Dreams & religion don't mix

I read a book recently called 'Conscious Living - Finding Joy In The Real World'. There were a couple of paragraphs I found to be profound and wanted to share them with you:

"There are dreams that live in our hearts and souls. We are called to birth them, nurture them, and bring them to fulfillment. There are awesome barriers to accomplishing this task, no matter whether your dream is writing the ultimate novel or cooking a transcendent clam chowder. The barriers are in ourselves, in society, and in just about any other place you might care to look. In many ways, crossing all the barriers to your creative expression is what life is all about.

If Thomas is not to be doubted, Jesus addressed this problem squarely. It appears in one of the most powerful passages in the scriptures (perhaps so powerful that it was kept out of the final version of the Bible). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.' It's easy to see why this passage got deleted from the offical canon. It is not a message you would want falling into the hands of the general public if your goal was to control them. People reading this would be inspired to look within themselves for the source of creativity, not outside toward the authorities. Truth would be spoken even in places where it was inconvenient. Everyone would want to be a prophet and a poet; the worker-bee population would decline precipitously."

The Gospel of Thomas can be found in the Gnostic Gospel collection known as the 'Nag Hammadi Library', or is often offered as a book all by itself, available at many book-selling outlets or libraries.