“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

Judy Garland’s famous song from the “Wizard of Oz” encapsulates our compulsion to dream. There is no-one I think who has not dreamed at sometime during their life, (and I don’t mean our dreams when we are asleep) it seems to be a basic human need. For many, it is only dreams that make their life bearable; dreaming that one day all the misery they are going through will be a thing of the past, that the lifestyle they have long envied amongst others, will be theirs; the young mountain climber who dreams of conquering Everest or the North face of the Eiger; the athlete who dreams of Olympic Gold; the childless couple who dream of a family; the pauper who dreams of winning the lottery; the invalid who dreams of good health; the widow who dreams of being united once more with her husband in the afterlife. The list is endless and varied.

This propensity to dream, to live in what some refer to as an ‘unreal world’ is in reality the prompting from our spirit-selves to allow the creative urges of the spirit freer reign. Our spirits are in a way trapped in our physical bodies and yearn for release; for a return to the freedom of the spiritual world where there are no restrictions upon the creative genius of our spirit. All great ideas that have moved humanity forward on the road from darkness to light and from ignorance to knowledge, have begun with a dream and a dreamer who will not be satisfied with things as they are. The spirit is ever dissatisfied for it knows there are no limits on the heights to which we can rise or distances we can travel. It knows that all things are possible and it is only the doubting, conscious mind which applies the brakes.

The rainbow is such a beautiful natural phenomenon it is ready-made to be the catalyst for our dreams. Anything that is beyond the rainbow must of necessity be something incredible, something marvellous; something to take us out of the petty restrictions imposed by everyday life. In such dreamlike states the imagination is free to roam where it will and the imagination is very much the creative centre of us all. By releasing the imagination to dream, whilst not forgetting the necessities of daily life, we add an extra dimension to our lives that can bring us peace and release the innate understanding of eternal life which each of us possesses. In doing this we come to realise that what we formerly considered to be so important in our lives is in fact only marginal; we are learning to see the materialistic ego in its true perspective, allowing it to act as guide rather than dictator.

Allow your spirit to soar above and beyond the rainbow; give your inner self permission to move to the forefront of your life; look back upon your ordinary life from these imaginative heights and see what is truly important; give yourself permission to stop worrying because you and everybody else are part of a carefully-drawn-up plan; be free! Be free but with a sense of responsibility that can always distinguish between true freedom and mere licence. Being free to dream means allowing others to do the same, indeed encouraging others to do the same. In the rarefied atmosphere beyond the rainbow, you begin to feel, perhaps for the first time, that freedom of the spirit is the ultimate aim of life on Earth. Only after experiencing the ‘captivity’ of the physical body and living in a material world, can we truly appreciate what freedom of the spirit means. Next time you gaze wonderingly at the rainbow let go; allow your spirit to surge upwards and move into the stratosphere of human spiritual experience.