Laughter and jokes and play are undervalued in our serious adult world.

We think of all of these as entertainment, just a way to escape the stress and burdens of a threatening world which weighs us down.

Do you ever feel like youâ€re carrying more than you can bear?
Laughter picks up those burdens, and takes them away from us, if only for a moment.

A break from our worries is great.
But laughter is much more than an escape.

Laughter can heal.

Studies show that laughter has a positive effect on our health, while negative moods are not good for us.

Sometimes, laughter is a wonderful expression of joy and happiness.
To me, nothing is more beautiful than a heartfelt smile.

I think that our spirit shines through those moments, clear and bright.

But, there are times and places where laughter and humor are not welcome at all.
Laugh during a funeral, a serious speech, or during a solemn religious service, and see what reaction you get!

Youâ€ll be called disrespectful or strange (at best).

What is this struggle between laughter and serious events?
How did laughter become the enemy of solemn, important occasions?

I think itâ€s because laughter and its extreme cousin, cynicism, are often used to attack and destroy.

We often laugh at things that we find ridiculous or foolish, even when other people find those same things important or sacred.

Laughter can shatter an important moment, and turn it to dust.

Tragically, we sometimes use laughter to pretend that something truly important to us is ridiculous or foolish.

Itâ€s our way of hiding from questions within us that need answers, or hiding from actions that we must do.

The Jester and the Trickster
In medieval times, it was common for kings to have a court jester. The jester was the one person who could joke about almost anything and get away with it.

He was there to entertain the king.

Sometimes his humor would be cruel and destructive to those who he joked about.
But often, he was there to raise important questions.

His job was to trick people into questioning the things that they otherwise would never question.

In the stories and mythology of many cultures there is the character of the trickster.
Sometimes this character is evil, and he seems to exist to bring out the worst in people, and lead them to harm themselves and others.

At other times, this character is a troublemaker, who doesnâ€t let people continue undisturbed in their everyday lives. He forces them to see the foolishness and weakness in themselves.

If the victims of his tricks donâ€t do anything with that knowledge, then the trickster is just an annoying character.
But if he succeeds in waking them up, he has performed an incredible service to them.

Playing With Fire

Laughter is like fire or any powerful tool.
It can be used to wake us up, to move us along the path of personal growth, to bring us healing and joy, or to destroy.

Iâ€ve spoken before (in Caution: Shape Shifters at Play and Why are we afraid to Play? ) about the power of play that enables us to try out other ways of thinking and acting.

You are the ultimate possibility machine.

Did you ever think about how many different lives might be possible for a single person?

Even you.

Sure, you pretend that everything must be exactly as it is, but thatâ€s the voice of fear speaking. Weâ€re caught in a whirlwind of fear — fear of change, fear of facing a world where anything can happen.

We all find ourselves stuck, caught in a world made small by our habits and mindless rules.

Fortunately, there are certain forces in our lives that have the power to suspend our habits and our rules, to suspend the certainty that life can only be just as it is.

Laughter and play are two such forces.
They are like a reset button which shuts off all the little programs and voices within us that are running our lives.

Do you feel the lightness and the freedom that comes with play and positive laughter?

Itâ€s not that weâ€ve escaped responsibility.
Weâ€ve entered an abundant, open space where possibility is real, free of our limiting beliefs.

So, how will you use the power of laughter and play?

You can use those forces against others to try to hurt them, to leave them temporarily or permanently without the comfort of their habits and beliefs.

You can use those forces to help others.

Better yet, begin with yourself.
Use laughter, play, and imagination to open up a space of possibility in your life.

Will you get nervous without your habits of thought, feeling, and action to tell you who to be and what to do?

Yes.

The emptiness and fear may lead you to jump back into the familiar, or fill the moments with a simple game that doesnâ€t question your life.

But you have another choice.
You could play at being someone else for a few moments.

Or, perhaps, you could play at being someone else for the rest of your life.

The post Are You Afraid to Laugh? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

They get smaller and smaller until thereâ€s no room to breathe.
Then, you must break out, or go crazy.

Have you ever felt like that?
If you can get past the pain and frustration and sadness, ask yourself how something rich and alive fell apart.

We may try to blame every problem on someone else, but the truth is more complicated.

We are not powerless. The decay of a relationship is not inevitable.
Are you a player in your own life, or does everything just happen to you?

Are personal growth and personal development real to you, or just words?

Everything changes.
Itâ€s up to you to shape that change.

Or you will be unhappy with the results.

Abundant Relationships
Where do you find abundance in relationships?

Do we make our relationships small, old, tired, and endlessly the same, or do we look for ways to fill our relationships with wonder?

Do you look at the one outside your skin and think she is small and familiar and predictable?

Or do you dream the possibility that is dancing within her and around her!
Do you feel the abundance all around her and within her?

Relationships begin with possibility.
The other person is unknown and wonderful.

And in that newness, you feel that anything is possible for her and for you.

Thatâ€s the key.
An abundant relationship is filled with possibility for each of you.

