On Dreamshaping: Nowhere to Hide

Mark McNease

Wherever I go, there I am!

It’s an old adage, meant to be humorous but with a grain of truth to it. The one thing I cannot escape is also the one thing I spend so much time attempting to flee: myself. My repetitive thoughts, my obsessions, my fixations, all playing out in loops that sometimes remind me of spools of yarn that have become entangled. Do I do this today? Do I do that? If I don’t to this, will I feel freer? What will bring me the simple relief I crave?

Another common analogy is that nearly all of us possess – or are possessed by – a monkey mind. This one is self-explanatory: what is something monkeys are known for? Jumping! Limb to limb, restless, never ceasing to move. That is a good description of our minds. It certainly captures what I experience almost every day. And the more I attempt to stop jumping, to settle on one fragile limb and stay there, the more another limb grabs my attention and within an instant I’ve jumped to that one. On and on, hour after hour, day after day.

Two truths present themselves with this: one, the limbs I jump from are actually very limited in number – the same few limbs over and over as I leap from one to another and back again. My thoughts are not a forest, but a small stand of trees grabbing vying for my focus until I’m exhausted. And two, what really propels me in this endless jumping is a deep desire to escape … myself. There is something unbearable about not jumping. To be motionless, mentally and emotionally, is a foreign state of mind for most of us.

Be still and know that I am god (Psalm 46:10). I’m not religious and I don’t believe in deities, higher powers or the supernatural, but there are many scriptures, from many sources, that can teach us deeper meanings, and for me this is among the most resonant. It sounds so simple, but in practice it can feel like an impossible task: to simply be still. To stop jumping. To surrender my need to escape the moment. And it begins by not reaching for the next limb – the very same one I’ve grasped ten times today already – by not hopping thought to thought and back again. Stillness in this case is a destination, and when we get there we find peace.

Dreamshaping … on shaping reality and living our dreams.