The Golden Eternity - Jack Kerouac

I have lots of things to tell you now, in case we never
meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter
moonlit night.

It said - It's all a dream,  Everything is Ecstasy inside.  We
just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.  But
in our true blissful essence is known that everything is
alright forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the secret Silence
inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember
the bliss your forgot:
There is only the Golden Eternity
You are the Golden Eternity

It is all one awakened thing.  I call it the Golden Eternity.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal
self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an
idea, a mortal idea.  That which passes into everything is
one thing.  It's a dream already ended.  There's nothing to
be afraid of.  I know this from staring at mountains months
on end.  They never show any expression, they are like
empty space.  Do you think the emptiness of space will
ever crumble away?  Mountains will crumble away, but
the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence
of mind, the vastness, empty and awake, will
never crumble away...

Jack Kerouac
The Portable Jack Kerouac
and The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Living in The Dream - Herman Hesse

Art by Alaire Bird
 

The things we see, Pistorius softly said, are the same things
that are within us.  There is no reality except the one contained
within us.  That is why so many people live in such an unreal
life.  They take the images outside them for reality and never
allow the world within to assert itself.  You can be happy that
way.  But once you know the other interpretation you no longer
have the choice of following the crowd.  Sinclair, the majority's
path is an easy one, ours is difficult.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of
yourself.  What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.  Each
of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is
forbidden... Forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to
transgress a single law and still be a bastard.  And vice versa.

I live in  my dreams - that's what you sense.
Other people live in dreams, but not in their own.
That's the difference.

Hermann Hesse
excerpts from Damian

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

 

Inside the Fairy Tale - Matt Licata

It's not so much that we need (or even can) get out of the matrix,
the developmental-cultural-historical lens through which we have
come to perceive what we call "reality."

Instead, begin to see it clearly, in all its nuance, subtlety, and
dream-like luminosity.  How am I imagining myself, others, and
the world?  What is the myth in which I am living, through which
I am seeing?  What is the story I'm telling, who are the gods and
goddesses I am traveling with?

Am I willing to take the risk to dream a new dream?  To differentiate
from the voices I have inherited from a world that has forgotten the
mysteries.  To listen to the new poetry as it pours out of the stars.

While we may never be able to fully step outside the matrix and
 report back as a neutral observer and "detached witness"
(another fantasy of modern consciousness), we can play within it,
dance inside and around it, allow ourselves the freedom to
 hide and seek, and the imagination to get lost and to be found.

We can get messy, fall apart, be vulnerable, fail well, fail with heart,
forget and remember, dissolve and come back together. And set aside
the fantasy that one day we'll come to some safe, secure, knowing
resolution to the wildness of love and its contradictory, untamed,
and relentless activity.  That one day we'll become a "master" at life,
wiggle into some invulnerable/untouchable state, tucked away and
protected from the reality that the rug can and will be pulled out
from underneath us in each unfolding moment.

To fully participate in the dream without falling into trance. And
even if we fall into trance, to dare to see it, too, as none other
than "the Beloved" in disguise.

It's really like being a character in our own fairy tale, with all the
mythical and archetypal beings by our side, curious as to what the
crazy love-struck boy or girl is going to do next, in awe of the
human form and the inseparability of matter and spirit.

Matt Licata

~

Photo - via No Mind's Land

You May Dream Dreams

In the Core of the Contradictions - Matt Licata

At some point, how you thought it was all going to turn out
will crumble away into dust.....all that remains is your raw
burning heart...

It is the nature of form to take birth, to dance, to play, and then
to fall back into the unknown.  This is not some sort of cosmic
error, but the way of things - creative, intelligent, and a reflection
of universal flow.

Relationships, work, family, friends, our health ... ideas about
ourselves, others, and the world.  What we thought would
provide ongoing meaning and purpose. Even what we were so
 sure about just a few days ago - the great realizations, discoveries,
 and insights about who we are, what is most true, what will
 provide lasting peace... no longer quite as convincing.  A dream
 has vanished and has not yet been replaced by a new vision.
 But inside the shards of the broken world, pure

life awaits.

