Sometimes a Leap of Faith Is Required
This is a personal essay about how we sometimes have to take a leap of faith to cross the chasm to our purpose, dream, or Dream Power. Let’s talk about how I had to do that to get from tech work to my purpose work, which is Dream Power.
A lot of people are in this situation where you feel like you’re in this matrix job, doing this thing to pay the bills. It could be a big corporate job or a little part-time gig – it doesn’t matter. Then there’s the thing you really want to do – your purpose work, your dream, and your passion. You can feel it building up, wanting to move you.
So many times, maybe like me, you have this conflict between what you want to do and what you feel you should do. Maybe a big bill is due and you feel like you need to go to this gig to make the money for that bill, but you really feel like you should paint or work on this project. Or maybe you just feel like you should go to the beach. The point is, that there’s a conflict between what you’re feeling and what you think you should do.
The only way I’ve been able to get over this chasm is by taking a leap of faith. You can imagine that sometimes it feels like you’re on this cliff in a desolate, barren land, and there’s a giant chasm. On the other side of the chasm is the beautiful dream garden of your dreams. If you could just get over there! But there’s no bridge!
Let’s talk about bridges, because maybe there are bridges. “Enabling work” can be a bridge. But for me, it got to the point where that bridge just never really materialized. Even though I’ve reduced my overhead to be minimal, with very low costs and minimal financial pressure – no credit cards, no car payments, no rent, everything owned, kids moved out – it’s still so hard for me to get into my dream life.
My logical mind, unfortunately, can be a real encumbrance. As engineers and tech people, we are indoctrinated with this totally detached left-brain way of thinking that everything has to be planned out and logical and understood ahead of time. Sometimes, you need to just take a big running leap and jump over that chasm. That’s what I decided to do. That bridge is called faith.
You take a running leap of faith over that chasm with all of your mind and spirit and fly over it! Now it’s different because what’s supporting you is trust, intuition, faith, and even miracles. You’re depending on a higher power, on God. You take that leap of faith, flying and hoping you don’t hit the ground or run into the cliff on the other side. You’re hoping you can make it into the beautiful Dream Garden that awaits you.
That’s where I’m at right now, honestly. I decided to make Dream Power first and put my enabling work second, and just trust. I’ve been in this place so many times, putting my family through hell trying to get across that chasm. But now I see that it’s the only way, really. There’s never going to be a perfect time. There’s never going to be anything on this side of the chasm – in the “Matrix world” – that’s going to get me over to the other side.
We think, “Oh, we could build an elaborate machine over here – a business with a thousand workers – or build a huge apartment building and collect rent from a thousand families. Maybe we’ll invest in crypto, stocks, do passive income, have a new thing and get rich off of it, go public on the stock market, work for 30 years and save for retirement, do a YouTube channel and become an influencer!” I could go on and on about this, but it just hasn’t worked for me.
The other problem with that strategy is that it can encumber you. When you go to jump over the chasm or fly, whatever Matrix machine you built to get you over there, you’re now encumbered with all that burden from it. Really, you just need to leave it all behind. You need to take a freaking leap of faith, jump over that freaking cliff, and leave it all behind! It’s scary! Maybe there are some dark clouds between you and the other side that you’ve got to fly through. You wonder, “Am I going to hit the wall on the other side, hit the cliff, and fall to my doom?” Maybe. But in my 24 years of doing this, I haven’t really found another way.
I’ve tried literally almost everything! You think, “I’ll do a startup, I’ll write a hot new app, I’ll found a company and go public and make a lot of money with investors, and then I’ll have a million dollars in the bank and I can live off the interest and then I’ll get across the chasm!” But now you’re dependent on that. Wouldn’t it be better if we could just get to our dreamland and have abundance come? That would be the ideal – you’re not even thinking about abundance and it’s just coming. You’re doing your purpose work and abundance is just coming.
