtered through your brain. That means that your dreams are filled with your personal symbology. It’s not going to do you a whole lot of good to rush out and buy Freud’s version of dream interpretation—and I’m very sorry to all of the psychologists in here—instead you need to figure out what your interpretation is. In your dream there was a fire truck. All right, what can that mean? What is a fire truck to you? Give me a few in here.

Fire trucks are really exciting, and when you’re a little kid, you’re hanging out the window, watching them go by with the siren. And you love covering your ears up.

S: So for one person it could be excitement. Something exciting is going on. Pay attention, enjoy this. Whereas to someone else . . .

It could just mean urgency of some kind.

S: Urgency. Pay attention. Be aware of this.

Sallie said . . .

Fear.

S: Fear. It could be fear.

Get a Dalmatian. Fire trucks often have a mascot that’s a Dalmatian.

A dog.

S: Thank you. Maybe you’ve been trying to make a decision about a dog, so there you go. Thank you, David.

A fire truck is fear because my house burned at one time.

S: Yes. Yes. So your personal symbology is going to give you the doorway into what those dreams are about.

Your dreaming is an important part of message-accessing—your own version of a telephone answering machine—and they’re helpful. That’s one kind of dream.

I’m going to shift just a little bit right now, though, into daydreams to give you what I was playing with there. In a daydream state you are kind of halfway trancy aren’t you?

You’re in a state of reverie.

S: Reverie, which is different than reveille. I got reveille, reverie. A daydream is a time in which, as I said earlier, your brain is doing a super-multitasking work.

Sometimes a daydream is the result of you just being too exhausted and you’re not able to focus your thoughts. Anybody in here ever had the experience in which you were so tired that the moment you sat down you just fell asleep? In those same sorts of situations you might also have a daydream while you’re standing. Every time you’re still for a few seconds you find yourself just going off, and that’s out of exhaustion. Daydreams can be a means by which your brain rests, but they also can be—and this is going to get really airy-fairy for a moment, so put your seatbelt on—they also can be one of the easiest ways in which you’re able to receive information that’s helpful to you, one of the easiest ways for you to hear that still small voice, your super-consciousness, your Source telling you which direction to go and how to best do it. Or, sometimes that voice is just your mother telling you you’re going to get in big trouble if you do that. But receiving those messages during that sort of halfway state can also be useful for you. What’s the biggest problem with making use of it, though?

Trusting it.

S: Trusting it. That’s true. That makes sense. That wasn’t the one I was going for, but that’s true.

You have to really know your filters and what they mean. Otherwise you could be misguided by your perceptions.

S: By your own expectations.

Spin.

S: Spin. Sure. You’ve got to be real careful that you know yourself very well. I was going into a very, just draped-over-the-top, easy answer, which was you’re usually not in a place where you can write it down and think it through, because you’re in the midst of doing other things. But if you allow yourself, when you’re not daydreaming, the opportunity to know your responses, know your expectations, know what your beliefs are, to have yourself in a regular habit of knowing you, then when you do daydream you’re going to be better able to figure out what that message is—if there is one. To figure out if this is God speaking to you, or if it’s “I’m really tired. I haven’t slept in days, and I’m just off in space. Knowing yourself makes that difference.

All right, those are dreams. Put them aside. The dreams you have in your sleeping state, the dreams you have in your waking state. Now, there is another sort of dreams. What are they?

Could they be dreams that come from your heart?

S: Yes.

That lead you to your passion.

S: Yes. The dreams that—well, I like the way that Heidi said it. She said “the dreams that come from your heart that lead you to your passion,” because passion is a very important part of what I want to emphasize tonight.

We have talked on these first-Sunday nights of late about different means of knowing yourself—big picture. This fits exactly after fear—passion and dreams—because when you have too much fear ruling your life, you lose your ability to dream.

You also get to see your fears, because as soon as you dream, part of you is going to tell you why it’s too risky to do that. And so if you have a dream . . . for me, often times, the voice that comes into my head is the one telling me all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it, not good enough, not educated enough, all those things will come up and reveal to me what my fears are.

S: Good. Good. And to say that another way: You know you have a decision in front of you—“I’m going to go this way. I’m going to go that way,” as if they were all that simple, right? And when you say “All right, this is the way I’m going to go, Stuart is saying all of a sudden you become very aware of what your fears are. Because of all of the little scary feelings, the little voices in your head that say “Oh no, you can’t do this because. . . . You shouldn’t do that because. . . . That’s not right because. . . .”