All form must end, departing through a portal into darkness, so that
new forms may emerge from the crucible of clear space.  But what
is emerging in the womb of Now is not knowable ahead of time,
and is not subject to our hopes, fears or fantasies of control.
While the mind will struggle with the wrathful nature of this truth,
the heart knows... the body knows...

See that the death of form is filled with erupting particles of life,
with magic, and with the fragrance of the holy.  You can relax...
and rest inside the core of the contradictions.  Here, the chaos
and the glory are one.

Matt Licata

In The Beginning Was The Dream - O'Donohue

In the beginning was the dream...
In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened.
Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed...

If we take Nature as the great artist, then all presences in the
world have emerged from her mind and imagination.  We are
children of the earth's dreaming.  It's almost as if Nature is in
dream and we are her children who have broken through the
dawn into time and place.  Fashioned in the dreaming of the
clay, we are always somehow haunted by that; we are unable
ever finally to decide what is dream and what is reality.  Each
day we live in what we call reality, yet life seems to resemble
a dream. We rush through our days in such stress and intensity,
as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world
depended on us.  We worry and grow anxious - we magnify
trivia until they become important enough to control our lives.
Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary
sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly
in the infinite night of the cosmos...
[.....]
There is no definitive dividing line between reality and dream.
What we consider real is often precariously dream-like.
Our grip on reality is tenuous...

Excerpt from Eternal Echoes 

by John O'Donohue

~

We see who we think we are, who we believe ourselves to be.
We see a self that is fabricated by thought and thus we see a
fabricated world, similar to the state of a dream...

Dzogchen Donlop Rinpoche

From - Mind Beyond Death

~

Photo from the web
source unknown

"First" (excerpt) - Chuck Surface

[.....]

First...

Turn your wandering Attention within,
and find the Self within your self...

Find it not by "thinking about" it,
But by Feeling with the Whole of your Being.
What you are, Where you are,
Before the feeling of you, the person, ever arose...

[.....]

You are the formless, unmanifest Mystery,
And... you are all that appears.
From, within, and as that Mystery,
As it moves into Creation.

Once you have poked a hole in Heaven,
It will shine into your manifest Experience,
Of space, time, and objects.
Here... in this Dream of duality.

And in time, that Wellspring in your Heart
Will Dissolve the residues
of the salt doll "self",
In those living Waters.

Knowledge... is... insufficient.
Many "know" intellectually,
That they are formless Pure Being,
But continue to "feel" themselves bound...

For such "knowledge" is nothing more than "belief."

To cut the Knot...
"Find the 'I' Feeling and rest there",

As Ramana [Maharshi] said.
Not by looking at a conceptual "picture"...

But by diving deep, in Feeling, in Experience.

Throughout the day, as you can Remember,
Turn Attention within, turn Feeling within,
And forgetting all concept, theory, and conjecture,
Investigate the nature of Where and What you are...

And Resting there...
Moved by that Ancient Longing...
Dissolve in and as The Unknowable Mystery...
That you are.

[.....]

Chuck Surface

Facebook

To read the entire poem click
here then scroll down in the left margin
to Aged Poems - which are listed alphabetically.

~

Photo - pic of clouds turned on end. 

A Dream of Wholeness - Matt Licata

As you fall asleep at night,
and look up into the moon -
It's just there waiting for you -
that vague sense that something is missing;
of disappointment in the way things are unfolding...

Perhaps at a much earlier time, with a star or a tree or water
as your witness, you made a prayer of wholeness.
The response to that prayer has come,
but not in the way you expected.
It has arrived by way of the shattering of an old dream,
the dream of how you thought it would all turn out.
While this dream is painful, it is alive, sacred and holy.

Heartbreak and disappointment are not easy.
They will pull the rug out from under you and remind you
of how [raw] it really is here, of how anything could happen,
and of how unresolvable life truly is.

These ancient feelings and emotions are not your enemies
working against you.  They are not evidence of your failure,
or that you have fallen off the path.
They are the path.
But they are not the path you thought.
They are of the unknown and seeded with creativity.

They are relentless in a way, these forms of love,
but will never give up,
they will never stop looking for you
and calling you home.

