Visions and Ideals

In this episode – Visions and Ideals . . .

If you were to ask me, “When are you most receptive to positive inspiration?” Without a doubt, I would say - “While cycling.” It’s a joyous experience. You feel the familiar rhythm of your breathing and cadence, and the thrill of effortless speed. Your mind is free to explore new ideas as the wind gently brushes your face.

During these experiences, ideas explode into my mind. For me, it’s the perfect time to listen to audio segments that remind me of how important it is to go back and be inspired, once again, by powerful ideas that have shaped my dreams.

A superb example of this transcendent experience is taken from the book, As a Man Thinketh, published in 1903, by James Allen. It's entitled Visions and Ideals. And it's one of the most beautiful segments I've ever heard. It goes like this, “The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sorted vocations are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its, dreamers. It cannot let their ideals fade and die, it lives in them, it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the afterworld, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they've lived, without them laboring humanity would perish.

He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart will one day realize it. Columbus cherished the vision of another world and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe and he revealed it. Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty in perfect peace and he entered into it.

Cherish your visions, cherish your ideals, cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment. Of these, if you would remain true to them your world will, it must be built. To desire is obtain. To aspire is to achieve.

Shall man’s basis desires receive the fullest measure of gratification and his purest aspiration starved for lack of sustenance? Such is not the law. Such a condition of things can never obtain, ask, and receive.

Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be, your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The Oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.

You will realize the vision, not the idle wish of your heart, be it base or beautiful or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly most love.

Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts. You will receive that which you earn, no more, no less.

Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. Your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."

This is Patrick Ball, thanks for listening, see you in the next episode.