Sometimes you need to stop and listen to that. Standing on the train tracks, the whistle heard in the distance, move; listen to that. That’s a good thing to listen to. Standing in the train tracks, hear the whistle in the background, what you get is, “Lie down. See if it can run over you and not hurt you.” Not good. Don’t do that one. Let your sense of survival guide you for a while until you’ve reached that point that you are able to hear and understand yourself well enough that you know, “Oh, that’s just that bratty four-year-old in me,” or “It’s that loving and kind father figure in me,” until you’ve got all of those little voices in your head all figured out.

Dreams get lost in the shuffle. Now what I just said just about every one of you in here—just about—recognized exactly what I was saying. You knew that personally, and I’m sorry that’s true. Dreams get lost in the shuffle of what?

Life.

S: Life. The day-to-day existence. And the important thing is not Does it happen? It’s Why does it happen? Why do your dreams get lost in the day-to-day functions of life? What does the idea of living your dreams do to those little voices?

[. . .]

S: And what are those dreams? The reason that I wanted to really focus on that tonight is because you are . . . I’m just going to push it out of the boat altogether. It’s because you’ve come to a point in your life by far too young for it to be so in which you are losing your passion for living because you are forgetting the power of dreaming. And in this day-to-day—I like to call it a “microwave”—society in which you can cook a meal in four minutes, or something like that, it’s very easy to fall into a trap of insisting that everything be done your way and you want it done immediately. I thought I was the only one that put that out there, to the leadership. “Do this now.” You want it done immediately, and you become used to more-or-less being able to set your life onto a very specific course based on what you can do or get or be in the moment, no dreams attached. And that happens for a very important, heart-breaking reason: because more often than not in this world, children are taught that it’s time to stop dreaming.

Now, your parents surely never said to you, “Oh, stop dreaming!” Instead they said probably what? Stop lying?

Stop daydreaming.

S: Stop daydreaming. Stop being silly. That will never happen. That’s fantasy. Grow up. Get real.

That’s not the way the world works.

S: How many of you have a computer? And use it. Do you think that thirty years ago, when many of you were young—all right, a few of you were young.

We were all younger.

S: A few of you weren’t even here yet. A few of you have the ones who were young. Do you think that thirty years ago the idea of having a computer you could just haul along in a little case with you was thought of as realistic?

No. I remember arguing with one of my friends who kept telling me that as soon we were out of college, there would be something like that. And if we had just been a little bit younger, we wouldn’t have had to type and erase and type and erase.

S: And you said, “Bill, cut that out! That’s so silly.” Because, you see, everything that happens in this world happens because somebody dreamed. And in one way or another everything that you have in this world you have because somebody dreamed. But you’re only free to dream, just like at night when you’re in bed, just like in the day at the grocery store, you’re only free to dream or fantasize or hope or imagine or whatever little label you want to put on it—visualize, imagine—you’re only able to dream as large as your fears will let you. And your fears kill passion, and passion fuels dreams. Fear kills passion, and passion fuels your dreams.

So what is passion? Am I saying the last time you got some has everything to do with whether or not you have hopes for the future? Wait a minute, for some of you it does. Wait! Let me change that one. Aye. I see who’s laughing in here. What am I talking about? Passion.

That thing that when you start to wake up in the morning, and part of you says, “I want to get back under the covers and go back to sleep,” there’s that thing that pops up and says “No, but I want to see what’s going to happen today.” That’s how I know when I’m in touch.

S: That’s nice. That’s nice. That part of you that says “Oh sure, come on. Something exciting might happen.”

Cathy.

I sort of feel like it’s spirit alive in me. Passion, it’s the blossoming, it’s the bursting of spirit.

S: Darn, I should have called on you later. But that’s good, yes. And ultimately I am saying that’s exactly what it is, but it takes its [. . .] right to you. Yes.

It’s an enthusiasm, a drive, to do something that makes you feel really good or really happy.

S: Nice. An enthusiasm or drive that moves you toward.

It’s a place of no time for me, where everything else seems to melt away and all you have is that thing that you are or that you’re doing. And then all of sudden you wake up and you go, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been here five hours, and how could I have missed that,” because you’re so involved in it.

