{"id":2678,"date":"2011-06-14T00:57:26","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T04:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=2678"},"modified":"2011-06-14T18:25:01","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T22:25:01","slug":"dont-live-in-other-peoples-boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/06\/dont-live-in-other-peoples-boxes.html","title":{"rendered":"Don’t live in other people’s boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIf\u00a0you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life,\u201d as T.S. Eliot counseled, \u201cyou must accept the terms it offers you.\u201d This requires us to withhold our consent when anyone offers us a version of reality that is less than generous and open to fresh possibilities.<\/p>\n

I had occasion to think about this in a rather genial context, when I ran into one of my favorite used book dealers opening his store very early while I was out walking my dogs. I asked, hopefully, if he had a new consignment of books. No, he explained, his building had sprung some leaks and he was there to wait for the plumbers. \u201cEverything wears out,\u201d he declared, \u201cincluding the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

I did not feel obliged to quarrel with this statement. As the owner of an old house, I know that certainly old plumbing wears out and old roofs spring leaks. Yet I was not going to endorse the notion that\u00a0everything<\/em> wears out, even if this appears to conform to the second law of thermodynamics as well as much of our everyday experience. Neuroscience instructs us that brain cells can grow back and that the neuroplasticity of the brain is so extraordinary that survivors of serious strokes can actually transfer functions from damaged areas to other parts. Of course, if you don’t want your brain to wear out you’d better use it!<\/p>\n

I didn’t endorse the statement that everything, including the brain, wears out, and I didn’t deny it. I simply withheld my consent and adopted the agnostic position on the matter. There are many occasions when it’s rather more important to take this stance – for example, when someone asks us to agree to the proposition that \u201cyou can’t trust people\u201d, or \u201cthere’ll never be enough to go round\u201d, or pushes the bumper sticker philosophy that \u201cshit happens\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are not required to argue or to preach when we withhold our consent from opinions and mindsets that turn our inhabited world into a box. We simply decline to join others inside their mind-made boxes, while we proceed to develop and impose our own terms on the world we inhabit.<\/p>\n

To succeed in that, we need not only to go around other people’s mind traps but to drop our own negative mantras. I’m fierce about that, as a teacher. When I hear anyone in one of my workshops committing a negative mantra (which may begin “I’m no good at -” or “I’ve never been able to -“) I ask them to go outside and spit that thought out on the ground. Fair’s fair. I tell my groups that if they ever catch me committing a negative mantra of my own, they can send me out of the room to do the same thing.<\/p>\n

\"ActivedreamingAdapted from\u00a0Active Dreaming<\/a>: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom <\/em>by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf\u00a0you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life,\u201d as T.S. Eliot counseled, \u201cyou must accept the terms it offers you.\u201d This requires us to withhold our consent when anyone offers us a version of reality that is less than generous and open to fresh possibilities. I had occasion to think about this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3,26,27],"tags":[298,297,296],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-living","category-imagination","category-life-direction","category-self-help","tag-choice","tag-negative-mantras","tag-out-of-the-box"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't live in other people's boxes - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/06\/dont-live-in-other-peoples-boxes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don't live in other people's boxes - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cIf\u00a0you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life,\u201d as T.S. Eliot counseled, \u201cyou must accept the terms it offers you.\u201d This requires us to withhold our consent when anyone offers us a version of reality that is less than generous and open to fresh possibilities. I had occasion to think about this…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/06\/dont-live-in-other-peoples-boxes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-14T04:57:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-06-14T22:25:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/06\/out-of-the-box-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Don't live in other people's boxes - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/06\/dont-live-in-other-peoples-boxes.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Don't live in other people's boxes - Dream Gates","og_description":"\u201cIf\u00a0you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life,\u201d as T.S. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2691,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions\/2691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}