To return to our storyline from Inception, the goal for the hackers in the sci-fi movie is to get back to reality before the victim does. Unfortunately, in our life circumstance, the hackers don’t need to rush at all. They know that we hate “The Grind of Life” so much that we are all too happy to reside in Virtual Reality Level II or Virtual Reality Level III. They need not worry whatsoever about us occupying any space in reality. The result is that, unbeknownst to us, the hackers are able to run amok in (their and our) reality. As Metallica might put it, “You know it’s sad but true!” [“Sad But True” (Metallica)]. But as in the movie, Inception, all that it takes is for the victim to realize that their dreams/lives are being hacked. Then, all they have to do is to wake-up. Once you are aware of the situation that confronts you then you must choose to make decisions that will lead to fulfillment of your needs and not your misdirected desires. It’s not impossible or hard to do. It requires that we use our consciousness and ability to reason.

Dreams and the Power of What We Think and Believe

I have always been intrigued by my success. I have had so many unique opportunities, educationally and professionally, that others with the same set of skills or experiences as me have not. Why is that? People around me may assume that it is because I have been driven to succeed since we are taught in school and at work that this is how success comes to be. I was being interviewed on Spanish radio once about Austin ISD’s Hispanic Futures program and was asked just prior to coming onto the program what advice I would give to the listeners about the importance of education. Without too much thought, what I came up with was the phrase: “el exito se gana, no se regala” (success is earned, not handed to you).” It appears to be good advice, but do we assess the usefulness of this advice based on the right criteria?

My sense is that we typically think of the idea of earning success as having worked hard enough to achieve success. But with wealth being so concentrated with a small proportion of Americans, do children born into wealth actually earn their success or do they benefit from the success of their parents and/or prior generations? I think my advice to parents about education is valid, but I think the typical success measures solely address life outcomes: what kind of job you have, how much money you make or what kind of car/house you have. The question is: have we actually earned these things?

The standard for people growing up in poverty is that they have to earn success. That’s what students at urban schools are told. Why have the rich kids who have the social and academic supports to do well in schools been presumed to have earned their success? Rev. Mike Manor, a good friend who is a retired social worker and community/spiritual leader that, for many years, facilitated an on-going Friday morning conversation about race and equity, uses a baseball metaphor from time to time to highlight the impact of privilege on life outcomes: “Some people enter life on 3rd base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” That most certainly constitutes success that has not been earned, but yet we look down upon children and families in poverty for being at home plate and not already being on 3rd base. Although we ought not to judge, we not only judge, we judge erroneously.

My theory is that the true measure of success has to do almost exclusively with our character rather than monetary earning potential. Since I feel that no person is better or more special/deserving than another, then it cannot be that money has anything to do with our success as human beings or more importantly, as spiritual beings. Now, you probably think that we’re going to venture into spiritual matters here. And we are, ever so briefly, but for a good reason. The musical-spiritual discourse part of this book comes much later, but I believe that the thought process that relate to faith and hope are very similar to the thought processes that relate to dreams.

I wouldn’t characterize myself as being “driven to succeed,” not in any way, shape or form. I did not want to be top in my class. I wanted to get good grades because I knew it would keep me out of trouble with my parents and teachers. I had my heart set on attending the University of Texas but decided to attend Stanford University because everyone around me told me that I was crazy to pass up such a great opportunity. I went to graduate school to study urban planning because I didn’t think I would be happy working as an engineer, and it seemed pretty well-aligned with my undergraduate coursework. I did not have a vision for changing the world through municipal policy and planning. Also, I never dreamed about being a political leader. I ran for political office because I was encouraged to run by many community advocates who were not aware of any other viable candidates. Of course, this is not the whole story about any of these life decisions/experiences, so I will explain more in coming chapters. What I will explain about these unique opportunities is their connection to my dreams.

I believe that the dreams that I held onto that led to these opportunities and experiences are: (i) my desire to make my parents proud; and (ii) my desire to help others who have not had the opportunities and experiences that I have had in my life. These hopes combined with a strong work ethic that was instilled in me by my parents led me to be diligent about finding avenues to make a difference for others. So, the intention was a self-less one, and my pursuit of this intention was a proactive one. I recall on several occasions being in annual job performance reviews and being asked, “What is your goal in life or in your career?” and responding, “I am not sure. I just want to help people, and I feel that being in this position is a good way to accomplish that goal.” The reaction to such comments was usually a blank stare and, probably, a thought such as, “What a waste?” or “Is this guy for real?” I sincerely believe that life gave me the opportunities I outlined in the previous paragraph because I demonstrated a real commitment to realizing dreams that were NOT focused on self-advancement. As I will demonstrate below, there is some basis in science for my claim.

The first point that I will advance is that your thoughts affect the world around you, LITERALLY. If our thoughts affect the world around us, then what we think really does matter. What we do is not the only thing that matters. What we think is equally as powerful, maybe even more so. We affect the people around us in either positive or negative ways based on our thought process, and their thoughts affect us. And all of this happens without any of us knowing it has happened. So, if you wish to do good in the world, do good deeds AND have good thoughts!