S: It’s a portal, she is saying, a portal through time in which you are so focused on what you’re doing that the time just flies and you are all of a sudden aware that five hours have passed and where did it go? That’s also called surfing the internet, right? I think so. I think that’s also there.

Passion feels good. Now, I want you to think for a moment: What are you passionate about? Now, I’m not going to ask you to say what it is you’re passionate about. I just want you to think, what are you passionate about? And for those of you who are still thinking about it, stop, because you are making my point.

When you don’t have passion, life stops. You are alive, but not living. Passion motivates, which is what Paula was saying, so if you find in your life that you are not very motivated—perhaps you would never say that; that’s what your father would say to you, right? You’re not very motivated. Go clean your room. Or not. If you look at your life and you see that you’re not doing anything, you’re not really interested in anything, your days have become a cycle of get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, over and over and over, if you find that you are thinking more often of things you used to do rather than things you want to do, if you are finding that you are laughing less and—I mean this one—crying more—and it does not have to produce water out of your eyes—if you find that—a more difficult situation that it can become—if you find that you’re just not real excited about life, that you have become negative—you’re the person that people start slipping away from at parties, and it has nothing to do with what you had for dinner or something like that. That’s only toning circles, right—you find yourself seeing the worst possible scenario first, you find yourself cynical, you find yourself . . . or maybe that’s the problem, you just don’t find yourself any more. These are the things that happen when you have become afraid to dream and have lost the passion that pulls you forward in life.

So what do you do to be able to dream? Well, you keep a dream journal. “But wait a minute, Samuel, I think that’s the other kind of dreaming.” No, that’s this one. It’s a different sort of dream journal, is what it is, but this is an exercise that can help you get your passion back, and it’s not going to be quite so easy as, as soon as you wake up in the morning you just start writing whatever comes to mind. It’s not that. It’s different, and for it you’re going to need to keep a small little notebook. Can you show me that one?

It’s not a notebook.

S: Oh, it’s not.

No, it’s a checkbook.

S: Better still. All right, if it were a notebook, if this was a notebook instead, that’s a nice size. Perhaps you have a smaller one, something easier to haul around with you. Look at that. That’s another good one, and that’s a great one. So you’re already carrying around these bits of paper. When you catch yourself laughing, write it down. When you catch yourself interested in something—you’re sitting down watching television, waiting to go to bed to start the cycle up again, a commercial comes on that makes you say, “Hmmm,” instead of “Humph,” write it down. You’re speaking with somebody and you feel just a tiny bit of that morose curtain of depression starting to lift the tiniest amount, write it down, because what you are doing—just like a dream journal at night—you are training yourself to become aware of what your shovel is to dig you out of the pit you’re in. It’s not what’s going to magically take you out of the pit; it’s the shovel you can use to get out. When you are mired up to your knees in swamp mud—and I know that sometimes life can feel that way, can’t it?—you need a shovel to dig yourself out. Some of you are mired up to your neck. Is there hope? Yes. That’s what I’m going to continue with here.

What makes you happy? [Pronounces it “hoppy.”] I’m going to try that differently. What makes you . . . happy [to Suzie] say the word.

Happy.

S: Thank you, because I got visions of rabbits when I said the word. What makes you happy, and somebody thought rabbit so I wanted somebody who said it your way to say that. You think I don’t see these things. What makes him hoppy? Because what makes you [pointing to Suzie] . . .

Happy.

S: . . . is very much the key to your passion. The trick is some of you have forgotten what makes you . . .

Happy.

S: Thank you, dear, you’re doing very well.

Now and again in the opportunity to talk to you individually, I will ask “What is it that makes you . . .”

Happy.

S: I think it’s working very well. I’m enjoying it.

If you will move your mouth it would help.

S: All right, what makes you . . .

Happy.

S: You see, you toss in something new and there goes that . . .

Rhythm.

S: Yes. Back to where we were. Because that is the key, what makes you . . .

Happy.

S: . . . is the key to—worked it out that time—to your passion. And very often, when you surround yourself with those who no longer have their passion, they’re going to do that very human thing, one of the greatest of stupid human tricks, that very human thing of trying to keep you in their orbit, their friend, their family member, and they will do that by doing what they can to keep you from being unique, different, because they are un-. . .

Happy.

