“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
- Alan Watts
...
Hello friends :) This week, the bookclub (Amber, James, Jordan, Avery, Mallory, and myself) read chapter 4 of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. In chapter 3, "Who are you?", we identified our true Self, and in the "The Lucid Self", we learn how to remember and stay connected to this true Self in our day to day lives... thereby transforming how we move through and interact with life.
Last week's chapter asked us "who are you?" again and again, peeling away all the layers of what we are not (our external world of sensory input, our bodies, our past, our personalities, and our emotions and thought, which interpret the all the previous things in this list). This introspective shedding exercise, pointed us to the very center of our being - the source of consciousness itself. Everything "outside" of our awareness, is not us (not the soul, not the witness), but is like clothing we wear (ego) as we dance the dance of the human experience. So, as mentioned above, "the lucid self" teaches us how to interact with our world from the place where we experience ourselves as the center, the soul, the spiritual heart, oneness, awareness itself... instead of interacting with life as identified with our stories, circumstances, personalities, habits, sensory input, and our overall conditioning.
Below are some notes from the chapter, as well as a journal prompt for further exploration.
Chapter 4: The Lucid Self
In a lucid dream, you know that you are dreaming. Because of this awareness, of being "the dreamer in a dream", you interact with the dream differently... you are conscious that there is a "you" who is acting within the dream, and there is a "more real you" who is watching the whole thing. However, when your dream is not lucid, you're totally caught up in the dream, you totally believe that the dream is real... until you wake up.
The scenario above is the same predicament that we are in as human beings. We are so caught up in the dream of life - all of the colors, action, feelings, drama - all of the stuff going on, that we are not lucid of our experience. We are often not aware that "I am the one who is having a human experience" "I am the one who sits in the center, watching it all go by, as consciousness itself." When we are living out of that place, living centered in our awareness, we are living lucidly. And the more lucid we are, the more efficiently we can move through life, the more life becomes a great adventure, rather than a great suffering... or a big just 'jumping from reacting from thing to thing to thing'. Easier said than done.
So how can we do this? How can we balance our experience so that we have one foot in the material manifested world and one in absolute reality? The answer is simple, but not easy: focus. Focus is the power of the mind. It is the power of our consciousness. The same consciousness that focuses on our external world, is the same consciousness that focuses on our thoughts and feelings. We focus on things all the time... what we focus on is a product of habit. We can form a habit of focusing on the stillness and oneness within... the same stillness that is the fabric of all of existence: consciousness itself. What do you want to focus on? The yogis say that is your only true free will - your choice to focus on the divine or to focus on the ego.
Just like the example of the dreamer and the dream, watching a movie provides another great example of how we interact with our human experience. You've probably noticed how sometimes you get so sucked into a movie, that you become totally unaware of anything else... even your body or the room you're in... you're that focused. Most people live in a similar state. You are completely absorbed in the screen of your "own inner movie" comprised of all the things that make up the egoic you (the small "s" self). You are so absorbed in your movie, the little life, the little identity, you've created and will do anything to protect. You will, consciously or unconsciously, do anything to protect that identity. Your identity has certain amount of fear, love, insecurity... all of your tendencies... you know them well. And if certain things happen, these emotions will flare up, and then eventually they'll settle back down again. And you spend your entire life so busy trying to prevent these disturbances. "In fact, you are so preoccupied with controlling your world of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, that you don't even know you're in there. That is the normal state for most people."
So, back to the movie metaphor. When you're watching a movie, you get sucked in, but you can, if you want to, draw your awareness back into the room, or into your thoughts... reminding you "oh yeah, I'm watching a movie." Imagine if there was a technology that connected your awareness to the movie, so that not only your vision and hearing, but also your taste, smell, and touch were involved.... that even your emotions and thoughts were involved. You would literally become Will Smith. You'd better hope that kind of movie experience is on a timer or you'd be lost in there forever.
It sounds scary, but that is exactly the scenario we are in. That is the predicament of the human experience. We are totally locked in - totally absorbed by the 5 senses and our thoughts and emotions... so absorbed that we don't recognize that our true identity lies in the awareness that watches it all. If I am only aware of my "movie", if my consciousness is so sucked in that it no longer knows itself as itself... when that happens, I am a lost soul. But... even if I'm lost, at a macro view, I never really went anywhere. The same consciousness is experiencing itself as the dreamer, Will Smith, my unique human experience, and my innermost Self. It's all the same consciousness.
It is important to recognize that nothing is "wrong"... the human experience isn't wrong or fake or not true or unimportant... it's just not the full story. It's only side of the coin. Our exploration here is to recognize and come to know our full and complete situation... ya know, being alive, existence, and whatnot.
The first step is to remember - to wake up from the dream, from within the dream. The first step is to have even a moment of lucidity. The second step is to keep remembering, to live in remembrance. Doing so, by implementing practices into your daily life that bring you back home to your Self. This is the purpose of mediation.
This return to the Self, to the atman, to love, the soul, to God... is the core message of every religion and spiritual teaching. It is what every human being, conscious of it or not, longs for above all else.
Journal Prompt:
What practices bring you back home to your center? Recognizing your center, not being a place where your ego, your human self, feels safe because all of your needs are met... but a place where you are always safe, always loved, always at peace no matter what is going on - because it cannot be touched by the world... that eternal space. Write down some small things you can do each day, so that you can live "in remembrance" of your true Self... to get you back in touch with your lucid state... that all this human stuff is just one side of the coin. A few examples are: mediation, nature, a word/phrase/mantra, movement, your breath, creativity, journaling itself, or anything else. Just write them down, and pick even just one thing that you can implement into your daily life. This tool is your place of stillness and grounding, within a life of ceaseless motion, serving as a constant reminder, of who you truly are.
next week: chapter 5, infinite energy
dream extreme!
♡ kat
Bình luận