“All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allen Poe
A sojourn at the retreat a short time ago had me revisiting a vision book that I began at the start of the quest to find the property that I saw in a dream. I was showing it to some long time friends. Not surprisingly, if you subscribe to the effectiveness of manifesting through vision books, I realised that many of the things that I had written or drawn down had come to fruition.
Creating a vision board, or as in my case – a vision book – is not difficult. All it requires is some time and a few simple steps.
I like to work on my vision books at two specific times. Yes, I have a couple – one is specifically for the retreat and the other is more personal but includes the retreat.
The New Moon and the Full Moon are my favoured times, but any time that you are comfortable with will suffice. Some pages are for the month and some are for several months and may resemble a business planning document. I use a variety of goal setting techniques in formulating what goes onto the page. My favourite at the moment is the GROW model.
Goals
Realistic/Reachable
Obstacles/Opportunities and
Way Forward
Most importantly I put the date on the page. I may divide the page up into various topics or headings and these may be small sketches or pictures or words cut out from a magazine that has taken my fancy. I then set aside some time to meditate before starting. I set the intent that what comes out on the page is just right. During the course of the session, it becomes apparent that there is a synergy between many of the things that appear on the page. Arrows, links, pictures and words appear.
For instance in January I had as one of my things on the page was health. I applied the GROW model to this and added in the “R” section a date that I wanted to achieve my goal. Having spent the last few months of 2016 with pneumonia and finding that I was recovering slowly from it, this was a priority, not only from the business point of view, but a vision of improving my health and longevity by focussing on it. I asked myself “What is my Why?” and reflected on what came out of that meditation. Two months later, I revisited the page and realized that I was “on track” for most of what I had written. The areas that I still need to achieve are transferred to the next page and I find that by setting down my thoughts and goals, that I become more accountable to myself.
The pages are a mixture of goal setting and dreaming…… for with the retreat there needs to be a certain amount of dreaming and it is in the dreams that I feel that anything can be possible.
Some of the actions that I am taking as a result of these will only ever be a dream for me, but may be a future generation’s reality. On these pages I dream of planting trees. In fact on the last visit I planted 3 more. These were grown from seeds of a gum tree that were no bigger than a pin head, yet the parent tree was a magnificent 40 metre high specimen with a trunk that had a girth too big to encircle with my arms.
Other trees that I have planted are Oak trees, grown from gathered acorns and nurtured to young seedlings. Yet I will never see these trees in their full majesty – they will remain for me, just a vision of what might become, just as willing gardeners planted the stately oaks in the main streets of the nearby country towns.
I may draw other things on the page… it becomes a de facto “To Do” list. Again I find another page that has more to do with trees…. on February’s page was a section on finding a spot for the Casuarina or She Oaks saplings that I have also grown from seed…. They have yet to be planted as I’m searching for the right spot for them and reading about their physical needs as well as the metaphysical significance of them, just as I did when I was searching for the right spot to construct the first labyrinth.
Pages in my vision book may include a word picture of an ideal client and I am always pleasantly surprised when the phone rings and he or she introduces themselves and makes an appointment!
The reward for keeping these vision books is in going back over them and putting a big tick next to those great big audacious dreams that have been achieved – perhaps they should have a gold star!
It is interesting that some of the things put down that weren’t achieved were in fact “pipe dreams” … dreams that if they had been fulfilled would have taken me further away from where I am now and in retrospect, I’m pleased that they haven’t come into fruition.
It is also interesting to read back over vision books from years gone by and see that there is a common thread running through all of them…. and to be grateful for the things that have manifested.
Weeks of Intention will start next week and I hope you will join me on this journey. However you can choose to follow in real time or wait until it’s convenient for you and begin your own ten weeks of intention. Obviously since everyone’s intentions differ, you may choose to substitute the intention for the week with something more relevant for you.
With the New Moon coming up at the end of the week, my thoughts have turned to how I might prepare my monthly vision page. As this is the first New Moon of the new financial year I have decided to structure it a little differently to usual and will approach it similarly to a self coaching session. It will be interesting to see if the results are different as I sit down after a meditation session and journal my answers to the following questions:
plan somewhere where you can readily review them. As you move closer to success and progress to your ultimate goal, regularly review your goals. Ask yourself the following question: “What would I do if this step didn’t work?”
