John’s instructions for me once I got to NATPE were to go and talk to everyone in the King World booth, and to meet one executive there specifically. He knew this executive and I was to use his name when introducing myself. King World is the company that sold the Oprah show to TV stations around the country. That, John said, was called syndication. Then I was to call him when it was over.
When I told this to my father, he had a different set of instructions for me. As part of my preparations for going to NATPE, he had me make business cards with my name, address, and phone number on them. He told me to talk to everyone at the King World booth just like John said, but to do it quick. Then I was to go all around the rest of the convention and introduce myself to everyone that I could, handing out all 500 of my cards to people I spoke to personally. I was to tell each of them, during some part of that conversation, my dream.
I took both my father and John at their word. I walked all over that convention floor and shook a lot of hands. I also told my dream to a lot of people. I especially made sure to talk to all of the production companies headquartered in Chicago, in case the efforts to meet with Oprah fell through, so that I could triangulate my strategy in getting to her company. I didn’t hand out all 500 cards, but the stack was a lot smaller when I came home.
Sending me to NATPE had been a bit of a test with John. It was instructional, and at the same time it was a way of gauging my interest and dedication to my goal. Fortunately, I passed. Soon after NATPE, John called and asked if I could fly to Chicago by the end of the week to interview at The Oprah Winfrey Show. I did, and was offered a job on the spot.
John’s sending me to NATPE was a response to my efforts. This is important to note because dreaming is a relationship between our inner voice and our outer efforts. That sentence should be bold and underlined. What we see in our imagination, or what our dreams tell us, is but a wisp until we respond to it and bring it manifest in the physical.
Dreaming is both nighttime and daytime, both imagination and effort. If we live solely in our imagination, we won’t get very far in life, neither if we live solely in effort—both are required. Together, dreaming and manifestation work as a dance that moves us forward and draws the form and direction of our life.
Sending me to NATPE was also a gift from John. Rather than remaining something abstract, I now had an image of the entertainment industry, and specifically of me in the entertainment industry. Walking the convention floor I had, literally, stepped into the business for that brief window, and I could see myself working in it. I would walk into different exhibitor booths and could imagine myself shaking hands with buyers, talking about television programs, sitting at tables and scratching out deals. By forming into an image, the entertainment business became a tangible reality.
Image is our blueprint. As much as images are the language of our present experiencing, they are also the destination we direct ourselves toward. It is from image that our conscious processing makes decisions.
Lesson Three:
We can do anything by seeing it. We can create any reality we choose. We are the creators and captains of our life.
Images are the bases of all our actions. Just like driving a car somewhere, if we can’t see where it is that we are going, we have nowhere to go. The images that we see inside are our destinations. As Richard was instructed in the book Illusions, putting ourselves into our images makes them manifest in real life and in very real ways. Walking the floor of the NATPE convention directly put me into a now-tangible image, which then became a now-tangible destination.
The trip to NATPE was also a gift in another way. Not only did going there prepare me for the job interview with Oprah’s company, it put me in a situation where I could be creative, or not, to make a little, or make something much more.
I could have spent the whole time talking to just the folks in the King World booth. That was, after all, what I had come there to do. Instead, at my father’s suggestion, I walked the convention floor over and over, speaking to people from MCA, Columbia, Paramount, Universal … all the studios and all the boutiques. I saw how television shows are packaged, watched how buyers and sellers talked to each other, what they ate, and how they dressed. My worldview expanded, and I made countless contacts. This was all very good, because I didn’t take the job at Oprah.
The job offered to me at The Oprah Winfrey Show was to work in production, and production was starting the following week. I had, by this time, only a few more months left to graduate college. I was faced with a choice: graduate from college, or take the job at Oprah that I had dreamed about since junior high. I chose to graduate.
I made my choice with freedom and lightness of heart, because I had verified that dreams of our passions can become manifest. The lesson that my dad had been teaching me, that I had read in Illusions, I had now tested and experienced for myself. Rather than feeling like the closing of a door saying no to the job offer, the offer was a promise to me of endless possibilities. I said no with the newfound assurance that I had a lifetime of opportunities to manifest for myself.
In dreaming, it is important to write down our dreams and images so that we can verify how they become manifest. It is essential to verify as a reminder to ourselves of how this relationship works. Verification is an important part of the dialogue—it is like saying to your Self as partner, “I hear you.”
It is easy to say that dreaming work requires faith. Another way to consider it is that this work requires trust. Because I have been Dreaming for many years, writing my dreams and verifying them, like a scientist I have observed a world that operates according to certain laws or mechanics. Because dreaming is born of the body—it is a biological function—it adheres to its own physical laws much like other biological functions. While the Dreaming world contains the Mystery, it doesn’t operate by whimsy or caprice; it is both reliable and verifiable. So I dream in this world trusting in its modes of operation, which I have verified for myself over and over again.
It is also important to write down how our dreaming becomes manifest so that we don’t miss the miracles. Life is both quotidian and sacred. We can lift the quotidian up to the sacred by imbuing it as such. This often happens through recognition and gratitude.
I could easily have dismissed the Oprah opportunity as luck, chance, or being in the right place at the right time. Or, I could have taken it for myself and claimed it as a result of hard work. For me, it was neither; it was a true co-creating with my dreaming and conscious selves. I dreamed what I wanted to do, which had bubbled up from my inner. Then, I responded to that dream by consciously working to bring it manifest.
Consciously working to bring something manifest means simply being present and responsive when the path begins to unfold through opportunities. This unfolding is one of life’s miracles. I have seen people do all the work of imagining only to miss the opportunities to manifest because they didn’t believe in the miracle; they stayed mired in the linear reality instead of having eyes to see what was laying out before them.
It is very easy to devote rapt attention to our disappointments, concerns, fears, or the perceived gaps between our now and where we wish to be. If we do this, we become myopic to the Mystery. Instead of living a vertical reality, we settle into a linear one. With the Oprah experience, rather than seeing it as simply a series of random events in my life, I chose to lift it up to the vertical and lived it as something sacred.
The Aboriginal women could have just seen any rock on their land the same as any other. The rock we celebrated could have simply been a rock. Or not. By greeting the rock and imbuing it with their ceremonies, it became a strong connecting point for their entire lifespan as a people and a divining rod for their experience with the Divine. This is what is meant by lifting the quotidian up to the sacred and imbuing it as such.
Settling into the linear perspective flattens out our life experience. From here it becomes harder to see that all around us at every moment there are other qualities and available experiences happening in the vertical—all the miracles.
Life