 Three Keys To Fulfill Your Wildest Dreamsby Sulana Stone If you’d like to fulfill long-held dreams, try a radical approach. Radical people create their own breakthroughs for getting whatever desired. They are nonconformists open to options for achieving “extraordinary” goals others don’t see. Take Christopher Columbus. When conventional wisdom proclaimed the world flat, Columbus held the extreme notion he could sail over the edge and land in China instead of deep space. Five centuries ago, Europeans reacted with disbelief when they heard the world was round. If Columbus were to sail into our modern times with revolutionary factual information about our world, would “enlightened” people believe him now? Besides demonstrating the Earth is round, Columbus made another equally mind-popping discovery. His revelation was about the power of cultural belief systems and how people see only what they believe they will see. In 1492, Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Until Columbus’ arrival, islanders had only seen and heard of small boats—like their canoes. So when the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria arrived, the natives couldn’t see the big ships that were floating in plain sight! “I don’t see any big ships!” Why couldn’t the islanders see the big boats? Because nobody in their culture had ever written or talked about big boats. In any culture, mythmakers—teachers, historians and media—decide people’s reality. The world these storytellers talk and write about creates a belief system unique to each culture. This system acts as a filter, screening out realities that don’t fit into the cultural conditioning of the society. The mythkeepers who shaped the islanders’ belief systems didn’t recognize the possibility large ships might exist. The filter of this belief prevented natives from seeing three large sea vessels…at first! The island shaman wasn’t able to see the ships when they first arrived. Like his people, he couldn’t see past the filters of his cultural conditioning. But unlike the common folk of his tribe, the shaman was educated by radical mythmakers—shaman elders. From these elders, the shaman learned that a person only sees the elements in the world that the person’s mind has been exposed to. He also learned three keys to help see outside his belief system—to perceive the world as it really exists. Key 1 - Look for a Different Pattern The 1st key, made famous in the movie Star Wars, is to notice “a disturbance in the force.” Anchored offshore, Columbus’ ships are creating out-of-the-ordinary patterns in the ocean waves. Even though he can’t see the ships, the shaman notices unexplained variations in the waves. Key 2 - Don’t Listen to Your Mind! Curious, the shaman investigates. As he begins his inquiry, he uses the 2nd key. This key alerts him to the limitations of his ego-mind. The shaman understands he only perceives realities his mind has been exposed to by his culture.
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