Vision: Golden Eyes on the True Prize

New year time is vision time. Millions of pens hit the page scrawling goals for better things to be, do and have. Minds glow with images of what will make life happier, healthier and wealthier. Great intensions, but it's mostly a noble distraction from what the soul genuinely wants. Setting high-minded goals is the separate self's way of reasserting the belief that it occupies the driver's seat of life, steering the car of your destiny toward its cherished goal. It reminds me of the my childhood car-seat; the one with the toy steering wheel. There I would sit importantly and cleverly steering the car and its passengers through the dangerous stream of traffic. All the while, my mother, behind the big wheel to my left actually guided the car to our destination.

Genuine vision is something else entirely. It's a picture of the possibilities life is offering you. It's the call of life not to be a greater you, but to be the greatness that can be facilitated through you. Vision is the soul's gold glowing beneath the surface of the mind's programed thoughts and desires. It's the long forgotten dream that stirred your consciousness awake, the spark that was then hidden by the shoulds and coulds of your parents, teachers and employers. Vision is not an object to be possessed; it is the stream of energy and wisdom carrying you through possibilities beyond the mind's self-imposed limits.

Vision isn't a pleasant choice made on a breezy day. It's the force of life dragging you out of your bed in the darkness of a rainy night. It's a wake up call that won't let you go back to sleep; a call that comes when you least expect it, at the most inconvenient time, in the messiest place. Vision is often delivered by a slimy character with glowing eyes and a greasy grin. You may slam the door shut, but it's too late. Vision has already pierced your belly. Its gnawing hunger can't be satisfied by the empty calories of money, status, and personal power.

Accepting vision takes trust beyond anything the mind can accept. The belief grid that defines a place for everything and defines everything by its place doesn't accommodate the unknown, unexpected, indefinable and unmeasurable. The worldview that worships the song of "I did it my way" doesn't joyously embrace a cosmic chorus chanting a strange magnetic hum. To trust the pull of this hum is allowing the pull of your vision is to go wherever it leads, emphasis on WHEREVER. Only then can your vision lead you passed the fool's gold of ego gain to the soul's gold of vitality and wisdom. Though you may feel alone on your vision's quest, you are interconnected with all of life. It is life that is having and living the vision. It is life appearing to be a separate "you" and it is life playing all the characters and settings of the vision. Vision after all, is life being life.

The adventure and benefit of entering your vision was described beautifully by Joseph Campbell: "We have not to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world."

Let 2010 be the year you receive life's vision and let it have its way with you.