Where dreams are born

In my last article, I proposed to you an idea of what it means to be lucky. That luck is the result of character growing to its ultimate fulfillment of destiny.

I promised to follow up on my hint about where I believe the source of character comes from. Perhaps another way of saying it would be to ask the question, where are ambitions created? What does the birthplace of dreams look like?

I’ve been reading Young‘s psychology of the unconscious. He dialogues with the previously offered theories of Freud, arguing for what he agrees with and challenging some of the elder psychologist’s more radical ideas. But for me, a new concept was to equate the word libido to mean something equivalent to the zest of life.

The psychologists have suggested that the shape of our dreams is some sort of primary language universal for all humans. It is the way our unconscious mind, processes, and categorizes experience and thought.

My superficial exploration into this discipline has exposed that the experts debate about the meaning of dreams and fantasy, but not about their existence. I expect to find that there is a certain disagreement in evaluating the importance of these most basic level symbols and ideations. But it seems pretty clear that our dreams have value in helping us understand who we are at the root of our being.

When I return to my question of what does it mean to be lucky? And if I accept the answer to be what happens when our character forms our destiny. Then I think it’s reasonable to accept, coming to terms with our dreams, will ultimately lead to our destiny.

How do we engage our dreams? How do we shape our fantasy? How do we engineer our destiny?

It must come down to imagination.

I find plenty of self help writing recommending processes to program our subconscious. Usually, it’s some combination of repetition, manifesting and enlightenment. These efforts often can be helpful, but I’ve never been particularly fond of anything that resembles putting ourselves on some kind of a mental or emotional tightrope. And the danger is that if the only way to shape our unconscious mind is by whipping up a dizzying pattern of repeated phrases it seems doomed to fail.

My theory is that to build our character around the most basic level of our dreams is best done by working from our natural interests and imagining their growth and flourishing. Suppose you dream of being rich, what would that realistically look like? And I don’t mean realistic in the sense that you judge the likelihood of it happening, but rather realistic in the sense of answering the question, what will you do on a Tuesday in ten years from now?

That is the point, 10 years is long enough to make plenty of money. If you are wealthy in 10 years how will you spend your time? This practice of thinking clearly about your future allows you to begin to shape it.

How will you describe your character? How would others describe it? What will you be doing with all that money? Who is around you and how long have they been in your life? What kind of fitness and health will you have?

To think about 10 years from now, means that you will give yourself the time to make millions, but today is the time to imagine the character and the nature of your dream. Only once you have envisioned a version of existence that you can actually live with, that you will enjoy starting today, will you be in a position to actually realize your destiny.

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