Youâ€ll find abundance dancing around others when you can see it dancing around yourself.

Abundance is around you and within you.
You can find abundance in almost anything, even in things that are physical.
But it takes the right attitude to feel it.

As William Blake said:
”To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”

You can find endless possibility in the smallest place or thing or time.
And it is so much easier to see a person as infinite.

There are worlds beyond worlds within each of us.

But we live in a physical world, where things and even people seem to have boundaries.

Yes we have to pay the bills, change the diapers, and take out the garbage.
But when our relationships are centered on these actions as ends in themselves, as though abundance has vanished from the world, our relationships will shrink and disappear.

Our attitude can imprison us within the apparent boundaries and make everything and everyone small.
Or we can dance among infinities.

Possibility comes within reach of your mind and heart when you connect one little place or thing or time to the endless world around us.

One moment is a note in a symphony of time.
One place is a brush of color on a huge canvas.

And one person is a window into an endless series of worlds.
The possibility is born when one thing takes its place in relationship to the immense world around it.

Giving and Taking: A Dance of Energy
What is this relationship that we speak of that connects one thing or person to the world?
Itâ€s a flow.

But that sounds too weak and random.

Imagine a great wave of energy that reaches out to each of us, like waves breaking on the shoreline.

Then imagine another great wave coming from each of us and bursting out upon the world around us.

Waves upon waves from an infinity of points slowly build up a great glowing, sparkling web.

This is closer to the image of flow and connection that I have in mind.

In this web of relationship, everything gives and takes, broadcasts and receives, influences and is influenced.

The world often focuses on our shortcomings as givers, saying that our relationships will crumble if we love taking too much.

Ah, and to be a giver, doesnâ€t that force my partner to be a taker?
Isnâ€t that a problem for her?

Weâ€re looking at a great series of flows in isolation, and weâ€re getting mixed up.
Itâ€s not the direction of any one flow that matters.

What we need is a rich web of energy that flows back and forth between us to build and maintain a healthy relationship.

And to keep our relationships young and powerful, what we exchange must be more than tiny things and moments, morsels of food within our cages.

We must exchange possibility.
We must give and take from each other the invitation to a world without visible boundaries, a rich, abundant world which calls to all of us.

The post Why Do Relationships Wither and Die? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

Weave them together with a sprinkling of hope.
Dreams of a bright future will fill your heart and mind.

And dreams are the fuel that drives personal growth.

Do you think that you’re too old to dream?
Many people assume that only the young can dream.

Everyone has moments when they are filled with passionate dreams of the future.

For some of us those dreams flash and disappear, and are gone.

For others, the dreams are like the moon.
The dreams grow stronger, weaken, and then return.

Sometimes those dreams are sharp and alive.
They seem to surround us, and call to us.

At other times, those dreams are lost, buried, forgotten, or hidden.

Safety and Adventure
We have contradictory elements within us.

One side of us looks for the familiar.
It looks for familiar patterns among the world that greets our senses.

We want to connect todayâ€s world to yesterdayâ€s world.
We want to predict and control what happens to us.

This side of us makes us feel safe.

Another side of us swims in a sea of possibility.
We hunt for new patterns to taste, and explore.

We want to expand our world, and make it larger and larger.
This is the heart of all desire for freedom.

This side of us loves adventure.

It loves dreams, and lives on dreams.
This side of us makes us feel alive.

Perhaps the years youâ€ve lived have weighed you down, and clouded your dreams.

But are your dreams really gone?
No.

You canâ€t live without dreams, any more than you can live without air.
And, if youâ€re only safe, you can never be free.

Getting Stuck
When our pain and fears and habits stand in the way of our dreams, we get stuck.

Most of us are stuck in one or many areas of our lives.
We have goals or dreams, but we canâ€t seem to make any progress toward them.

When we canâ€t connect with those dreams, they become another reminder that weâ€re trapped, and the dreams lose their magic.

There are many ways to describe the feeling of being stuck:

• resistance
• trapped
• enslaved
• running in circles
• life on hold
• powerless
• lifeless
• small
• old

Itâ€s easy, and natural to think of yourself and your life as something small.

Focus on the physical world that surrounds you.

Youâ€ll see a world of objects.
Objects fill a small place in space, and have a limited, predictable use.

It’s easy to look at your body as just another object.

And you assume that your mind and heart and future must be similarly bound and limited.

This way of viewing the world comes from that part of us that wants the world to be small and predictable and safe.

But thereâ€s a price to be paid, when the drive for safety buries the dreams of the explorer.

The life drains away from the familiar, until it seems old and small and empty of life.

One of the reasons why we get caught up in looking for only safety is that we come to feel overwhelmed by change.

Itâ€s frightening when everything seems new.

Youâ€re overwhelmed by the endless possibility and you donâ€t know what to do with it all.

You shut down, and look for a safe, familiar little corner to hide out in.

