An Introduction to Dreamshaping

Introduction

“All things are of the substance of dreams.” For many years that has been my personal mantra, my code, if you will, to live and dream by. Explaining what this means is tricky. I’ll start with saying what it does not mean: It does not mean that nothing we experience is real. It does not mean we should rely on wishful thinking to create the kinds of lives we want to live. In my experience, wishes are for birthday cakes, fleeting and usually unrealized unless the odds of them coming true were already in our favor. It does not mean life is free from struggle, or that the dream of it is meaningless because we’re just going to wake up someday and realize we never existed.

Life as we experience it is the ultimate lucid dream—those dreams in which we become aware that we’re dreaming. We look around us in the dream we’re having, and we understand within the dream that we have the power to create it, frame by frame. We are suddenly unbound by the rules of everyday life, in which options are few and our days are filled with things we must do: work at jobs we don’t really like, meet obligations we would prefer to be free from, remain in relationships that are poisoning us, and generally live in a state of low-grade helplessness. The world is going mad! Polarization and politicization, partisanship and mistrust, lives that feel like a grind, wearing us down as we endure them rather than celebrate them. We hope to survive to that end of the tunnel we’ve been travelling toward, where light, and Social Security, and freedom are enjoyed for a few golden years that rush by like water over a dam. But then, if we want to, we wake up in the dream and realize it’s a dream. We’re not truly stuck. We can make choices. We can be our own dream guides, leading ourselves each day as we both live this dream and create it.

Dreamshaping is about waking up inside the dreams we’re living, and knowing we can shape them. It does not require supernatural thinking. It does not require higher powers. While I have nothing against those things, or against religion or sacred texts, it was imperative when I first imagined this book, this dreamshaping manual, that it not rely on anything outside the dreamer and their determination to be the architect of their life. What matters for the purpose of this introduction is letting the reader know that you can do this. You can shape your dream, starting now. And shaping it begins by realizing you have the power to do that.

Dreamshaping can be summed up as action informed by understanding. If the language of achievement and accomplishment works for you, then use it. If shaping your dream involves setting goals, then set them. For me it began by understanding that all things are of the substance of dreams, and that I’m the dreamer.

What is the shape of your dream, its landscape? What are the things you want in your dream, and, just as importantly, what are the things you want out of it? The toxins, habits and obstacles that limit what you imagine for yourself? The objective is not to reach the end of it—for all dreams end—but to experience it while we’re dreaming, and to know we are not powerless. We’re the set designer! The casting director. The author, the publisher, the camera operator, the conductor. All of it.

All things are of the substance of dreams.

Feel the substance in your hands.

Shape it to your liking.

Starting now.