Maybe the idea is that we get to that promised land, we’re doing our dream work, and maybe we take all those skills that were on the other side and apply them to our dream. Maybe we write a business plan, maybe we do a startup, maybe we get investors, maybe we sell some stuff. But now it’s in alignment with our dream. We’re over here now, we’re focused, we’re in the dream world, and we’re doing our dream work, and it’s working, and money or abundance is coming in whatever form you need it to come.
For me, that meant just doing Dream Power and trusting. I don’t know how it’s going to work. I can’t tell you for sure that it’s going to work, that I’m going to make a living with it, that I’ll be able to make enough money and pay my bills. But beyond that, I feel a calling to get this material out, especially with all the stuff going on in the world right now. That calling has been loud the last couple of months, to the point where it’s like do or die, now or never. That’s why I am saying very loudly “Now is the time!”
It feels kind of weird because I’m teaching this but yet I’m still learning it at the same time. There’s an imposter syndrome, although I don’t know who I’m impostering, because this is unique. This is my stuff. I’m not trying to copy anybody. What’s cool about this for me is that it’s completely mine. It’s my inspiration. There’s no one to be an imposter of, really, except maybe my authentic self. When I do Dream Power, I feel like I am so my authentic self. It just feels so right. Now, how I do Dream Power doesn’t necessarily feel right all the time, but I used to feel like I had to be a filmmaker to prove Dream Power, because I do like filmmaking and movies and stories and stuff. That does light me up. If I had a passion, movies and film are definitely some of my highest passions.
The ironic thing is, I wasn’t out making a lot of films. You’d think if it was really my passion, I’d be doing it. But I haven’t been, partly because of Hollywood and its whole discouraging evil system. It’s not like painting or something where you can just start painting. I mean, I guess you could just get out a camera and start making stuff, but now they’ve got AI and AI can do everything.
I’m more of a producer, more of an idea person. I like telling stories. I’m not really into the art and craft of actually directing a film. I could just as easily work with other people to do that. So I’m more of a writer. It took a while to find my place in film, but I have a vision and I write it down. Other people can implement that vision. The computer can implement that vision. I don’t have to be the guy behind the camera. It took me a while to realize that, but it opens up all kinds of possibilities – books, graphic novels, games – you can tell stories in all kinds of ways!
I think storytelling is actually my biggest passion. But the point is, a leap of faith is what’s required sometimes. I think the title of this essay will be “Sometimes a Leap of Faith is Required”. I’m not going to say that you have to do that, but I think if we want true freedom to really do our dream fully and in a truly abundant, passionate way where we’re not encumbered, where we’re free to create, then you probably do at some point somewhere along the road have to cut the tether to the other side and take that leap of faith. I think that’s going to have to happen. It’s scary. We don’t want to do it. We want to plan and have everything in order first, think we’ve got it all down first. We want everything nice and neat and secure. But I haven’t found that way. Maybe if someone else has found that way, let me know.
I do know of other people that were able to make that shift. Maybe they retired, maybe they had a successful business, I don’t know. Maybe they have some passive income from some rental properties. But they’re able to do their work and focus on it and get it out.
As I do this research for Dream Power and get this material out to the world, I try to come up with these sort of tenets or principles, but really I don’t know how many rules there are. I don’t think it’s good to be too rigid. I think one of my problems was this idea that you can only have one main passion, which I thought for me was filmmaking. So I spent 10 years trying to do the Star Kids series, which is still happening, but I’m not trying to force it, which is what I was doing. I was forcing it, and all that was left were the stories. That’s when I realized that really, I’m a storyteller, and the stories could take the form of books. I’d like to see them as movies and stuff and film, sure, but I didn’t have to be so strict about how the story was told. It didn’t have to be a TV series. Now I realize that there could be a whole bunch of Star Kids and their stories. I was way too rigid.
So, should I post this essay? I don’t know, I’m scared. What if I fail? Then I’ll look stupid. You know what? I think I’m going to take that leap of faith and post it anyway 🙂
