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 Mary Anne Thomas is the author of "An Adventure of the Mind," a complete "how to manifest" spiritual workbook, available http://www.mindadventures.com.
Lesson One:
The power of a dream
Your dreams are more powerful than you realize. Galileo Galilei once yearned to understand the night sky and he created science. Robert Goddard envisioned space travel and man walked on the moon. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and started a civil war, which freed America’s slaves.
Are your dreams this powerful? Lets find out . . . by taking a look at how a dream becomes reality.
The dream we’re going to study is familiar to you. It’s the dream of American Independence. You know how it ended, of course, but there is a detail behind the story that you’re not familiar with: the motives of the man who created the dream. His motives were not for a grand ideal, like independence; they were more closely aligned with the motives behind your own dreams.
Our story begins on April 19th, 1775, the day the first six Americans died in the War of Independence. Colonists from many of the thirteen colonies had gathered on Lexington Green in Boston to protest England’s decision to establish a standing army in America. In England, not even the King could send an army against Englishmen. His decision to do so was a violation of the rights all Englishmen believed they possessed. It was inflammatory enough to create independence, but it did not. No one knew what the word "independence" meant.
Writing years later, Benjamin Franklin said:
"I never had heard in any Conversation from any Person
drunk or sober the least Expression of a wish for a Separation,
or Hint that such a Thing would be advantageous to America."
So, how did independence become a reality? One man had a dream, but his dream was not for independence. It was for something more common, more personal. It was to become rich and famous.
The man’s name was Thomas Paine. He had arrived in Philadelphia on November 30th, 1774, broke, divorced and with a history of failure. The son of a Quaker corset maker in England, he had tried to follow in his father’s footsteps but had no aptitude for business. He failed. He next attempted to emulate his father-in-law, becoming a tax collector, and was fired for negligence. He became a teacher and was fired. His first wife died; and in his grief, he made a disastrous second match. To escape failure, Paine fled to the New World. He arrived alone with nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing. Paine had his anger: At the establishment in England which made rich men richer, and poor men poorer; at tax collectors who were forced to exploit their own brethren; and at the powerlessness of education which was meant to help men rise economically, but in truth was unable to challenge rigidly-enforced class systems.
Paine’s anger matched the feelings of others in America, and within a few months he found a job as the editor of a new magazine. His first article condemned slavery and won him support from powerful colonists. One of these colonists, Benjamin Franklin, suggested that Paine tell the story of Anglo-American relations. Paine took Franklin up on his idea; and thirteen months after arriving in America, Paine wrote the most influential political pamphlet ever published: Common Sense.
In one brilliant stroke of writing, Paine sold Americans on a republican form of government. He answered objections to republicanism, one by one. He attacked the fondness Englishmen had for their kings and told the truth about English rulers, that they were descended from:
"A French bastard (William the Conqueror) landing with
an armed banditti and establishing himself King of England
against the consent of the nation."
On January 10th, 1776, Paine gave the first copy of Common Sense to Benjamin Franklin. Three months later, it had sold 120,000 copies, a figure comparable to 10 million in sales today. By May of that same year, several state and county conventions sent instructions to Congress to establish independence. By July 4th, independence was approved.
Which one of your dreams is this powerful?
Let’s find out right now!
Your first exercise:
A national day of dreaming
Make one day this month your national day of dreaming. Take the day off. Plan to do something entirely different. Spend it alone; loaf; read a book; watch old movies on TV; go to lunch with friends. Give yourself the freedom to change your routine and dream.
When your national day of dreaming arrives, write your dreams down as they come to you in a journal or on a legal pad. Write about the way your life will change; write about the people who will step forward to help you; write about the ideas that will make your dreams real; write about the effect your dreams will have on other people.
Mary Anne's tips:
1) Don’t leave out big dreams! Big dreams are as easy to fulfill as little ones.
2) Don’t leave out your dreams for material rewards! Just as all people are spiritual, all dreams are spiritual too.
3) Dust off your old dreams even if you’ve been disappointed in the past. This time, powerful new exercises (in future installments of this serialization) will back you up.
4) If you can’t wait and want to get started before you can arrange a day off, use this short-cut: Take out a piece of blank paper. Draw a line down the middle. On the left-hand side, list the things you’re unhappy about (in all areas of your life). On the right-hand side, list the things you’d like to have instead. Unfulfilled dreams were not intended to make you unhappy! They were intended to guide you to your dreams through the use of contrast. This short-cut will show you how.
© Copyright 2001, Mary Anne Thomas. All rights reserved.
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