Hopes and dreams is one of the Bars in the Access Consciousness Bars system (http://www.bars.accessconsciousness.com/). As with all Bars points, this one helps us release the thoughts, feelings and emotions related to the particular Bars point, in this case Hopes and Dreams. Perhaps the first question to ask here is: How many of your hopes and dreams actually belong to someone else?

“How many of your hopes and dreams actually belong to someone else?”

Most of us have parents that had hopes and dreams for us, generally based on what they would like to see for our lives and what they believe is important. What were your parent’s hope and dreams for you? Did they desire for you to marry well? Get a college degree? Become a lawyer? Have children? Be picked for a national sports team? Did you find yourself trying to fulfill their dreams or even rebelling against them?

Parents, teachers, cultural and religious leaders tend to believe that they are doing their jobs when they impart what they have decided are the most important values and goals for you. The fact that you, as an individual, may have different aspirations is rarely considered. This is generally not based on meanness so much as an inability to think beyond their paradigms that they too were sold. When you look back, can you find any hopes, dreams, goals or aspirations that you followed that were not really yours? How well did that work out for you? Unfortunately, many people end up in jobs, relationships and other situations that are not really a good fit for them. If this is true for you, please know that it is never too late to change!

This change generally takes two steps.

The first of these steps is to identify which hopes and dreams are actually yours and which belong to other people. Getting your Bars run and asking questions is a great way to begin to look at this. Doing this step can give you practice in becoming aware of just much of what we consider our thoughts, feelings and emotions don’t actually belong to us!

The second step is to take a close look at the viability of your hopes and dreams. Often our hopes and dreams reflect more of how we wish the world was rather than how it actually is. That can also end us up in situations that don’t work out well. Perhaps you had a dream of being a great painter, playing baseball for your favorite team, becoming an important political figure or traveling the world. Did you achieve it? Most of us don’t achieve these kinds of dreams. The difficulty arises if we judge ourselves as failures or spend too much of our lives pursuing these dreams without asking a question. Some questions that are helpful with dreams are: What do I actually know about my talents and abilities in this area? What’s the value of this dream? What does achieving it mean to me? What am I unwilling to be aware of about myself and this dream? Unfortunately dreams have little to do with being aware. Sometimes being aware is very uncomfortable and even brings up disappointment, but in the end it helps us live much more effective, creative and even fun lives.

“What does achieving it mean to me?”

Hopes, like dreams, are also not based on awareness. We can hope that our spouse will stop drinking, or that our child will turn out the way we would like them to turn out, or that there will be world peace or that a particular candidate will win the election. Gary Douglas says that: “Hope is the pretense of not knowing.” As you move away from hopes and dreams and into your own knowing, you will notice that your life begins to work with more ease and fewer glitches. It’s not that hopes and dreams are bad or wrong; it’s that they divert us from our knowing and the awareness that allow us to make choices that work well for us. What if you gave up your hopes and dreams in favor of a willingness to be aware? Might this create more of the life you truly desire?

“What if you gave up your hopes and dreams in favor of a willingness to be aware?”