Matt Licata

The Earth Is Not A Dream - Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe
that earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
that all things you have ever seen here
are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter.  But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
we might discover somewhere in the garden
a strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
that there is nothing, just a seeming [an appearance].
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
the world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
as if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

”Hope” - by Czeslaw Milosz

~*~

The only “dream” we “awaken” from/to
is the dream of separation from
our True Divine Nature…
The Light of our True Being…

Mystic Meandering

~*~

“Nothing short of direct experience
of ‘The Divine’
will ever satisfy our needs
for wholeness, fulfillment,
and completion…”

Author unknown

~

Photo: from the internet
photographer unknown

"No More!"...

I heard a voice of a young child as I was waking from sleep yesterday morning.  It yelled “No More!”  The voice came from *inside* - How strange I thought.  I wondered if this was a message for me, or, if it was me screaming from the inside – “No More!” – enduring a particularly stressful time at this moment in life. Or was it my inner psyche calling out to a world gone mad; witnessing a species apparently turning against itself, apparently trying to destroy itself in so many different ways – or so it seems.  And the rest of us – onlookers – enduring the dance of darkness that plays itself out – forced to face the darkness within and without.  I pondered this all day, turning my awareness inward to the fear inside – repeating the phrase internally – “No More!”  At the end of the day’s reflection was the sense that sometimes all we can do is endure the way life is – day to day.  And I wondered why - why that is true, why is it that we must “endure” such pain, such suffering, both within and without…  But there was no answer….

 Maybe the voice was from a dream I didn’t realize I was having.  And maybe that really is what life is – a dream we don’t realize we’re having – that we must endure for as long as the dream lasts, until we are awakened from the dream by a voice saying “No More!”…  I don’t know…  I cannot presume to know anything anymore…

~

Below is a “poem” I wrote from my meditative writings
sometime between 2004 and 2006 that gives a
different perspective.

Entropy

The shadows have come to roost

and

 *everything*

 is

 collapsing

~

~

~

~

The tides and ripples of entropy will continue

until all is returned to Source again ~

the Primordial State:

Pure Life Energy…

Entropy is not necessarily a bad thing.

It is the way of Existence.

It is a

T

E

L

E

S

C

O

P

I

N

G

 of everything that is,

back to its original Source/State;

a re-homing of all that was created in form,

the conceptual structures,

so that only

the Eternal

Essence

 remains

Do not be alarmed by the seeming destruction

of what you have *believed* to be real.

The false must be released, shed – like dross.

In this there is a sense of chaos, destruction, loss, and death;

the crucible affect;

a state of alchemy,

the refinement of all things in existence

to its Original Nature.

Nothing is lost in the process.

All is coming Home.

The

Divine

 Outbreath

Has

 Been

 Re-called.

Bring your awareness to the place of Stillness within.

Don’t try to create order in the chaos.

But be still and let the chaos pass.

”Order” is found in the Stillness,

in returning to deep Stillness

The healing of mankind

is

 in

 the

 *recognition*

 Of

 The

 Truth

 of its Eternal Essence -

Infinite Beingness…

Entropy is the crucible of that healing…

Allow it…

~

The invitation

 is to expand our view of reality

and return to the *awareness* of

our Eternal Being…

Mystic Meandering

taken from my

Meditative Writings

written between

 2004 and 2006

Shamanic Dream...

This painting was my “break through” piece during the recent art course that I took, and was a complete surprise.  I am not an “artist” by profession.  And this is my first ever attempt at painting.  It is not what I would consider my “style.”  It was an experiment as part of the course.  I just painted the images that emerged.  I wish I had taken pictures along the way, as it evolved from just markings on canvas to this.  The day that it became my break-through I laughed and cried at the same time, in a moment of letting go, as I danced around the canvas to music, painting hash marks, squiggles, zig-zags and circles…  Really, that’s how it started.  Sounds crazy I know, but it was very freeing.  I laughed and cried because something was *finally* happening – freely.  It was just a wild and crazy dance of paintbrush on canvas. J  As it turned out, those original markings created these images, except the big heart on the right.   And those images merged into this painting.  Sorry the photo is not the best. It’s a little distorted, and blurred at the bottom for some reason.

