Tag: dream

imagine

.Reading time 2 minutes.

angels and demons
dance together in my dreams
no heaven no hell

I wrote the above haiku and reflection below about two and a half years ago. With the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, I thought it apropos to share this again. May a world of peace for everyone dawn—pink and soft light over the horizon of darkness.

From Aristotle to Einstein, philosophers, artists and poets over the ages have spoken about the power of imagination. In some regards, it is lamentable that we often perceive knowledge as an accumulation of so-called objective “facts”, and imagination as a kind of unreal world of dreams. But the creation of anything and everything always starts with the imagination. So what then actually, is imagination? Is it not the source of everything?

Since its creation in 1971 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the famous song “Imagine” has been invoked worldwide in a shared desire for humanity to transcend differences and to live “life in peace”. You may say that imagining world peace has not created it; however, in the act of imagination, in stating and singing and sharing the dream, are we not creating the real experience of peace within our own hearts and together with others? When we imagine peace, we experience it. Likewise, when we imagine violence, we experience it. What we imagine, we experience. What we imagine, we become.

We are all dreamers—it is our birthright and our true nature. So why not dance and dream together, for a world of peace? We are our dreams. May they be light.

diamonds

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
bewitched by the light
on this long road of diamond dust
i dream endlessly

airspace

.Reading time 2 minutes.
i dream skies clear blue
an airspace of love and peace
encircling one world

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but in fact, what comes first: the dream or the day? Imagination or reality? Perhaps the difference between the two (dream and day, imagination and reality) is not so distinct after all—one bleeding into the other as our dreaming and waking worlds are nothing more than a continuum of one consciousness, of one stream in time and space navigating terrains all at once sublime, spellbinding, and atrocious.

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but is it not the dream that gives rise to words articulated and actions initiated? And ultimately to that concept which we call “reality”—which is indeed precisely that, a concept, a conceptualization of the mind. It is the mind which dreams and thinks and creates. It is the mind, consciousness itself, which is the ultimate “reality”. We all dream; we are all dreamers—inevitably. So direct your dreams and your desires beyond what you have been taught is possible, beyond the visible horizon and into skies of clear blue.

“I see no conflict between reality and imagination. They are not in fact separate. Our real lives hold within them our royal lives; the inspiration to be more than we are, to find new solutions, to live beyond the moment. Art helps us to do this because it fuses together temporal and perpetual realities.”

~Jeanette Winterson