Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Most Popular of All Time

Chasing the Magic

In this episode, Chasing the Magic: How the Summer of ’98 Inspired the 'Ball Boys' . . .  Do you remember that feeling? The late-summer air was thick with humidity, radios crackling on porches, the smell of fresh-cut grass and barbecue smoke in the backyard. Every evening carried a new kind of suspense—the country holding its collective breath after every pitch. “Did he hit one today?” became more than a question; it sparked a nationwide conversation.   For me, and millions of others, the summer of 1998 wasn’t just another baseball season. It was theater, a movement, a time when the game recaptured something sacred. As sportswriter Mike Lupica said so perfectly,   “No matter how old you are or how much you’ve seen, sports is still about memory and imagination. Never more than during the summer of ’98, when baseball made everyone feel like a kid again, when it felt important again.”    Just four years earlier, the 1994 players’ strike had left the sport bruised...

Beyond Facts

✨ In this episode, Beyond Facts: Reimagining School–in the Age of AI . . .   This week's podcast is a bit different; it's another example of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can offer tools to creatively enhance your analytical presentation of information. We took this week's blog and copied it into Gemini with the question, “If a story is to work, it must, on some level, create an illusion of escape and also achieve a goal simultaneously. Does this apply to my blog post that follows?” What's created is not just an analysis of the writing, but an AI-generated discussion produced “On the Fly” - Enjoy! Did you know that the word "school" comes from the ancient Greek word scholÄ“ , which originally meant "leisure"? Not a rigid schedule or droning lectures filled with "facts," but free time for thinking and conversation. To the Greeks, learning happened best when life slowed down—when you had room to reflect, to ask questions, and to wrestle ...

Retirement Talk

In this episode, Patrick & Huck: Retirement Talk . . .   We all get caught daydreaming sometimes, don’t we? Just like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn might’ve done, lazyin’ by the river with a fishing pole in hand and the BIG wide world spinn’ in their heads. This morning, with coffee steaming and plans bubbling, I found myself driftin’ into a chat with none other than my imaginary friend–Huck Finn himself. Patrick: “Mornin’, Huck. Say, I’m mighty curious what you’d make of this retirement business.” Huck: “Well now, sit tight, ‘cause I’ve been thinkin’ on that too. Only thirty-one days 'til you're sixty-nine — whew! You're talkin’ ‘bout quittin’, hangin’ up your spurs, Givin’ the workin’ life its final good slurs. Ain’t got no debts, no mortgage, no fuss, Just clean livin’ and freedom waitin’ on the bus. Most folks’d throw hats in the air, cheerin’ loud and proud, But you? You’re starin’ out yonder, lost in some cloud. You're dreamin’ of cyclin' and books and guitar...

Drifting with Purpose

In this episode,  Drifting with Purpose: What Huck Finn Teaches Us About Finding Your ‘Why’ . . .  Have you ever re-read a book and felt like it had changed while you weren’t looking? That’s exactly how it feels diving back into Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to be swept away again . It had been decades since I first met Huck and Jim. But here I am – older, hopefully wiser – and finding their journey down the Mississippi more powerful and more relevant than ever. This isn’t just another dusty classic. Twain's masterpiece is a living, breathing story – one that speaks through laughter, danger, awkward truth, and uncomfortable beauty. It’s a book that dares you to ask: “What kind of person am I willing to be?” Right now, I’m deep into Huck and Jim’s incredible journey, and what’s striking me the most isn’t just the plot or the river—it’s the voice. Twain’s masterful use of local dialect pulls you straight into the 19th-century Amer...