Safe Abundance
For most of us, our drive for safety has suppressed the drive for possibility.
We need to strike a balance between safety and possibility.

Letâ€s try to reconnect with the explorer who is hunting for possibility.

Thereâ€s another word that carries us to the world of possibility.
This word is popular in traditional religious works, as well as spiritual and new age works: abundance.

When we think of abundance, we think of rich possibility, but a possibility that is friendly and nurturing – a world of possibility that supports us fully in familiar ways, as well as offering pathways to new worlds.

Letâ€s look into abundance a little deeper.

Look at how the idea of abundance enriches specific areas of our lives.

These pathways and directions add some structure to the possibility, and make it much less overwhelming.

Letâ€s open ourselves to abundance in the following areas of our lives:

• abundant vision of self
• abundant learning, knowledge, and skills
• abundant attitudes
• abundant choices
• abundant action
• abundant relationships
• abundant tools, objects, and space
• abundant time, with abundant opportunity for growth & change

In later posts, weâ€ll explore each of these in detail.

The post Are You Hiding From Your Dreams? first appeared on Fearless Dreams.

The horizon, the sky, a full heart, a beautiful home, endless money, choices, true love, a long life, health, beauty, friends?

For my son, who is 10, it means a tall pile of books from the library to fill his leisure time. For me, abundance is part of feeling free.

Sure, money is what comes to mind for many of us, at first.  Money brings choices, and we imagine that large amounts of money will enable us to be/do/have anything in the world, and free us from every uncomfortable feeling and thought.

When weâ€re missing something (health, money, friends, joy), and feeling that lack, we try to erase the feeling in us that says my world is incomplete, and behind that the voice that says, “Iâ€m not complete.”

Thereâ€s a big gap between the fact of not being able to buy something I want, or even pay my bills – and the feeling that Iâ€m not complete, and that thereâ€s something wrong with me.  Itâ€s a gap that passes by in a moment for most of us, but itâ€s there.

We might define abundance as freedom from that feeling of “not enough”.

Is abundance just freedom from a situation that seems to be closing in on us like a prison? Is it something as simple as getting enough food to eat, or getting enough money to pay our bills.

Or is it having so much money and “goodies” and spiritual experiences that we canâ€t think of anything else to possibly want?

No. There will always be something I donâ€t have, something I canâ€t do, someone that Iâ€m not.

The odd thing about the feeling of “not enough” is that you carry it with you as you pass from poor to rich.  The feeling may no longer be focused on a house or car or spouse or a certain amount of money, but itâ€s still there, and itâ€s always looking for something else to focus on.

Some people say that all they need is “just enough”.

There are people who are satisfied with what they have in material possessions, because they are primarily focused on other aspects of their lives that are more important to them. They still feel that theyâ€re missing something, they just set that feeling aside.
And these people are rare.

For most of us, thereâ€s no such thing as just enough.
You may have just enough to cover your bills, or fulfill some particular desire.  But thereâ€s no comfort, and no peace with “just enough”. Youâ€re surrounded with endless images of having more, and your imagination adds to the images that surround you.
As soon as you come to “just enough”, you inevitably raise the bar, aim higher, and “not enough” is back.

What do we do?  Do we find a way to reduce our expectations to the point that we donâ€t desire anything, and donâ€t care about anything? Do we declare that itâ€s all meaningless, so that thereâ€s nothing left to want?

Tragically, some people try this. They might banish the feeling of “not enough” like this, but theyâ€re replacing it with an endless emptiness where more is just not possible, and abundance canâ€t exist.

Deep inside, we are all desperate to banish that feeling of being “not enough”, being limited, being trapped, being enslaved. Often we donâ€t know why we feel that way, but we know inside that weâ€re all meant to feel free. We want to feel free, unlimited, and unstoppable.

I may try to approximate that feeling of limitlessness and freedom by surrounding myself with lots of stuff, or people, or ideas, or experiences, or by searching to free myself from the things that seem to limit me the most. But I keep returning to feeling stuck, or else I bury the feelings so deep that Iâ€m left with only a subtle feeling that somethingâ€s wrong.

Real freedom is ultimately tied to a feeling of the infinite.
What is infinity? Infinity is more than just a really big number. You canâ€t get there through action. You canâ€t ever get there by counting up to it.

And whatever the difficulties that fill our everyday lives, freedom is ultimately something inside of us.  Just as “not enough” is a feeling that goes beyond any particular life situation, abundance is also a feeling that is independent of any particular situation.

Abundance is a feeling of joy and gratitude for the world that I live in, and the things I have, and the friends and loved ones who share my life. Itâ€s finding the infinite in whatâ€s already here with me.

Abundance admits that there are endless possibilities still before us, and that there are people who live differently than us. It allows us to want more, yet see an incredibly rich existence right where we are.

Strangely enough, the more possibility, the more infinity that we can see in who we already are, and in what we already have — the more possibility we can see waiting for us tomorrow, and around the corner.

The post Not Enough Abundance first appeared on Fearless Dreams.