The Nothing

I dreamed, and in my dream I thought

"It is the Nothing, only instead of being afraid and running from it, people are glad, and leaping into it."

Sometimes it can seem easier to give up and allow yourself to sink into despair.  That is not the path of least resistence, only a lie that tells you it is.  Working hard day after day at changing your life requires a lot of effort and can seem tiring, but that is a misunderstanding.  In the short term, giving up seems easy, but in the long term doing the work is the only way to avoid being devoured.  We are not meant to give ourselves over to destruction.  Transformation is possible, understanding is attainable, peace is one breath away.  

Dream: The Festival

I have such long, vivid dreams and within the dreams there is a richness of detail and layers of memory and experience that I wake up feelin glike I have been somewhere else.  If anyone who reads this knows about dream interpretation, I am looking for a dream reader to teach me. 

Last night I was dreaming that it was the night before a small local festival. It was dark, and I was walking down the street with some friends.  There was a lot of traffic, and across the way I could see the houses preparing for the next day, one house was unfolding itself at the top, letting out a large well-designed porch for people to enjoy.  At the bottom of the embankment below the sidewalk, I saw rocks next to the street.  I'm always looking for rocks, and this time I saw a piece of green sea glass.  Almost as large as my palm, rectangular, smoothed and rounded on the edges.  I went down the embankment to pick it up, my friends wanted me to leave it because they thought traffic was dangerous, but I knew I would be safe.  When I got down to the street, a limo stopped and a wealthy young man opened the door and asked what I was doing.  I talked to him, and he offered to take me to the festival.  I told him I would see him there.

The next day I wandered around the grounds of the main festival gathering area, it was green and grassy, and had a beach just a little ways off.  No one had planned much for food, but people were bringing in their own, some sharing, some asking for donations to split the cost.  Children were running around laughing.  There were two young boys (around 10) that were somehow attached to me, friends perhaps, not my children but in a way there with me.  They asked me for pizza and I told them that I had three dollars in quarters, if they could scrounge up another two dollars, I would take them to Little Ceasars later.  They were happy with that answer, and I left them on a wooden bridge that you see at playgrounds, only far more expansive.  I wandered into an area where there was a small performance, someone playing piano.  20 or so chairs were set up, and I was delighted that I had come at the right time.  I remarked to the person next to me that I always try to make it to these performances, and had memories of prior events I had gone to in that setting.  There, I saw the rich young man.  He seemed interested in me, but I was too busy enjoying the festival and had other concerns so I didn't talk with him. 

After the performance I walked through different art displays that the festival had to offer.  One was a hall covered in Japanese art, scence of people in Japan, flowers, buildings.  I sighed and said to the person wandering near me, I would live here.  There.  I have lived there before. 

Then, I went out into the grassy area and met up with a girl I have been friends with most of my life, like a cousin.  We had both been working some days of the week at the home of a little boy who had some kind of severe disability.  He was about 8, unable to walk, and unable to speak up for himself, but had a very sweet energy and we both cared about him very much.  The girl asked me how he was doing, which surprised me because I though she had been there recently.  She said that the woman from social services had taken over her hours.  I was alarmed by that, since on my days that same woman was always there, sitting on the couch like it was her house, talking to the boys father, and something just didn't feel right about the situation.  The woman had harmful intentions.  The girl and I wanted to talk about it more, but wanted to be sure we had privacy, so we walked on, looking for a place to talk.  Another girl came up to us like she knew us, but as far as we could remember we had never met her.  She was thin, pale, stringy hair, an odd face that seemed like she had trouble fitting in with regular society.  She sad immediately- you said you would take me to 44th street!  There is a funeral there later that I need to go to.  You can come with me, and then we will come back here.  My companion and I looked at each other, I thought of taking the boys for pizza anyway, so we shrugged and agreed to take her.  We didn't know who the funeral was for, and didn't ask.  The girl was satisfied, and walked away.  Shortly after that, I was a coin in the dirt and picked it up, thinking of the boys' pizza money.  It was larger than a quarter, old and worn but the engravings were still clear.  The front had a man's face in profile and said that it was a 51 cent piece.  I turned it over and it said "tarot" on the back, and had a picture of a thigh bone, it said "mark of the severed leg", and another message next to that but that message didn't stay with me.  I turned to my friend in amazement, since this coin was directly related to the situation with the little boy we took care of.  I knew the second message was information or direction about him, or the social services woman, and what we could do.  I put the coin in my pocket, and we kept looking for a place to talk.

We found a house that was familiar, and went into the bathroom and shut the door, but we didn't want to be interrupted, so in the bathroom there was another door down to the basement.  We went down there, and shut the door.  Still not feeling like we would have privacy there, we walked through the basement with its low ceilings and piles of boxes to another door, which led to an indoor pool that hadn't been used in years.  It was tiled, and had a gentle slope down to the deep end.  We started talking about the boy's situation, and very soon a nun came through the door and we stopped.  She was suspicious about what we had been discussing since we stopped so suddenly, so I told her that we used to play in this house as children and were reminscing, looking at all places we had fun when we were 6.  At that moment I could vividly remember playing in that place when I was little, the girl and I running around, even swimming in the pool.  I don't know if I have had dreams with that girl before when I was 6, or since then, or if in my dream I just had very clear memories to fill in the richness of the dream.  But I knew I had been there many times, and I remember the exact feeling of the room, details of how it looked both drained and with water.  And then, I woke up. 