The original markings on the canvas were a repository for the paints I had been using on a previous canvas – not colors I would normally choose as the main colors – but there they were, forming hidden images. 

The center figure was the first image that emerged almost immediately.  I painted around it then sat with it for several days, wondering what to do with it – waiting for it to show me.  It didn’t want anything – at least for now. J

 As I looked deeper at the canvas each day, other images emerged around it: The Shaman’s profile on the top right; the all-seeing eye at the top; the bottom figures; and the cauldron and chalice up the left side.

I call it Shamanic Dream because it has the feel of a Shamanic journey/dream.  And one has to wonder, who is dreaming who?!  J

The other 4 canvases that I started during the course are at various stages of completion and all are very different.  Stay tuned! J

The art course I took was an online e-course called Bloom True
with artist Flora Bowley

Family Vortex - Victims and Vampires

It seems I get right to the edge of losing my self and falling into the spaciousness of the Vortex of Light, about to fully surrender into the vast pool of Love, when “life as it is” calls me back from the edge every time; sucking me back into dreamland again… How does this happen, I continue to ask myself…

In this case, as in most other cases, it’s the requirements of family needs, of an aging mother and a sibling with chronic back problems. Both have legitimate physical disabilities, one with failing memory and cognitive abilities as well. But the emotional dynamics of our family dysfunction feels like a play of Victims and Vampires.

With my own aging process and physical ailments I’m finding it more and more difficult to be of assistance to them without completely draining my own life force energy and physical body of its stamina. And I wonder sometimes *how* am I going to continue to do this – to be available to them on a daily basis - as was the case this week. I know there are many of you out there who are, or who have taken care of aging parents, and disabled family members, and so this may come across as a little whiney as I feel my victim-self arise. She wants to know who will take care of her, who will be there for her when this body gives out. I feel trapped by the family vortex and resentment arises - afraid that I’ll be devoured by the vortex of vampire energies needing me – lost in their vortex forever. Sounds *self*-centered, I know.

I will spare you the details of the current situation, but the family dynamic involves a kind of do things only just in time, and just as needed, where those in need don’t take care of themselves in a timely fashion, but wait for crisis point and hope that somehow “The Universe”/God will “take care of everything” – believing “there is a reason for everything.” This keeps everyone involved on an emotional edge – waiting for something to happen, for someone to rescue, for someone *else* to make a decision and take responsibility.

One of the “victims” in this play feels victimized and angered by life circumstances – feels life is happening *to* them, not seeing that the choices they have made in life have created the issues they now face. Neither do they see the impact that their choices are having on others – how they have actually turned into energy vampires. This “victim” *thinks* they are the center of the universe and everything is supposed to happen *for* them… The Universe evidently is supposed to move solely on their behalf. But that doesn’t happen and they end up trying to control everything, to lessen their fear of powerlessness and helplessness - grabbing a false sense of power wherever they can – usually through anger and control. I know, I’ve been there done that… :) And more often than I like to admit I re-visit that space of resentment, anger and control because of my own fear that I will not get what I need... Another *self*-centered fear...

Another victim in this play can also be “self-sacrificing,” giving in to “the victim,” sacrificing their own needs, taking the brunt of the other victim’s wrath. Unable to enjoy life if someone is in pain or suffering (another role I know well), they feel it is their obligation to suffer with those who suffer, but their “caring” is often a mask for a detached piety, and need to be in control. It amazes me the false sense of power that is wielded in this play!

