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An Excerpt from Growing Big Dreams
By Robert Moss

The greatest crisis of our lives is a crisis of imagination. We come to a dead stop because there is a barrier in front of us and we can’t imagine a way to get around or over it. Our work space feels like it is walled with cement blocks that are closing in more tightly every day, but we can’t imagine where we would go if we quit. We can’t breathe in an airless relationship but can’t picture how to take off. We look in the mirror, when we dare, and see the age lines, the skin blemishes, maybe the thinning hair, not the beauty that we may carry inside.

We go on repeating to ourselves the tired old stories, strapped onto us by family or past histories of defeat and disappointment. Or we cling to memories of brighter days, or that win on the high school sports field, or that sweet summer romance, or that medal for valor, or that early success that was never repeated. Either way, by nursing grief or guilt or nostalgia, we manage to go through life looking in the rear-view mirror, stuck in the past, never fully available to the present moment.

Or we miss the moment by carrying anxiety about the future, screening mental scenarios for what could go wrong. We give ourselves a hundred reasons not to take the risk of doing something new, something that would take us beyond the gated communities of the mind into the wilds of creative adventure.

Conscious of it or not, we go around repeating our negative mantras. I’m too old. I’m not pretty enough. I don’t have the money. People always let you down. People don’t change. I’m so tired. You don’t think you do this? Pause for a moment. Take off the headphones. Listen to what’s playing on your inner soundtrack. It may be a song. “Am I blue?”

I confess there are days, between snowstorms in a northeastern winter, when my mood can slump and go the color of the dirty gray ramparts of ice on the curb in my small, gritty city. And more days like these in the shut-up times of the pandemic. I don’t want to get out of bed even to walk the dog, who is waiting for me patiently. I may be stirred back to life by a dream or a cheering message from a loved one or hopes of an ocean beach vacation or a foreign adventure. But when I find it is still hard to rise above a low, lethargic mood and dump those negative mantras — My legs hurt, I’m played out, I can’t walk on the ice — I call in one of the greatest life coaches I know.

I know him from his most famous book. Maybe you do too. His book is titled Man’s Search for Meaning. His name is Viktor Frankl. He was an existentialist — which is to say, someone who believes that we must be authors of meaning for our own lives — and a successful psychiatrist in Vienna before Nazi Germany swallowed Austria in 1938. He was a Jew and a freethinking intellectual, two reasons for the Nazis to send him to a concentration camp. For several years he was in Auschwitz, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps.

In the camp, every vestige of humanity was taken from him, except what he could sustain in his mind and his heart. He was in constant pain, reduced to a near skeleton with a tattooed number on his arm, liable at any moment to be beaten or killed on the whim of a
guard. He was there to be worked to death. He watched those around him shot or pummeled or carted off to the gas chambers every day.

He made an astonishing choice. He decided that, utterly deprived of freedom in the nightmare world around him, he would tend one precious candle of light within. He would exercise the freedom to choose his attitude. It sounds preposterous, if you don’t know the story of what unfolded. When people tell us we have a bad attitude in ordinary circumstances, we are usually not grateful. The suggestion that we can choose our attitude when the world around us seems cold and bleak or we have suffered a major setback, even heartbreak, sounds cruel. But let’s stay with Viktor Frankl.

When the light went out in his world, he managed to light that inner candle of vision. Despite the pain in his body and the screams and groans around him, he made an inner movie, a film of a possible life in a world where the Nazis had been defeated and Hitler was a memory. It was an impossible vision, of course, an escapist fantasy. There was no way he was going to survive Auschwitz.

But he kept working on his inner movie, night after night, as director, scriptwriter, and star. He produced a scene in which he was giving a lecture in a well-filled auditorium. His body had filled out, and he was wearing a good suit. The people in the audience were
intelligent and enthusiastic. The theme of his lecture was “The Psychology of the Concentration Camps.” In his movie, not only were the death camps a thing of the past; he had retained the sanity and academic objectivity to speak about what went on during the Holocaust from a professional psychiatric perspective.

This exercise in inner vision, conducted under almost unimaginably difficult circumstances, got Viktor Frankl through. One year after the war ended, in a good suit, he gave that lecture as he had seen himself doing in his inner movies.

What do we take away from this?

First, that however tough our situation may seem to be, we always have the freedom to choose our attitude, and this can change everything. Let’s allow William James to chime in: “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

Second, that our problems, however bad, are unlikely to be quite as bad as the situation of someone who has been sent to a Nazi death camp. That thought may help us to gain perspective, to stand back from a welter of grief and self-pity and rise to a place where we can start to dream up something better.

Third, that we can make inner movies, and if they are good enough it is possible that they will play in the theater of the world.

If we take Viktor Frankl’s example to heart, we see that choosing your attitude can be an exercise in creative imagination that is much more practical and original than trying to edit your inner soundtrack (though that is worth trying) or telling yourself that you can’t afford the energy of a negative thought (you can learn to use the energy of any strong emotion, including grief and rage).

Would you like to make your own life movies, in which you enjoy the satisfaction of your deepest desires? Are you willing to grow a vision of bright possibility so rich and alive that it wants to take root in the world?