Noncorporeal Beings Dream

Last night I dreamed I was on a starship like the Enterprise, and there was a sister ship nearby.  Two enemy ships appeared, and for some reason the senior staff wasn't able to stay and they made me temporary captain of the ship I was on.  The enemy ships launched a full scale boarding, quickly and efficiently taking control of both of our ships.  I knew that the only way to take the ship back was for the crew to secretly coordinate efforts and rise up against the intruders.  I led a small party of those of us who hadn't been captured toward the area where they were keeping the rest of the crew.  On the way, we were captured as well.  Once there, I was surprised to find the 'hostile' force seemed friendly, at ease, and happy.  I found this strange, but continued plotting.  I was able to find a paperclip in the room where we were being held, and when I got the chance I sprung into action and jabbed it into the eye of one of our enemies.  It was like poking water, no damage at all, no effect.  The man I had stabbed just chuckled and explained that they were noncorporeal beings, and had only temporarily taken an appearance of having a body to interact with us.  Once he started talking, I realized that they were indeed some kind of alien that had only looked human, and that their style of communicating wasn't exactly like ours.  There were misunderstandings, and mystery in what they said, and no one had been able to figure out what they wanted, since it was clear they weren't going to hurt anyone or steal the ship.  They had merely rounded everyone up and had them sitting around a table together, while other groups of the crew were being supervised but offered various leisure activities.  I got myself assigned to one of the activity groups after a while, and was able to spend a little bit of time talking with one of the aliens to ascertain their intent.  When I did, I went around to as many crew members as I could and explained, asking them to spread the word as quickly as possible- they weren't here as a hostile force, they were here because they had evolved past the need for a corporeal body, and had found bliss, peace, constant happiness by existing fully in each moment, fully enjoying whatever they were experiencing.  It seemed impossible for humans to be able to feel joy of that kind while being held captive, but that was the lesson.  If they could understand mindfulness and living in the moment, they would be free, even though still wrapped in limiting bodies.  Some of the crew members were skeptical, but agreed to at least try, while others immediately understood the deeper lesson and saw that the aliens had something revolutionary to teach us.  Soon we got word that the "invasion" extended all over earth.  There was a lot of confusion there as noncorporeal aliens in bodies "took over" every town, every street, but already there were many that understood the purpose and were spreading the word.  Confusion, disbelief and resistance in some, radical acceptance, cooperation and happiness in others. 

Mask Dream

Last night I had a dream that a group of 8 people and I were checking out our new neighborhood.  We were going house to house, saying hello and introducing ourselves.  We came upon a house with a large screened in porch, and a middle age couple came out to greet us.  They told us they loved the area and had been there for many years.  They said there were just about to eat, and did we want any food.  I felt like something wasn't right, and that we shouldn't eat the food.  One of my group accepted however, and as they started to eat, the house began hurtling through space and time.  Out the window I could see different scenery flash by.

We landed in an ancient civilization, maybe Egypt, and were taken to a processing center.  The first step was the culture's punishment ritual, those who had done wrong were supposed to try to throw axes at us on the train car we'd been placed in.  I saw an axe drop near me, but missed, then the person throwing it was supposed to jump down into the tracks and sacrifice themselves if they missed.  When the person jumped, I saw it was a tiny girl, 2 or 3 years old, dark hair and eyes, and I caught her.  Her sister was above, and told me that now I was responsible for her life.  I promised I would take care of her.

We moved onto the next step of initiation, a cleansing ritual by one of the local people.  As we walked to our quarters, I could see the barren rocky landscape, the unusual rock formations, the lack of vegatation. 

I saw rows and rows of people encamped to one side, the civilization was being taken over by aliens.  They had similar bodies to humans, but noticeably different faces, so they wore shiny black masks with faces carved out, but no holes for eyes, nose or mouth.  The people in that land had adopted the masks, and almost everyone had started wearing them so they couldn't tell the difference between them and the aliens. 

In the end, I waited for my turn (last) to have the cleansing ritual, and saw my housemates falling under the spell of the land, getting distracted and forgetting they weren't from there.  I knew if I waited and kept alert, I could go home.  I just had to remember who I was.  I said my name, and woke up.

Superman Portal Dream

I'm planning to post on a number of different topics, one of which is dreams.  I'm beginning to learn dream interpretation, and already it has been incredibly interesting and helpful.

Last night I dreamed that I found a portal that transported children to the dimension where Superman exits, only Superman was me, or the person that went through the portal.  Only young children were supposed to use the portal, I approached it as my adult self, with a small girl maybe 3 years old.  She stood on the round platform, just her size, and I held on to the sides.  We were transported to the other dimension, where we received all universal knowledge.  When we came back to regular reality, the girl was now an adult, a woman who was not-me, but me, my sister-best friend-lover, and then she integrated herself into my being.

All of reality is made up of inter being, and all knowledge is within us, around us, available to us.  Thank you Tolle, Deepak, Thich for the understanding of this, and for the awesome dream.