Taking the Dream for What It Is

When I first started this journey, the decision to change, to become what I truly am, was of the utmost importance.  There was an intense sense of urgency.  After all, I could no longer live my life as a lie.  The very thought of that was so abhorrent to me that I wanted to leap off a building rather than live one more second as a bundle of half-formed and ludicrous beliefs.  It was very necessary to see the life that I had led up to that point... the life of unworthiness and suffering with unconsciously held expectations of my own deserved punishment. 

I think it was not only necessary that I came to a stop point but absolutely critical that I finally found out that all of the former lies and half-truths that I had accepted were indeed not necessary for me to hold any longer.  At some point during this year (and I think possibly in everyone's journey this same point appears), I stopped taking the dream seriously at a very deep level.  The times spent in abject terror or fear, while still appearing at times, are no longer something that I think I will not emerge from.

Now there is a sense that the whole thing should be taken with an extreme amount of aplomb.  Wonderful word, aplomb.  The word first came to me on Wednesday, and it has been an ongoing meditation, along with the other meditation I do.  This morning, I "got it" at another level.  When I take the dream with more importance than any dream deserves, I make it real.  That is the error. 

At times the dream seems so real.  After all, what is apparent is that we are separate bodies in a world of danger, scarcity, and lack where every little bump in the road threatens to sweep away our tiny forms, returning them to the bacteria which will eventually decay Us and move Us into a state of nonexistence once again.  That is why pleasure is so important to us.  It gives us a little hope that maybe something can be gotten here on this earth for a little while.  It is like a child getting away with stealing a cookie, or staying home "sick" from school.  The pleasure is short-term, typically, and is pursued with the passion of the dying.  There is even a country song, "Live Like You Were Dying." 

While this may be good advice for those who are so entangled by fear that they can see no other way, it is ultimately a statement of our deep inner belief that life is not pleasurable, worthwhile, or meaningful in any way.  "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."  The whole point is that we think that we are somehow getting away with something when there are those rare moments of pleasure or small Pyrrhic victories.  We always know that there is a piper to pay for our dancing.

The ultimate fact, though, is that nothing ever dies, no separation is possible, and we merely change form from one thing to another.  The longer I travel on this journey, the more and more I see that the lie is the apparent.  The apparent world of form, the apparent world of separate objects, the apparent having to constantly live at the edge of extinction is simply a lie.  The trick... or steady concentration (which is why meditation plays such a role in spiritual traditions) is to see the apparent for what it really is.  This would not be difficult except for the layers upon layers of fear and guilt that have been weaved by society, culture, religion, and our own thoughts.  That is what needs to go.  That is what needs to be utterly destroyed, because one cannot see the truth of the situation while embroiled and mired in a thought process that tells one a lie.  Truth and lies have no middle ground.  Something is true or it is not.  Period. 

The truth is something that is always readily available when we look.  This last week was a study in the apparent impinging on my own mind.  At a certain point, the meanings I gave to my circumstances completely took over my mind, like a virus that is invading the body.  It told me that I was indeed in danger, in lack, in scarcity.  Businesses were heaving with the "economic crisis"... looking like they were going under... people were leaving me... everything looks... and still does... like it is going to come crashing down.  The fear in my mind was palpable, but I know better now.  There is one thought that keeps coming in... one thought system that is gradually pushing out the old.  I am not what I see. 

That one sentence has taken years to penetrate, and that thought keeps going deeper... layers upon layers of bullshit have been blasted away for that one sentence.  It is a knowing that this is the case.  I have too much empirical evidence in my life to fully accept the apparent.  Aplomb... taking it with exactly as much importance as it deserves... which means it deserves nothing but seeing it for the dream that it is.  Crossing fully to that awareness is the whole goal.  Finding out what I am can only come when I have emptied myself of everything I am not. 

If everything crashed around me, would it be "over" for good?  No.  It is like a video game.  Does the player go leap off a building when the avatar on the screen is going through a rough time?  Does the player identify fully with the dragon and danger-filled world of the avatar?  Does the player ever feel like he/she is in danger because the avatar is facing danger?  What is Real?  Doesn't the player have a certain amount of aplomb when running the character through the paces?  Does it really matter outside the desire to do well at the game?  Is anything at stake?

I remember Dian telling me, when I was playing a video game where the goal is to build a huge business, "Why don't you stop playing that game and go do that in real life?"  She saw the analogy as being literal.  I couldn't see that yet.  I see it now.  I have built businesses now.  I don't know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good I am at it yet, but it is the identification with it that it means anything to me... that it say anything about me.  There is the most aplomb where there is nothing at stake. 

Yesterday, after the week that I had, I felt it necessary to sit down and prove to myself once again that there is no such thing as loss, no such thing as separation, no such thing as anything being at stake.  How could it be?  I am as much a part of this room as it is a part of me.  I am exchanging energetic particles with it every moment that I am here.  Everything I touch has a portion of my body in it.  Everything that touches me, I take with me.  Everything is energy exchange, even thoughts.  The ideas that I have come from others, and I give them mine.  Nothing is ever lost.  I carry around wisdom from people that I have learned over the course of my lifetime.  Just because they are not here in the flesh does not mean that their essence... their energetic exchange has ever been lost.  There is no loss, and nothing is really going on either.  No energy is created or destroyed.  It is merely changing form constantly... matter to energy... energy to matter... back and forth in an endless dance of creation, destruction, and creation again.  We are in a closed-loop system.  If we're not really going anywhere then what is at stake?  Might as well just play around with it a bit, and find out what "new" thing we can do.