Who or what is reading this article? Everything going on in your mind is filtered through a lens that uses thoughts, perceptions and analysis to comprehend these words. It does little but interfere, deaden and intellectualize all you come into contact with. For your ego-mind has developed infinite ways to categorize whatever you encounter to ensure that your identity or world view remain intact. Its mission is to protect your identity (how you project yourself to the world), with your full agreement.
As this lens places layers of filters between the reader and the words, your world becomes compartmentalized and focused on an endless stream of chatter that never stops. Your mind, your thoughts, never stop. You never stop. And you remain on automatic pilot, asleep in the Dream state, a dream of your own creation. Until you fully appreciate that, you can never awaken from this dream.
In truth, the world you live in is the world of the ego-mind. Except for occasional moments when you touch your deepest essence, it is all you have known and where you spend almost all of your time. It has your attention. Yet it is really a prison, a tiny cell of perception which separates you from the greater universe.
But this article is not a part of that world or prison. For that world of thoughts and perceptions does not really exist, and in fact it has never existed. It is only in your mind!
This situation is akin to trying to convince alcoholics that they are addicted to drinking. Even if they realize the truth of their situation, it usually appears to them to be unbelievably hard to overcome their addiction, no matter what it might be costing them. And it is even harder to fully recognize the ego-mind and reject the way of thinking you’ve always known. It demands that you reprogram and recondition everything you have ever learned and requires a radical shift in your trajectory to overcome the inertia you’ve maintained over your entire life.
Unless you do so, you can never be here, in present time. You will continue to remain asleep in the make-believe world of your own dream, locked inside a prison of your own making – a movie which only you can see.
And because you have become so addicted to your conditioning, your ego-mind will resist this withdrawal at every opportunity. It does not want you to be free. It will continually take your attention away from the real issues at hand – being present and remembering that you are a divine human being, a god. It will tell you over and over again that it is more powerful than you are, that you cannot really be free, and that you need to continue to listen to it to protect you from untold imagined or remembered threats to your being and identity. And it will continually co-opt your “spiritual process” (even your “awakening” process), and it is very skilled at doing so.
In other words, all of your life you have believed and supported a story that has been a convenient lie: that the thoughts and images in your head are valid, that your world view makes sense, and that people are going to harm you unless you protect yourself through listening to the unending dribble of your ego-mind.
Of course, alcoholics always tell themselves that they are not addicted. They respond that this is preposterous, that they are not being seen clearly, that they are getting better or that their freedom from addiction is just around the corner. Or that they have occasional days, or even a week, when they do not drink at all! In your own case, you may tell yourself that there are moments or even days when you feel freer from your thoughts, or have become truly aware of your divine being. But then you find yourself back in the Dream state.
For the truth is that, by definition, you remain asleep until you awaken. And like any other addiction, you cannot awaken unless you make doing so your absolute priority. That is why so few people have left the Dream state, and why you may not personally know anyone who has done so.
This is no small matter. It’s the equivalent of your carefully examining each evening if you will reawaken the next morning from your night’s sleep. Of course, if you fell asleep and knew you would never wake up again, you would be extremely concerned and would remain asleep forever!
This is exactly your current dilemma. What if you had never really woken up – you just thought you had? Or if you fully realized you would remain in a “waking sleep” until you died? By definition, the only way to awaken from this Dream state is to wake up. Contrary to many people’s expectations, this doesn’t just happen over time. You have to first realize you are still asleep and jump up out of your stupor.
So what are your options? You can spend the rest of your life just like you always have, living out a character you are dreaming up. Or you can fully awaken as a free human being, no matter what. To leave everything behind. To take no prisoners. To free yourself from your unexamined beliefs and agreements and merge with the greater universe.
And then you will laugh out loud at the ridiculousness and futility of having spent all of your energy creating and supporting an absurd fantasy called your “life” – an identify you wanted everyone else to believe in because you thought that would protect you by bringing you love. What a total waste of your time and energy that has been! If you could only see that you’ve spent your life protecting your identity, you would laugh out loud! Yet, that is indeed the case.
So as always, it’s up to you. Only those who truly want their freedom find it. Otherwise, pleasant dreams!
Good article.
It should be mentioned there is nothing the dream character (you…the egoic little me) can do to cause waking up from the dream. Reprogramming and reconditioning is not the way to wake up. That would be the dream character learning to fake being awake. Which is of course absurd, as the dream character does not really know what it is like to be awake. All this doing to awakening is just another way to prolong the dream…but this time as a dream character with a higher purpose.
Cease doing. Look within. Who are you? What are you? Who is this “I” we believe ourselves to be. We can only look at what is and see it for what it is.
The ego is a mirage…it really has no power of its own. It only causes confusion and suffering when we take it as it appears, not realizing it is a mirage and it is not what it appears to be.