When I am in the family vortex, I am in the moment with them, but I am just trying to get through that sucking energy. I cannot step out of the vortex. And I wish I could just open that aperture and fall into that pure Light and expanded space of Awareness – but I get lost in the vortex with them - feeling sucked in – oops victim language. But I am not “victim” here, I just haven’t seen all the way through this vortex, and I continue to buy into the story of victim and vampires, getting caught in a self-centered dream…

So that’s my little dream drama this week. Not one I really want to participate in, and yet, here I am – participating… It does however show me where I am still attached to the *self*-centered dream of me… And I realize that living in the dream of me is really only living at the edge of Life, always waiting, waiting to fall off the edge, but never really letting go and fully surrendering to the pull of Light; never really taking the plunge – and be devoured by Love…

~*~

We all survived the week and things have settled.
The story has changed, as it always does…

~*~

Art: this piece was done when I first started playing with Pastels,
probably sometime in 2005/2006

Dreaming Mind

I had a dream on December 30th that seemed fairly significant, so I thought I’d share the gist of it, or is that the grist of it. :) I do not remember all the details, but the main “grist” of the dream seemed to be about locks. In particular they were doorknob locks (they all looked like round doorknobs). And I couldn’t lock them. I couldn’t lock the front door to the house, or the mail box (which was also a doorknob). The locks did not work. So I became preoccupied with the locks and spent a good part of the dream trying to *fix* the locks that would not lock, taking them apart and trying to figure them out – to no avail. There were intricate images of “mechanisms” that I would take apart and attempt to put back together again, but they wouldn’t go back together.

I see this as a good thing.

My “locks” are not working anymore, the mechanisms of the mind and self that have kept me (the Self) safe behind locked doors (figuratively) are not working anymore, leaving “me” open… And – I couldn’t put those mechanisms back together again. Hmmmm. Is this what Freedom feels like – open, vulnerable, exposed, falling apart, unable to put the self back together again, unable to lock everything up safely? Be careful what you ask for - Beloved takes no prisoners…

In the middle of trying to fix the mechanisms I woke up – from the night dream that is. As I woke up I realized it was just a dream that had occurred *in my mind.* The exact thoughts were: this is occurring *in my mind!* Like I was surprised, yet clearly knowing that it was all mind-made. I had essentially *thought* the dream. And yet, my *mind* did not want to wake up from the dream! It didn’t want to let go, even knowing that it was a dream. My mind wanted to go back into the dream – to finish the story – to try to fix the locks and the mechanisms – to find resolution. But “I” *didn’t* want to go back into the dream. “I” just wanted to wake up, but found it hard to do so because my mind wanted to hang on – to continue the dream.

The realization was that the *dream* was mind-made and I *knew* it. It was absolutely evident. But the pull to stay in the dream was greater than the desire to wake up. The only “resolution” was to *completely* wake up from the sleep state – where the dream occurs. But even then, after awakening, the dream hung on – in my mind; pulling at the mind to come back. The dream had momentum, the dream-thought continued, and my mind couldn’t let it go. It *wanted* to play out in my mind – even after awakening… I seemingly couldn’t disentangle from the dream state – mentally or emotionally. Sounds a lot like life - the waking dream...

So, I asked myself, is “awakening” really “enough”, is “awareness” enough to completely awaken from the waking dream? You know, the one we call life... Or do we remain in a dream of our minds, even after awakening, even with awareness? Apparently the thought-dream still continues, even after awakening. The mind keeps creating the dream- the waking dream of life. The key seems to be in the realization that it is only a dream and the impetus to wake up from the dream – to not *believe* that the dream is real…

Several days later I woke up with the thought that I had reached “the end” - "the end" of what? The image that opened to me was that of the mouse in the maze picture looking over the wall. The sense was that I had reached the “end” of the maze, that I couldn’t go any further, as there was nowhere else to go – so I *had* to look up over its walls. It wasn’t that I had found my way out of the maze on some blissful path – the yellow brick road - and landed in Oz, I just knew that I couldn’t continue in the maze – the maze of the mind, the maze of the dream. And the only resolution was to stop, to shift my perception from the maze – the dreaming mind - to a different paradigm; to look beyond the familiarity of the well-worn pathways of the mind and discover a different way of seeing and experiencing the world...

It occurred to me that we are free to participate in the maze of the mind or not… We are not locked in to the maze. Our sense of freedom depends on whether we are fixated on the dream, or able to see beyond the walls of the faulty mechanisms of the mind.

“If you want to see what’s behind the curtain of reality,
to take the red pill and discover what the matrix really is…
you have to be willing to give up everything.
The cost is literally all of “you”
– your identity, your addictions, your life-long programming…”
[the maze].
Author unknown.