S: . . . your expression of passion, something that you are . . .

Happy.

S: . . . about becomes dangerous, because suddenly we are no longer alike, we don’t have in common. If you are the one who needs that relationship, you might even put aside those things you are passionate about in order to fit in with those who no longer have passion.

When you were a child, you were in a process of learning and growing, and you had so much in front of you that you easily dreamed. You were pretty motivated about anything you really wanted to do, perhaps to your parent’s constant frustration. When you were a child, you could do that because you knew that you were extremely limited, but very well connected.

Now, let me explain that. You knew that you were learning, that there were all sorts of things you did not know yet. In fact, that’s why they forced you into school. As a child you remembered not being able to talk, perhaps, you remembered the frustration that would come from not knowing how to—maybe—write your name, and when you learned to do that, you knew that there was so much more. And at that point in your childhood—I hope not—or your adulthood when you realized “I’ve gone as far as I can,” that’s when you lost your passion and quit dreaming. Now, sometimes that’s because you’ve gone through all the school you can, you have all of the degrees, all of the knowledge possible in that particular field, you are the number-one expert, and you know there’s nothing more you can do. And I will assure you that that’s exactly why those number-one experts become very dead. And for those of you who have had the opportunity to be that, you know what I’m talking about. When tomorrow has nothing to give you, you start dying.

So you don’t know what makes you . . .

Happy.

S: . . . and you have reached the end of your view of life, what you can and cannot do, what is possible, what is not, and you find yourself in a place—well, if nothing else, it’s probably boring, maybe it’s even a little dangerous—there’s nothing left to care about. What can you do to get the dreams going again? What can you do to find the passion that will motivate you to go through another day?

Two things: the first one is what we’ve been playing with for the last couple of minutes here, and it is figuring out what makes you . . .

Happy.

S: . . . and doing it. The key there was not figuring, it was doing. Every day practice happy.

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

No, it was good.

S: Aye. Heard it that many times, it comes out right.

Every day if there’s not anything you can think of, how about throwing yourself back to something that used to make you . . .

Happy.

S: Every day, do one thing. And laughter—and I mean real laughter. I don’t mean that kind of laughter that is that polite little society thing that you do so you won’t get kicked out of the club. Laughter is a really good thing to loosen up the concrete in your brain that keeps you from being . . .

Happy.

S: . . . and able to think about what brings you . . .

Happiness.

S: Oh, good. So try laughter. Some of you know the Buddhist gods. There is one that is bald and rotund and laughing. Laughing. You’ve got to love a society that has a laughing god, don’t you?

All societies do, they just don’t know it.

S: Oh, that’s so good. So laugh. If you can’t come up with anything else, find an Internet joke site. You all have computers, right? And seems to be so.

[. . .] discount movie theater and find a comedy and find maybe a comedy that attracts you that you really think will, you know, you can laugh at and just enjoy.

S: See a film you enjoy. Hang out with people that you know make you laugh.

Or someone you can laugh at.

S: Lost points on that one, Frank. Do something every day that makes you . . .

Happy.

S: . . . so that you can begin building up a reservoir of passion once again. Laughter is permission you give your heart to move forward, and moving forward is what gets you out of the rut you’re stuck in. Laughter. Play. Doing things that you used to love with an open mind, because maybe you’re not going to love them again. Maybe it’s not the same, but it’s opening a doorway that’s been stuck. You’ve got to push a little hard, but you’re not going to be doing that by learning to worship the stuck door, seeing that as all you have, or worse, seeing that as the spiritual guide to life.

Passion is what you have when your spirit has the chance to live through your body, when what you truly are—[Oma making noise with her tail] that’s a drumbeat by Oma—when what you truly are, the vibrant, loving, funny, light-filled being of pure Source energy sits inside this body and looks at the world, and says, “Yes!”

Your dreams are important. [When] you put down your head on to the pillow tonight, ask yourself to remember your dreams. But while you’re awake, I would ask you to ask that same question. “Help me remember my dreams.” Start working on bringing passion back into your life, the passion that comes from a heart that is . . .

Happy.

S: Good work. That’s when your creativity will come back, by the way. That’s when your laughter gets loose, by the way. That’s when you start having fun again. And, you know, it’s not about succeeding at it, it’s about just giving it a try.

Glochanumora. Happy, happy . . .

Happy.

S: . . . trails.