The first evidence of my claim that thoughts matter is the experiments of Japanese researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto who has spent more than 15 years documenting the impact of words on the formation of water crystals. His experiments involve exposing a container of water to written words or word combinations and photographing the water crystals before and after the exposure to the selected word(s). His findings suggest that: (i) certain words, and I would argue, kinds of thinking, affect water (i.e., our physical world) on a molecular level; and (ii) the words that create the most beautiful crystalline structures are those that are positive and hopeful. The word combination “love and gratitude” is one of the most beautiful of all crystals created. Also of interest is the beauty of the crystals for terms such as “beautiful,” “hope,” and “you did well” compared with the disjointed or fractured crystals from words such as “ugly,” “it’s hopeless,” and “that’s no good.”

Bruce Lipton, a stem cell biologist and former professor at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University, takes us to the next level of thought: our beliefs. Thoughts may be subconscious reactions to our immediate environment, so the impact that these random thoughts have in the world around us are random in nature. Our beliefs are more fundamental to our being. We carry our beliefs with us everywhere we go, and these thoughts will have a more profound effect on the world around us as we go about living our lives. One of the main ideas that Dr. Lipton puts forth is that “our perceptions of life affect our biology.” The interesting thing about this idea is that our perceptions change with every passing day since our perceptions of our environment will change over time. If our perceptions change, then biology is likely to change based on our new perceptions if they happen to affect our thoughts/beliefs.

Lipton explains how our advanced understanding of the functioning of cells demonstrates that our life outcomes are affected almost as much by genes as by the environment in which these genes develop and function. Our genes are like gateways that are either open or closed (active or inactive). What happens in our life, particularly in the prenatal environment and in the first six years of life, determines which genes are activated. If someone is born into a safe and nurturing environment, then it is more likely that the good genes will be activated thus leading to more positive life outcomes. What parents think, say, and feel leading up to the conception and during pregnancy and the infancy of their children have great implications for the future of their children. If parents are in an environment that is difficult and tense (i.e., full of stress), then it may be more likely that the genes leading to more difficult outcomes may be the ones that are activated.

Our genes only express our genetic potential. During our first six years of life, external forces have a very strong impact with regard to the activation of our genes. While the quality of our environment (pre-conception, prenatal, and pre-kindergarten) greatly affected our genetic development, after the age of six, it appears that we as individuals become the masters of our genetic potential. How we as individuals think, feel, hope and dream and how our environment influence these things (whether consciously or subconsciously) will change our genetic blueprint from early childhood in either good or bad ways. Lipton counsel us as follows: “You have a choice! But I can tell you that if you choose to see a world full of love, your body will respond by growing in health. If you choose to believe that you live in a dark world full of fear, your body’s health will be compromised.” What you believe matters a great deal!

This idea that thoughts affect our physical environment is echoed by Lynn McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment. She shares a great deal of examples demonstrating the variety of ways in which intentions (i.e., thoughts with a purpose) affect experimental outcomes. There is much that I would like to share about what is covered by McTaggart in her book but will focus on the peculiar way in which certain intention experiments appear to transcend time. The most bizarre of these experiments is one involving the impact that a single person’s prayers had on the health outcomes of several thousand patients who were dealing with a condition called sepsis. A scientifically significant impact was recorded for the documented severity of the illness in the patients as well as for the duration of the fever that they experienced. The interesting twist is that the prayers for the patients’ well-being were offered in the year 2000, whereas the illness suffered by patients occurred four and ten years earlier. Thus, the prayers that were offered had a scientifically significant impact on health outcomes recorded in the past.

In The Intention Experiment, McTaggart provides additional examples of experiments that produce time-displaced impacts, particularly those involving random outputs such as repeated flips of a coin, the repetition of certain movements by lab rats, the frequency of vehicles entering a tunnel, and reaction times of the nervous system to images appearing on a computer screen. What this suggests is that we can affect the past as long as the outcome we seek to alter is not known to us or could be made known to us by someone else. I find it interesting that this concept also applies to our dreams, that is, that our dreams and goals for the future are probable as long as we are NOT aware of something from the past that would preclude that dream/goal from happening. It appears that the past and the future are not so different from each other.

While the forward looking part of this equation is not news to us (i.e., you must work to achieve your goals/dreams), the most interesting by-products of this view is that as we move toward achieving our goals, our intention may be simultaneously affecting our past, present and future (i.e., altering them all in a way that facilitates the attainment of our goals/dreams). Living with intention thus becomes not only the key to achieving our life goals but also the key to creating the kind of world we want to live in. We have to believe that our goals/dreams are possible and that the world we want to live in is possible. But we cannot act in a way that precludes those goals/dreams (or world) from happening or they won’t happen.

If thoughts, beliefs, faith, goals, and intentions are capable of tangibly affecting the world around us, then so are our dreams. The lesson at the top of this chapter advises us to be smart about what we dream. What we believe affects what we think and guides the development of our dreams, so we should also take care in what we choose to believe. And if, at some point down the road of life, your beliefs are modified, then don’t be afraid to modify your dreams. Your future and apparently your past, is malleable.