“There” is a feeling. It can only be experienced “here” in the body.

Some of us have a sense of personal vision. Many others have no access to authentic vision at all – we may have only been conditioned to those desires. Either way, getting there can prove problematic if it’s always viewed as a place to get to in the future.

If we cannot access the emotional experience of our vision – here in our body – we will never get there. This is the problem with vision interpreted as goals or milestones. Vision is a somatic experience of our desire so that we may cultivate it right now. Goals are action steps that serve the overall vision.

So there’s something to it when Rocky sang, “Don’t dream it, be it.”

Many years ago I stopped dreaming altogether. I had convinced myself that I just didn’t know where I wanted to go, and that having no destination in mind was somehow “better” or more enlightened. Now I know this was detachment [from life], as opposed to a healthy non-attachment [to outcomes].

In reality I was in pain and frozen over. Without dreaming – a sensory experience of the possibilities within our lives that draws from hope – we go nowhere. It’s like venturing out into a thickly wooded forest in dense fog without a compass.

Vision sets your inner compass. It’s an inner calibration that aligns you with the right next step. (Not the next 10 steps!) The process of creating an authentic personal vision goes something like:

1. Permission to Dream

The first thing I had to do was give myself permission to dream. To open up areas of my desire that had atrophied even if it meant simultaneously grieving the loss of some of those things and the time I had spent bypassing being fully alive. Desire is a muscle that withers and deadens if unused.

2. Drop the Judgment and Naysaying

The second thing I had to do was drop the judgment and limited thinking around the visions that started to appear. The aching and awakening in my heart at first seemed foolish and frivolous. But the key is to allow even the most far-off and impossible visions to unfold – catching ourselves when we negotiate our way down to something more “reasonable.” There is nobody to negotiate with here. Not your lover, children, dog, etc. This is a practice in learning to be unapologetic in our desire. To stop containing ourselves inside a societally-approved box.

3. Feel the Vision

Third, I had to see and feel myself living that vision. Critical to this step, I had to feel where my body started to light up. When you start to access your vision, an essence of childlike wonder and play gets knocked out of deep sleep. You can start to access the feelings of actually being there. What it sounds like, smells like, feels like, looks like, who you are with. Sensation starts to come on board.

Having vision means connecting deeply to the bodily experience of that dream and cultivating that in the here and now.

4. Engage the Feeling With Incremental Action

You see, a vision is not a goal. It does not provide a play-by-play handbook on how to get there. It is not achievement-oriented. It is about creating personal alignment and resonance with what you see so you can bring it here. Not so you can “get there.”

There is no place to get to. If that vision is always an experience in the future that weighs on us – one we have no access to emotionally today – it will never materialize.

 

It will always exist in a far off land.

It will always be a looming cloud.

It will always feel like a loss.

It will stay relegated to fantasy and illusion. And you will stay right where you are, meandering without a compass.

 

So don’t dream the dream, live the dream in any way possible and accessible right now today.

Want to be happy? Treat people kindly. Want to grow a business that helps people? Help one person. Want to be a published author? Start writing about things that move you today. Want to live in the wilderness? Start going on regular hikes. Want to have a rich social life? Start reaching out to your friends.

Engage the feeling of the vision to figure out what in front of you right now demands your attention and action. Cultivate that feeling by doing things that bring that sense of aliveness and desire into your life today.

Your vision may never materialize exactly as you see it in your mind, but you will LIVE your life in a state of truth. You will stay on your path.

 

A Word of Caution About Vision and the Ego

If your intention is to be “known,” your intention is polluting your path. If your intention is for something to be known, you are serving your path. You are in service to your purpose and the vision, not to yourself.

 

“There is no there, there.” – Gertrude Stein