Daydream Believer

The Joy and Practice of Daydreaming

I remember distinctly in elementary school one day after coming back from lunchtime… it was bright and sunny out, and I felt comfortable and happy. As the teacher spoke, my gaze drifted out across the students at their desks and beyond to the windows. As I looked, I could see the sun outside sparkling and bouncing on the courtyard with a glimpse of clear blue sky in the background.

It was a perfect afternoon. The classroom seemed to quickly disappear, and I was away, somewhere, outside on that blissful day. And then I heard: “Anthony, stop daydreaming!”  I snapped back into my eight-year-old self and saw my teacher standing by the windows looking at me, along with all of the other students, their faces turned in my direction. And yet, even then, I thought about the joy of daydreaming. I actually loved daydreaming, and it was not the first time I had been reprimanded for such. I treasured going into a blissful appreciation of the moment, reveling in my own happiness, relaxed and content. It was almost a meditation.

Fast forward to today, and it is only in the last decade or so that daydreaming has transitioned from something to be quashed to something to be encouraged. New studies show that daydreaming is an indicator of an active and well-equipped brain, moving it away from the realms of pseudoscience to the cutting edge of cognitive neuroscience!  I wish my eight-year-old self had thought to tell my third-grade teacher that gem. 

We all daydream. For some, it’s part of how we think out problems. Still, more importantly for others, daydreaming is how we express our individual desires connected to our gifts when we are finally able to relax and let go of the judgmental and over-analitical-analytical monkey-mind. 

I’ve sometimes thought about that moment back in grade-school, and of the many other times I’ve been ‘caught’ daydreaming and wondered about the role it plays in our lives. Significantly, The Guides have had some input about this quite recently…  

I feel good when I daydream and imagine the wonderful things that could be possible, like doing something I truly love to do – such as writing blogs like this full time! I love that The Guides want us to imagine and make our wishes known to ourselves, our higher self, and indeed the Universe. I love that they want us to do this consistently. I love that this can enable new choices for us in our waking lives too. Daydreaming is perhaps then an essential process of opening a path toward finding opportunities for us to realize our heart’s desire and manifest the things we want.

By allowing ourselves to daydream often, we allow ourselves to create without fear, judgement or practical limitations, like money, for example. We get to unlock from the difficult or troubling circumstances around us and away from what we see in the media to imagine new, positive scenarios and outcomes. But moreover, our daydreaming is a Divine connection we make with the Universe and a time when we most feel connected and at one with it all. And according to The Guides, that feeling is correct…

If nothing else, by indulging in a little daydreaming, we can be happier and allow our mind to play with our hopes and dreams without limitation. These mental meanderings are indeed an act of co-creation and are strongly related to the experience of joy itself. Joy, you may have noticed, is often the byproduct of a good daydream. 

So now, rather than falling into a random moment, I allow myself to actively daydream and encourage, rather than suppress, those moments whenever I find myself to be delightfully lost in them.

Daydreaming is, after all, what my dad encouraged me to do back then in grade-school. He always said: “Shoot for the stars, and at least you may hit the moon!”  I’m pretty sure he was right.