As I sat in Olympic Village in Vancouver gazing over the ocean, a place that my daughter Emily and I often visited together, it dawned on me that we have to think differently about the famous statement, “Make Your Dream A Reality”. What it really should mean to us is, awaken yourself to the reality that life is a dream, and once you realize that, you will find happiness. 

It should be easy to accept that all things are temporary due to their dependence on other things for their existence. This is only a part of the truth however, and the less difficult part to accept. Not only are all things temporary, but their creation, existence and dissolution are all driven by random events.

Just as lucidity enables you to awaken in a dream, so you can awaken to the waking dream. This is nature of the awakening my daughter Emily gave to me, and this is available to all human beings. This is enlightenment and the path to nirvana. Once you see that all things are temporary, you will stop doing what everyone else is doing, which is grasping at temporary things in the belief they will make you happy. You will begin to see that, ironically, it is a fact that this very grasping is the cause of the very unhappiness we seek to avoid. You will see that all things depend on other things for their existence and you will stop believing things can be controlled and instead see that they must instead be accepted. To resist reality only makes us suffer and to accept it is the only path to the end of suffering, or what we call happiness. This is the “Right View”, and the goal of The Emily Dahl Foundation is to compassionately encourage others to find this path to inner peace. 

Sherman Dahl 

The Emily Dahl Foundation

September 15, 2020