~*~

Keep on knocking
‘til the joy inside
opens a window
look to see who’s there

Inner wakefulness

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams he’s living in another town
in the dream he doesn’t remember
the town he’s sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences
and though we seem to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are

Rumi

~*~

Photo Image – CD cover for “Sonicaid”
Music to promote sleep.
Copyright - Avalon (SOCAN.)
www.avalonmusic.com
Imagery: Solid Imagery Arts, LLC

"Cave Writings" - Freedom

Everything that happens
is an invitation to

Freedom…

Every life experience
is an invitation -
to rest in the ground of Being -

Freedom…

Everything is an invitation to
see differently,
relate differently,
engage differently,
function differently,
from the foundation of our Being.

~ to see beyond habituated patterns ~

Freedom…

It’s all an invitation
to see how life really “works;”
to see how the dream works,
and to remain unaffected by the dream…

Freedom…

It is an invitation to see
that only Love lies beyond
the wall of “me” –

to see
beyond the maze of the mind:
thoughts,
feelings,
beliefs, ideas, struggles,
illusions

of

separateness,
and stories…


Freedom…


~*~

Mystic Meandering
copyright
Nov. 28, 2010


Photo – a picture of a mouse in a maze
on a poster for “Career Transitions”
taken by my husband…

Dreaming The Fear

Just days after entering “The Cave” and meeting the fear I started having nightmares. Am not surprised actually. When you “decide” – that is, when you have been nailed to the cave wall by your fears you have no other choice than to meet with your demons, because the demons show up. Funny how that happens. Anyway, I thought I’d share this dream, not so much for its possible interpretations, but for the metaphor and Dharma it provided with regard to the fear that is moving through here…

In the dream I am laying in bed, just as I usually am while sleeping. A voice in the dream said: “Maybe you need to take care of that before B gets home.” There was a sense that “the voice” motioned to the window. So in my dream I looked at the window across from me, and it appeared as if there was someone behind the curtain panel on the left, as there was a protrusion of the curtain in the shape of a body and head. I kept looking, trying to see more clearly. As I attempted to look more intently at what this was, an eye appeared in front of the curtain panel to the right, with the faintest outline of a face – the emphasis being the eye; a rather large eye – just staring back at me. In the dream it freaked me out, triggering the nightmare. And I evidently did my usual warbling routine that I do when having nightmares, waking my husband up. I then heard B saying in my ear: “It’s okay – you’re dreaming – it’s just a dream – it’ll be okay.” That woke me up from the dream just enough to allow me to realize I was dreaming, and that there was no boogyman behind the curtain… Whew!

What came to me in the moments after, when I was trying to fall back to sleep, was – “Fear is a dream.” It was as if a switch went off in my head – bing.

This led to the insight that “fearing” during waking hours is also dream. It’s a dream of fear in Consciousness/Awareness. The *mind* of this mechanism called ‘me’ evidently gets freaked out by life’s make-believe boogymen behind curtains. Fear apparently happens when we focus on the construct of the ‘me’ and not the greater context of Self that is really living here.

I also noted that in some ways Fear has become a mask, a persona with which I have met the world. And that construct is collapsing evidently - hopefully. Five days before I had the nightmare I passed a kidney stone – the release of frozen fear. Fear is being released from this body-mind in many ways, and it appears that the “me” structure that has carried this fear all these years may be collapsing with it, as there is a growing recognition of its emptiness – revealing that this mask of fear, this fearful “me” is really a dream veil – hiding the real Self…

In the dream I *believed* I saw “the boogyman” hiding behind the curtain. I *believed* I saw an eye staring back at me. In the dream they were real to me, causing fear. But they were just dream figures rising from the mind, or psyche. And the only thing that *broke* the belief was being told that it was only a dream and waking up to the fact that it was only a dream. Hearing the words, “it’s just a dream,” spoken in my ear - the dream and the belief in its realness dissolved….

