Waking up inside the dream
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about this lucid dream I had 5 or 6 years ago, that I want to share with you.
The dream itself was pretty dumb, so bear with me, please. Because it was my response within the dream state, that’s been causing me to look at it again lately, with ‘updated eyes.’ It feels incredibly pertinent for these times. It also feels relevant to the whole spiritual maturation process, which is why I’m bringing it up here.
Lucid dreams, by the way, are ones where you not only realize you’re dreaming while it’s happening. That’s considered a semi-lucid dream: You know it’s a dream, but you’re still subject to whatever activity is already happening.
If, for example, you were to find yourself on an airplane headed for Burkina Faso seated next to Nancy Reagan, (wait a minute, isn’t she already dead? OMG, I must be dreaming!) you can look around and marvel at how real everything feels, smells, tastes and sounds within the dream. Exactly like ‘real life,’ in fact. But it never occurs to you to change the scenery itself. You’re still a passive participant, even though you’re awake in your recognition.
A fully lucid dream, on the other hand, is a quantum leap beyond recognition alone: You can decide and direct the action of the dream for yourself. The power is in your hands.
So anyway, this dream I had: I forget what triggered the initial semi-lucid recognition that I must be dreaming. But I decided to prove it to myself by breaking the laws of physics. If this was a dream, I reasoned, I should be able to jump up a foot in the air and then drift down slowly like a feather.
So I jumped. And I came down fast, like I normally would. Dang it.
Yet by this time I had my full wits about me. I was almost certain I was dreaming, even though everything about this place seemed so solid, so completely ‘real life’ convincing. Ignoring the evidence of my 5 senses, I trusted my instincts and jumped again. This time I drifted down, slow as a feather.
YESSS!
(Side note: This decision to ignore what seems so real, and go with a different, inner-directed decision instead? It’s exactly the same decision as when you “choose again” in a pivotal spiritual moment, whether to side with the egoic self, which seems so real, or the divine self.)
Anyway, back to my dream. So far I’ve proved to myself that I’m awake and this is indeed a dream...
OK, I thought delightedly, I can go anywhere, do anything. What do I want to do? Do I want to fly like Superman? Or do I want to go play with penguins in Antarctica? Or Mars! I could go check out other planets. Or wait! I could go have a chat with Gandhi. How awesome would that be?
Just then a bigscreen TV appeared right in front of me, with a handsome announcer guy who spoke to me in an unquestioned voice of authority:
“It has always been your dream to have a naked mid-air massage.”
I stared at him in disbelief for a few moments. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I replied finally. “It has NEVER been my dream to have any such thing.”
It was like I hadn’t spoken at all.
Completely unfazed, he repeated his statement. “It has always been your dream to have a naked mid-air massage.”
I stood there, blinking. We were at a standoff, me and that digital talking head.
I knew it was a lie, I knew this ridiculous thing he kept saying had nothing to do with me or my actual aspirations. I also knew he was saying it to distract me away from directing the lucid dream under my own power of choice. I knew all of this. And yet there was something so sticky, here. So convincing, so magnetically hypnotic.
You see, I fully believed that he (and the established world order he represented) were blocking my way. I believed I would have no choice but to capitulate and have the stupid massage. And maybe after that, (I hoped) I’d be left alone and allowed to do what I wanted. But it never really works that way, does it. Capitulation never leads to freedom.
I believed in his power to block my way, because back then, I wasn’t fully lucid in my waking life. I never really questioned those voices of authority. Especially the ones that came from TV screens. It was comforting to be told what we were all supposed to want out of life. To be told what success is; what will make us happy and fulfilled. What will make us all safe.
I never really questioned those voices of authority. Especially the ones that came from TV screens. It was comforting to be told what we were all supposed to want out of life.
So even though I was indeed fully lucid in that dream, and even though I knew the announcer guy was full of pre-programmed bullshit...I still took his authority as gospel truth. It never occurred to me that I could simply walk right past that flatscreen TV.
I could’ve let it babble on endlessly, nothing at all to do with me. I could’ve walked out the door to go do whatever I chose. After all, this was my lucid dream. I could’ve changed it however I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
“It has always been your dream to have a naked mid-air massage,” he repeated a third time.
I rolled my eyes and sighed, resigned now to this vaguely creepy, faintly sexual coercion. Well, I told myself, how bad can it be. Might as well get it over with.
As my feet slowly lifted off the ground, the dream ended.
Waking up inside the dream
So let’s talk a little bit about waking up inside the 3-D dream we currently call ‘reality.’ It's not all that different, is it.
Semi-lucidity is a good way to start: Seeing through the babbling talking heads on the TV screen (or the social media feed) is an excellent place to begin. Noticing they don’t actually have the power they want you to think they have, is also a useful thing to realize.
But it’s time for us all (me included) to go beyond all that. Time for us to awaken so completely that we start “choosing again”; re-making the decisions that guide and shape the dream itself...until the dream itself is no more.
And we can do it. This is why full lucid awakening (as opposed to enlightenment, which is something else entirely) is what’s truly called for in these times. It’s time for us to see, and know, what we really are in truth. And then, to live our lives and take actions based in that truth.
It’s time, in other words, for you to know yourself (and all others) as an endlessly flowing, present moment expression of the full sanctity and immense power of the river of life itself. And, yes, to act like it.
Because all of it (and more) is who and what you really are. In truth.