You Are Dreaming

Right now you are dreaming. You are having an experience in an apparently physical reality. You are receiving sensory data (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) from an environment that seems external, your thoughts and feelings seem private, and you appear to be separate from those around you. While that’s all a very real experience, it may be helpful to understand that it is also a fantastic illusion!

You signed up for the illusion. You made a choice to come and have this experience, to live in this reality for a time, with all of its rules and constraints. But you probably don’t remember making that choice. You don’t remember because that’s a part of the deal when you come here: you accept a kind of “amnesia.” It may sound all too convenient to explain away such incredible statements with amnesia. But amnesia was a requirement because this experience would be impossible without it. In fact, this experience is about operating within some staggering constraints: including even, and especially, the constraint of not remembering all of what you really are.

Here in this reality, you experience yourself as- that is, you “are”- a human. You are male or female, young or old. You speak a language to communicate with those around you; you send symbols (words) to others who must interpret them in their own way and send symbols back to you. You get up in the morning, eat breakfast, do what you have to do during the day, and you use the toilet in the apparent privacy of the bathroom. You experience the pleasures and pains of the body. You have a name, a history, a list of things to do. You ARE somebody.

But in a far deeper sense, you are much, much more. You are an immortal being of conscious awareness. You are a spirit! You are unconstrained, unlimited, unharmable. You know on a deep level that you are an integral and fundamental part of the great all-comprising loving consciousness that we call “God.” You project your awareness into realities like this one to have the experience of being something within a special set of constraints, in order to grow your own being and participate in creation. Coming from God, the great foundational consciousness of unconditional love, at your core you also are profoundly loving, and you wish to expand and develop that capacity in yourself.

If these statements seem aloof and abstract, do not accept them! Rather, seek instead to simply discover for yourself if they are true or not. There are many ways to do so, and each is very personal and unique. But in general, meditation is a powerful first step: gaining familiarity with your awareness as it exists beneath the thoughts and judgments is a window to actually experiencing glimmers of wakefulness. Don’t take anyone’s word for it- listen within!