It's All a Dream

Last night I had an intense dream - more like a nightmare.  It was filled with fear and confusion.  The anxiety was intense.  I felt as if I were suffering from a schizophrenic episode.  The dream played out like a psychological thriller movie.  Each scene was filled with suspicious characters and their malicious intent.  I felt like Natalie Portman’s character in the movie Black Swan.

There were creepy characters like an angry landlord who was chasing me for the rent.  My friends were suddenly untrustworthy and patronizing.  My conversations with the figures within the dream didn’t make sense or follow logic.  I was hallucinating and became paranoid.  I didn’t know who I could trust.  I thought to myself “is everyone out to get me?”  I felt as if I was descending into madness.  I questioned whether I was insane or product of an insane world?  A distorted sense of “self” compounded my anxiety and I began to think “I’m losing my mind.”

The twisted plot took a turn and my focus was to find refuge.  I needed to find someone I could trust.  Regardless of my diagnoses (crazy or not,) it would be in their arms I’d find a haven - someone who can guide me.  They’d help me see truth in this crazy situation. The following dream sequences were but a frantic quest.  My anxiety intensified with each moment and I questioned “would safety be found or would I find myself in an asylum?”  

Moments before the proverbial straight jacket (symbolic of death from my viewpoint) would be forced on me, I found my partner (who symbolically represent love)!  I was saved in that moment and relief was instantaneous in the love that was revealed.  I woke up from my sleep and up from the bed - like a jester popping out of a jack-in-the-box.  I had realized “it was just a dream.”

Upon reflection of the the dream in the early hours of the morning a spark of clarity revealed itself to me.  It had occurred to me that the dream was but a dream within a dream.  The following quote from A Course In Miracles came to my awareness:

“All your time is spent in dreaming.  Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all.”  -A Course In Miracles

Perhaps not as dramatic obvious as the “sleeping” dream, the physical world (waking dream) is just as delusive.  In both sleeping and waking dreams figures are but symbols.  I can easily draw parallels from my nightmare.  For example, the fictitious landlord could easily represent a multitude of people in my life who I accuse of wanting or taking too much from me and/or disturbing “my” peace (i.e. the car that cut me off on the road, colleague at work, family etc.)  The feeling of being patronized is but a reflection of self-doubt and my need to be seen in a certain light by others.  It’s symbolic of how I try to manage my self image through the viewpoint of other people.  The questioning of my sanity only mirrors that in fact the ego IS insane.  My search for refuge is allegorically my search for Truth.  A Course In Miracles would remind me:

“This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity.  There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you.  That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you” -A Course In Miracles

Like the dream, the physical world is filled with anxiety, fear and insanity.  Madness is pervasive all around.  Nonetheless the straight jacket (symbolic of death) never made its way on to me!  I found refuge in love and awoke.  My hunt for safety within the dream merely embodied the inherent call home in all of us.  In the dream my partner was metaphorically the savior.  In the physical world it’s symbolically the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit functions as a pillar of guidance and the release from the dream.  He’d help us see truth in any situation where we can’t see clearly.  We only need the willingness to seek him out.

“The Holy Spirit understands how to this, but you do not.  That is, why you need Him, and why God gave Him to you.  There is nothing else to seek.” -A Course In Miracles

The awaking experience from the nightmare itself is analogous to the awaking to enlightenment.  And just as I awoke from the nightmare we can awake from suffering.  After all it’s just a dream.

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