Then you want to learn to use your imagination. The word imagination comes from the Latin imago, or image. Imagination has been defined as the faculty that clothes the forces at play in the inner world in images so we can perceive and interact with them. Phantasia, from which we derive fantasy, is the Greek word for imagination. It means “making visible.” The act of making visible makes it possible for humans to communicate with beings that are more than human. “Phantasia was the organ by which the divine world spoke to the human mind,” Robert Johnson observed in Inner Work:

From my experience I am convinced that it is nearly impossible to produce anything in the imagination that is not an authentic representation of something in the unconscious.

The whole function of the imagination is to draw up the material from the unconscious, clothe it in images, and transmit it to the conscious mind. Whatever comes up in the imagination must have been living somewhere in the fabric of the unconscious before it was given an image-form by the imagination.

This book will help you connect with your inner imagineer and become scriptwriter, director, and star of your own life movies, choosing your preferred genre and stepping into a bigger and brave story.

ROBERT MOSS is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of modern psychology and shamanism, and offers workshops on dreaming, creativity, and shamanism throughout the world. He is also a bestselling novelist, journalist, and independent scholar. More information at MossDreams.com.

Excerpted from the book Growing Big Dreams. Copyright © 2020 by Robert Moss. Printed with permission from New World Library.

Is my intuition fooling me regarding getting back with my husband? How will I know? I have this deep feeling that my marriage will survive, but at this moment, we are not even talking and he has found another woman. Am I just fooling myself? How can we separate our intuitions from wishful thinking?

Maryanne

Astrea:

It's so difficult to know if what we're sensing about ourselves and the people closest to us is true or merely what we wish were true. When the question is romantic or something to do with other loved ones, it can be twice as difficult to figure things out.

Since it's so tricky, we often just give up and accept whatever we see on the surface as what's really going on. Right now, you say you and your ex-husband aren't even speaking to each other. I promise this will change over time, whether you both decide you want to be together again or not.

As hurtful as it is that he's found someone else, nine times out of ten, that person is Rebound Girl, and no one to take very seriously. Often people make something like that seem like more than it is to their ex simply because they're angry.

My psychic feeling for you is that this woman is a diversion because he can't face you at the moment to talk about anything real or serious. By having a girlfriend, he can avoid coming back home for a while longer.

I DO see you back together in July, however. According to my cards, you seem to really love one another. This is just a very bad time in your relationship, but it will pass into forgiveness and eventually reunion in a few months.

If you feel iffy about your own intuition, ask a reputable psychic for a second opinion. If you can't find a gifted, responsible reader in your area, there are plenty here at Kajama who can take a truly objective look at what is going on in your life.

If you don't like the diagnosis or if it seems way off from your own thoughts and feelings, you can try for a third opinion, but after that you should stop. That old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth is true. Oftentimes, people will go from reader to reader until they get the answer they want to hear, and that doesn't help anyone!

Too many readings, even if you're doing them for yourself, will always make you feel more lost and confused. So if you're reading for yourself, beware. If we aren't in a respectful, objective state of mind, the tools we use can tease us and joke around about even the most serious of subjects.

Whenever you're unsure whether something you're sensing is a psychic intuition or wishful thinking, I believe it's time to call in an expert. I never, ever read for myself or anyone in my family. I can't do it; it's too hard. It gives me a killer migraine just to try to sort it all out.

If I have a question, I get someone else who is a reader to take a look. Is that the lazy way out? I don't think so. I think that asking someone outside the situation to look at it objectively is the best way to get some real answers.

*****

Susyn:

You pose an interesting question. It's one that most people struggle with at one time or another. There are ways to distinguish between wishful thinking and intuition metaphysically, though it can take some time for the truth to come clear.

You could actually be slowing down the course of destiny by hanging on to the hope that your husband will return. To deal with this situation most effectively, you will have to take your focus off of him and what he is doing, and return the focus to yourself. Once you do, you'll immediately notice things beginning to change.

I have found that in relationships between men and women, the man usually emulates whatever the woman is focused on. When you first met, your focus was likely on yourself, and his focus was on winning your heart. Over time, especially after marriage, a woman's focus tends to turn her husband and his needs. Once this happens, the man's focus returns to himself and his own needs or desires.

If you will regroup and start living according to your own best interests, and perhaps even consider the idea of dating someone yourself, your husband will notice this shift almost immediately. It needn't involve the exchange of any words or information; he will subconsciously pick up on your energetic shift toward detachment.

As an example, I was divorced from my husband for almost two years before I began dating again. Until then, my ex pretty much left me alone, but the morning after my first date with another man ñ boom! - he was on my doorstep. Even though the marriage was over, his focus was back on me in a veritable instant!

When you let go of this idea of reconciliation and begin doing things for yourself, whether that means taking a dance class, dating someone new, or clearing out his belongings to make more room for your own, you may discover that this separation is actually a blessing. You will find yourself feeling more confident, independent, empowered and attractive.

To find immediate relief from this struggle, start by making a list of things you love to do, and what you can do for yourself now that you have the time. One of the quickest ways to make this shift is by engaging in physical activity. To get the ball rolling, join a gym, plant a garden, or clean out a closet.

Though no one wants to fail in a relationship, this separation could be a blessing in disguise. If this marriage is meant to come back together, it will do so much faster if you are taking good care of yourself and are in a happy, high vibration. If you turn this situation over to the Universe, you won't have to make a decision about the future, for everything will all unfold in your best interests.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.