Keith Varnum - The Dream Made Real

This book is about you! Your aspirations. Your longings. Your dream.

And its about making your dream real, actual, tangible, touchable.

My intention in sharing my life experience is to assist you to take your dream from the realm of hope and possibility into a world of achievement and reality.

At 19, I was a happy, healthy aspiring filmmaker. I was open, innocent, carefree and creative. Then I lost my eyesight. No Western medical doctors could help me to see again. What was real in my life then was not my dream, but a nightmare! If I didnt wake up and take charge of my life, this nightmare was the only reality I would know the rest of my days.

Instinctively I dove deep into my frightful emotions, which eventually led me to my intuition. My inner knowing guided me to seek help from the most real pathfinders I could find. I spent the next twenty years with Hawaiian Kahuna, Japanese Zen masters, and Hopi medicine men. All my teachers are very no-nonsense, practical, down-to-earth peopleextremely realistic, grounded and anchored in everyday reality.

I resided with them, absorbing their living wisdom. These mentors dont just believe their philosophy; they live it. They dont simply think the world is a certain way; they confirm it with personal direct evidence every day of their existence.

They verify their beliefs each day by acting on their convictions, being their truths. Their ideas about the world are inseparable from their everyday experience of the world. Their principles are integrated into their daily livesinto how they breathe, walk, love and feel each moment.

As one of my teachers expressed it so well, You only know what you can do. Wisdom is living what you know. Knowledge is believing what you think you know.

I watched. I felt. I learned. I made changes. I began to see again. And I saw with new eyes. Hanging out with people who were willing to see the real worldtruthhelped me regain my willingness to see.

The key to unlocking my willingness to see was the fresh way that I learned to see. Modeling my mentors, I no longer looked only at the surface appearance of life events. I chose to see beneath the outer form of situations. I used my life experience to intuitively sense what was going on behind the scenes.

Seeing life reveals its secrets. When you see beneath the surface veneer of eventsinstead of simply looking at the outer facadeyou tap into the realm of true knowing, wisdom.

And, most importantly, when I began to seeintuitively graspwhat life is really about, I no longer recoiled at the state of the world. To my delightful surprise, I liked what I saw!

I no longer resisted the people, events and circumstances of my life. I could easily embrace what I perceived at this new deeper level. I no longer judged other people, myself or the world. I could readily accept the world as it is when I viewed it through the eyes of the soul.

My sight restored, I graduated from college and began my own unique Earth adventure. But after hanging out with my spontaneous, authentic teachers, I couldnt simply get any old job just to pay the rent.

As one of mentors was fond of saying, If you do anything for money, you are no better than a slave. I felt the truth of his words, even though I had no clue as how to follow this truth in a real-life practical way. Yet my spirit insisted I make my living doing something heartful, soulful.

I had my eyesight and my dreams, butlike so many peoplelittle sense of self-worth and prosperity consciousness. So I set out to experience the world in a fresh new way. The articles in this book tell my story of how I experimented, exploredand eventually embracedan approach to life that yields great abundance, love, vitality and joy.

I share my personal direct experiences in the spirit of a giftwith the intention that some nugget will trigger recognition, a resonance, a recollection of your own life purpose and passion. In any human interaction, the greatest service we can perform for othersand ourselvesis to increase the aliveness of every person involved.

To get value from this book, its not necessary to believe anything I write. All thats necessary for your dream to become real is a willingness to be open to the possibility that your dream can become real. And to act on that willingness!

I didnt believe most of what my teachers told me! I could barely even acknowledge the magic and power I observed in their lives. But my blindness, fear and pain caused me to be willing to be open to the possibility that these abilities I witnessed might be attainable for me.

I approached each practice of my teachers as a theoretical model, not as a truth. I couldnt believe any of their life strategies would work for me, but I could try each one on for size. See how it fit. Wear it around for a while like a new suit of clothes. Then if I got the same results as they do, Id take that strategy on as my own. Acting on my mentors principles, I immediately began to create renewed health, abundance and love in my life on all levels.

As my teachers suggested, I focused on getting my own personal direct experience of the validity of their methods. As I gathered more and more personal direct evidence of their real-life value, these principles and practices became my truth. I now know these strategies work because using them, I am creating my world as I prefer.

Positive thoughts are helpful in creating your dreams. Positive experiences are even more powerful.

Mental affirmations are useful in attracting your desires. Personal direct evidence is even more effective in attracting more of what you want in life.

Understanding the principles in this book is the booby prize. Improving your daily life by acting on the principles in this book is the true reward. The benefits of these ideas only come when you follow and apply these ideas in your daily life.

Hope, faith and trust are dynamic qualities, but there is a quality thats more powerful: the state of knowing that something is real for you. Dont settle for hope, faith or trustgo for the knowing!

The import of this book is that you can re-tell your Personal Story. Right now you can seed a new tale. A personal saga with a more fun, exciting and fulfilling plotline!

Youre not stuck with your Personal Myth. Because that is truly what your life story is: a myth. A socially supported fiction. An accurate description of your life perhapsyet still a made up script written by youconsciously and unconsciously.

The past only exists to the degree you re-create it in the present. You can consciously choose what you create each momenteach day of your liferather than allow your unconscious default programming to automatically re-crate the past.

Right now, you can choose to be innocentfreeof your past self-identity and limitations. You have the personal power to override your restrictive automatic conditioning and self-defeating patterns.

By definition, everything newbreakthroughs and miraclesoccurs beyond the boundaries of your current belief system.