Why FANTASY is an important part of REALITY (2nd of 3), © Ruth Elliott, 2012

3-The third reason that fantasy is such an important part of reality is that it is sometimes the only escape people have from wretched conditions. The ability to rise above this world is the stuff great storytellers and prophets use to take peoples hearts and minds to a better place they clearly see in their mind’s ‘eye’.

I heard the true account on the radio one day of a girl who told how she had been imprisoned for months by her father as a child, in a remote shack far from town, boarded up where no one could hear her cries. She suffered alternately terrible abuse and then neglect: Terror when he was there only to abuse her, and then abandonment when he’d leave her alone for days without proper necessities for survival. Her only escape was in fantasy, where she would go each day. She’d imagine that someone would come to rescue her, release her from her prison, and put her father in prison instead. It became her only hope and prayer each day, until finally one day it became a reality, when a passing stranger did heard her cries and she was finally rescued from her awful existence. The ‘fantasy had become a ‘reality’.

Where do our fantasies come from?

The subconscious mind is a rich source of fantasy and reality. Much of our dreaming comes from the images that are locked in our subconscious mind until they are given flight – when our ‘conscious’ mind goes to sleep, awakening our unconscious into our awareness.

Researchers now agree about the necessity of enough sleep to the sanity of the mind.   Why is it so important? If we don’t get adequate time for our ‘conscious’ mind to go to sleep, the ‘unconscious’ mind (which is really smarter than we give it credit for) can’t do its work!  Its work is what sustains us and gives meaning to the rest of our experience. That is where we connect to our own existence; our unconscious mind is the cohesive ‘glue’ of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual lives.  That is why it is vital to get in touch with our subconscious minds, why our dreams are important, and why we need to pay attention to, and to learn to control, our thoughts.