What If Your Reality Is Bigger Than Your Imagination?

Awake in a Dream

"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today." — Alan Watts

There’s a moment when you look around at your life, and you catch the glimmer of something almost surreal. It's like you’ve stumbled into a dream, but it’s not one that you designed with the limitations of your imagination. It’s bigger. Wilder. Unfathomably more complex. And you’re awake for it. Fully conscious, in awe of the reality that you are currently living.

That intense feeling of awe and gratitude has coursed through me a few times throughout my life. Most recently, it hit me in the most unexpected place: New York City. A city I packed up and left during COVID, convinced I’d never want to live in again. The concrete, the chaos, the constant hum of traffic, sirens, people. It felt too disconnected from nature. Too far from the mountains, the ocean, the space to breathe. So I left. I moved to Los Angeles. And I didn’t look back.

But something curious happened on the fourth day of my Vipassana course this past January, during our 4:30 a.m. meditation sit. A whisper of a thought floated by, almost like it didn’t belong to me. New York in the spring. I observed it, didn’t grasp it, just let it pass with the non-attachment I was there to practice. It felt almost laughable. New York was the last place I wanted to be. But the whispers kept coming back. Quietly. Patiently. Persistent. They continued to surface in different ways throughout my two-month journey across India.

When I returned from India and started mapping out where I wanted to root myself for the spring, New York began to pull. Not with force, but with something more magnetic. I booked a one-way flight and arrived with no solid plan, only an openness to whatever was meant to happen.

I asked my higher self, the universe, whatever you want to call it, to make it abundantly clear. If I was meant to be in New York for the spring, then let it be obvious and easy. If not, then let it be just as clear, and I would allow whatever unfolded next to be equally undeniable. I was truly operating without attachment to any specific outcome, trusting completely that wherever I was meant to be is exactly where I would be guided to.

And what has unfolded since feels like waking up inside a dream, one I couldn’t have possibly conjured on my own. New York made it abundantly clear that this is exactly where I’m meant to be. The synchronicities are too precise, the connections too serendipitous, the opportunities too perfect to have been orchestrated by my limited imagination. I’m reconnecting with people I haven’t seen in years, meeting new ones who feel so aligned, and walking through doors that, just a year ago, I didn’t even know existed.

It’s made me realize that the reality I’m living right now, the one I nearly dismissed, is far more extraordinary than any dream I could have designed for myself. It also made me realize that sometimes it’s the logical mind that actually stops us from listening to the quiet whispers of our intuition and the subtle nudges from our body. The mind just screams a lot louder. But more often than not, it doesn’t guide us toward the calling of our soul, because that voice can only be heard when we allow ourselves to be still, to be quiet, and to observe without attachment. To let go of stories and operate from a place of certainty beyond logic.

It’s also made me wonder: Where else in my life am I playing small?
Where have I let the edges of my imagination become the borders of my reality? And what happens when I push those edges just a little further? When I let myself consider that perhaps, my wildest dreams are only scratching the surface of what’s possible?

I wake up every morning with a deep sense of gratitude, wonder, and awe, not just for the opportunities or the people, but for the sheer unpredictability of it all. I don’t know what today will bring, and that curiosity for the unimaginable is exhilarating. I can’t map it out or predict its path. And that is exactly what makes it so magical.

If I could have dreamed this reality, I wouldn’t have even known where to begin. So now, I am leaning into that. I am letting myself imagine what it would look like to dream even bigger, even wilder, to push beyond what I think is possible. If I am already living in a reality that is bigger than my imagination, what else is out there that I have not even dared to consider?

With love,

Tracy