Somehow this should translate into waking life as well, don’t you think! There should be this amazing “enlightenment” that life is just a dream – a construct of the mind – with resulting joy and bliss at this realization. As of yet, this hasn’t fully happened. This sense of me evidently still believes the dream figures that appear from behind life’s curtains like a habituated dream machine. But I seem to know on some level that these fears are only dream ghosts from past beliefs, from repetitive, reactive responses to life’s events. The awareness is there – that the fear I experience is just that, an experience, created by how I *see* or what I *believe* about what I see. In this sense I seem to be slowly awakening from the dream machine.

~*~

“You dream your experiences.
You dream that you are (afraid, fearful, anxious)
Look at experiences as insubstantially transient
and related to mind projections.

When we think of experiences as only a dream,
it is less real to us.
It loses its power over us -
the power we gave it -
so it can no longer disturb us…”

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
The Tibetan Yoga of Dreams and Sleep
Quote taken from ZenDotStudio blog

~

So where is the experience actually experienced?
In Awareness…
There’s only Awareness
experiencing Itself as energy.
This sense of ‘me’ floats within Awareness.
It’s all Awareness – dreaming…

Author unknown…

~~~~~~~

Photo – the face of my drum

The Dream of Existence

Warning, I’m entering esoteric territory again. :) But you may find this amusing and even heart warming. It’s a writing about the deepening of the realization that I wrote about in Monday’s blog – After Awakening – Keep Dancing. (click & scroll down).

In the shower several months ago, water cascading over me, I was humming a tune. My mind went back to a TV program I had watched last season where a man who sang opera won first place in a talent contest… I realized I was humming that song. And yes, I watch TV. (No groaning please…) I know most “spiritual teachers” consider this a “non-spiritual” activity. They consider TV “gross consciousness,” and I guess for the most part it is, but believe it or not, some of my best insights have come from TV watching. The Mystery can speak through anything, if we’re paying attention.

The programs I tend to watch are entertaining: talented people in search of fulfilling their dream; people who are passionate about their talent and want to express it no matter what – as if their life depended on it. This is the kind of passionate intensity that entertains me. It delights me to see someone reach their dream, and realize their passion. It makes my heart smile. :)

Anyway, I was attempting to sing opera in the shower, :) trying to remember the notes and tune, singing away in my personal music booth. I began to feel deep emotion well up within as it suddenly dawned on me: *WE* are the dream of Existence. *WE* are the passion of Existence. We are the dream of Existence coming true. We are the dream of Existence expressing Itself – passionately – lovingly - with all Its Heart in form, just like the man singing opera that night who touched the hearts of others through expressing his passion. (By “Existence” I mean Being, Presence, Awareness, the Mystery, or however you refer to “It.”)

I was completely emotionally overwhelmed by this insight that we are none other than the dream of Existence Itself. Wow… The insights continued flooding in. This life, that some refer to as a “dream”, an illusion, that we are living, *is* the passion of and fulfillment of Being. How can this be, when some sages tell us we must awaken *from* the dream and “become” who we *really* are, as if we have to step out of the dream, which implies separation from that which is Dreaming – the Dreamer Itself. And so believing the dream of separation, we are conditioned to go on a “spiritual path” in search of this other-worldly “Self.” Hmmm… But – mayyybeee – I began to see, as awareness deepened - we awaken *to* the dream and *realize* that the dream is not something we escape from, but in fact is the expression of the passion of Being Itself, which is us! We are the passionate expression of Existence. Wow, could it be that Earth life, human life, IS the expression of Pure Consciousness?...and not some “illusion” that must be “transcended” or dismissed as unreal – but in fact is Reality Itself expressing Itself, as Itself, which is us! Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever heard it explained quite this way before - but for some reason this particular version woke me up in the shower that morning - again. It was a deepening of the realization from last December becoming *real.*

And so I bow to Existence and say, thank you for this… And thank you for this wonderful dream that is being dreamed in every moment – known as “my life”, and your life too – the One Life; although I’ll have to admit sometimes it feels like a nightmare. :)

I hope “Existence” is smiling, delighted by “Its” expression of passion in all Its forms – us. Just us – the Formless in form – life as it is.

May we all live passionately and creatively – expressing the true Beingness that we are!

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
www.ASerenitySanctuary.com