Awakening the Deamer Within the Dream

                 ”God is dreaming the universe and we are the dream dreaming”
                                                   Australian aboriginal traditional saying

As soon as we perceive light, hear sound, and feel movement in the womb, our brains begin to react with a series of images in our imagination, in our mind. It is how we are wired. Before we come into the world we bask in a rich and varied placental dream without symbols, without interpretation, without thinking. Once we emerge as human beings, who is to say such dreaming comes to an end? The dream continues, twenty-four hours a day for all of our lives. The way that it changes is that we learn symbols from our parents and others around us, then we learn how to interpret those symbols, and we learn how to think about those symbols and examine our interpretations.

When we are awake there is a material framework that allows us to perceive in a linear fashion. When we sleep there is no such structure and our dreams wander and change frequently. For most of us, we sometimes abandon the framework of "reality" while awake and take a break to day dream. Day dreams are like night dreams, ever changing and unstructured. The day dreaming imagination is without limit and can take us many places instantly. We see things others don't see, hear things that others don't hear, go places that we don't recognize in our everyday waking lives. The images of our day or night dreams seem every bit as real as those we perceive while awake. Where does one draw the line between what is real and what is solely imagined? Consider that what we imagine while awake is no more real than the adventures of our day and night dreams. It is all dreaming.

The mind is always dreaming. You and I are each dreaming right now. There is a world in each of our minds, one that each of us creates through symbolic images, interpretations, and analysis of those interpretations. The world that we think we see, hear, and feel outside of us is actually inside. We create our own virtual Matrix.  Our whole world is entirely images, in fact, entirely within our imagination. We live in a dream. This is a truth that has been acknowledged down through the ages by all wisdom teachings. The only important question is, are we aware that we are living in a dream?

Until we awaken to an awareness that we are living in a dream, we continue to be victims - victims of all the symbols in our head, victims of the voices of others in our head, victims of all the superstitions and lies imposed on us by religion, government, and our entire collective way of thinking and believing. When we are young our parents, schools, religion, and entire society introduce us to their opinions and beliefs through their agreed upon symbols. We believe in the religion our parents believed in and we believe what they taught us in school. We are told stories by our parents, stories about our country and its role in wars and about all of its heroes. There was never any bad intention behind those who nurtured us; we learn from those around us according to the only world they know. The world we grow up in prepares us to be a part of society, but unfortunately a society built upon symbols that are representations, not the truth. We learn to live in the same dream as everyone else around us, our faith gets trapped in the structure of that dream, and we see it all as normal. Adults can teach what they know, but they cannot teach what they don't know. Generation after generation we remain lost in the same dream, a dream within our heads that is a lie.

Once we have an awareness that everything we have learned through symbols is only a representation and not the truth, the only thing left is to enjoy life. When we give meaning to everything with symbols, our attention is dispersed; when we take away the symbols that we have assigned to everything, we are open to enter communion with all things. We become one with all things. There is no longer any symbolic distinction in the world. Even a momentary realization of this oneness causes the whole structure of our belief system to disappear as it all becomes the singular wonderful dream that it is. When we awaken from believing that we are not what we think we are, we come to understand what we really are, without words. And because there are no words to explain what you are, you resort back to a knowing peace where you no longer need to explain who you are by words. 

This is what separates the masters from the apprentices. The highest point we can reach is when we go beyond symbols and become one with all things, become one with God. It is the point at which we no longer judge ourselves or anyone else. It is the day we accept ourselves just the way we are, the day we accept everyone else just the way they are. The war in our head is over and the true dream is realized, where truth, respect, love, and joy fill our time in this playground of life. Only by awakening to full awareness can we rediscover the real dream within the dream we are living within.

The ancients would say that no one can say the name of God. It is true because there is no symbol for God. The only way to understand God is to become God. The truth is that we don't know the name of that which created us. The word God is our best symbolic attempt to wrap our head around the concept, but it ends up being interpreted in endless distorted ways because it is not real, but merely a symbol whose meaning we will never mutually agree upon.

So, the first lie of our collective dream that each of us is taught, early on, is that "I am not God". From this fundamental lie springs a chain of lies that we build our fearful lives upon. The lies mount and become overwhelming, overshadowing our birthright of divinity. We see the beauty of God and the perfection of God and we want to be like God, so our life is spent searching and searching in vain for the perfection that was always there. Humans are storytellers and we tell our children about a God who is perfect, but a God who judges us and punishes us when we misbehave. We also tell our children about Santa Claus who knows somehow when we've been naughty or nice and rewards us accordingly, like God. But these stories are distorted. Santa Claus does not exist. Nor does a God who judges and punishes. All these fundamental ideas in our head are not real. Culture downloads a program into its children that is filled with assumptions of unworthiness and submission to a system that “has always been”, but in reality it has not. When we awaken to an awareness of the dream we finally realize that we are and always have been God - we are life, we are love, we are truth, we are all things.

The dream of our life is actually the sum of thousands of little dreams. Dreams are born, they grow, and they pass away; they are always in flux, transforming our lives, whether we are aware of them or not. When we become aware that we are dreaming at every moment we can recover the power to change our dreams at will. Use the power. Each of us creates the world that we live our dreams in. If we are going to dream anyway, why not create beautiful, divine dreams! Wake up, dream well, and enjoy the perfect life that each of us was born to experience, a divine life that only we can create in total awareness.