What it is Like to Awaken: The Dreamer & the Dream

Below is something I wrote on April 27th, 2008. This was the time immediately following my tumultuous radical awakening. By now I had discovered Eckhart Tolle so I had posessed the raw material to understand what had happened to me and what I could do with it. This period was characterized by a predominant interest in how, or even if, I should help others wake up, especially my girlfriend, Amber, and my son, Tristan. Eventually I came to accept that it is better to lead by example than to try to shake someone awake. That said, it is not unreasonable to be prepared with answers to questions that they may eventually ask. The process of assisting in others awakening is still something that resonates strong with me, and I suspect it will be a part of me for a long time.

The writing below discusses how I came across one of Tolle's metaphor's that describes what it is like to awaken. It is both awkward and fun for me to read the almost child-like exuberance that shines through my writing. It's also quite funny for me to think about what my state of mind was only six months ago. It makes me wonder where my head will be six months from now. It is evidence of how far you can go in such a short period of time, and it encourages me to press forward.

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April 27, 2008

I have been awake for several months now after a long, slow awakening process. My kensho, my moment of awakening, was spontaneous due to the intensity that I allowed my ego (my Level 1) to assign to the events that were occurring in my life. It has been a very odd realization that the vast majority of spontaneous awakenings occur to those that have accepted great stress, pain, and/or suffering. Naturally, why would those with “the good life” need to wake up? But it wasn’t so apparent when I first started delving into the topic.

Now that I am awake, I have been seeking a way to awaken my friends and loved ones, including my nine year old son. [He is now ten.] I have been very cautious to avoid a “born again” approach, as it has always been a red flag for me when others have been evangelical about their causes and beliefs. Yet the significance of awakening is so clearly important and, to me, the issue is irrefutable, so I am compelled to find a way to help those around me wake up. Like the Tao, I have been seeking the most natural way, the path of least resistance. Many of those close to me know that something has happened to me, but I have resisted going into great detail until I’m prepared to help them open the door to enlightenment.

Tonight, as I was flying over Vietnam on my way to Singapore, I had an epiphany. I will write what I scribbled down on the plane tonight and I would appreciate any input in making the message clearer. I hope that you might be able to use the metaphor to explain it to those around you.

I was reading Chapter 7 of Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” entitled “Finding Who You Truly Are.” It is a phenomenal book for those of us who are already awake. I am concerned a bit that it might be beyond the unconscious masses, but time will tell. Regardless, I was reading “The Dreamer and the Dream” that starts on page 206. I will quote from Eckhart’s passage and then I will provide my proposed explanation to the unconscious of what it is like to awaken.

Eckhart Tolle wrote:

“Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form. Inner nonresistance to form – whatever is or happens – is a denial of the absolute reality of form. Resistance makes the world and the things of the world appear more real, more solid, and more lasting than they are, including your own form identity, the ego. It endows the world and the ego with a heaviness and an absolute importance that makes you take yourself and the world very seriously. The play of form is then misperceived as a struggle for survival, and when that is your perception, it becomes your reality.

“The many things that happen, the many forms that life takes on, are of an ephemeral nature. They are all fleeting. Things, bodies and egos, events, situations, thoughts, emotions, desires, ambitions, fears, drama... they come, pretend to be all-important, and before you know it they are gone, dissolved into the no-thingness out of which they came. Were they ever real? Were they ever more than a dream, the dream of form?

“When we wake up in the morning, the night’s dream dissolves, and we say, ‘Oh, it was only a dream. It wasn’t real.’ But something in the dream must have been real otherwise it could not be. When death approaches, we may look back on our life and wonder if it was just another dream. Even now you may look back on last year’s vacation or yesterday’s drama and see that it is very similar to last night’s dream.

“There is the dream, and there is the dreamer of the dream. The dream is a short-lived play of forms. It is the world – relatively real but not absolutely real. The there is the dreamer, the absolute reality in which the forms come and go. The dreamer is not the person {in the dream}. The person {in the dream} is part of the dream. The dreamer is the substratum in which the dream appears, that which makes the dream possible. It is {they are} the absolute behind the relative, the timeless behind time, the consciousness in and behind form. The dreamer is consciousness itself – who you are.

“To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.”

Pardon me while I reread it again and thank Eckhart aloud. Through his writing and Plume’s publishing he has reached out across the universe to me and planted the seed to grow into the explanation that I will be using to help those around me to awaken. Awesome.

As I first read the passage above, in my awakened state, I clearly got the picture that Eckhart was painting. But my mind began to race. Would this be clear enough to shake my unconscious loved ones and friends awake? Alas, I felt that it only unlocked the door, maybe cracking it open. But if the metaphor of the dream could be fully explored, maybe it would be the alarm clock that I had been seeking. You tell me if it was. Please read the passage below and tell me what you think. Be brutal. I’m thick skinned and need, want, beg of you to fine tune it. If your comments allow me to awaken just one additional person, you effort is immeasurably worth it.

Here goes. Imagine laying this out for one of your most significant persons:

Can you remember a time when you were dreaming, and while you were in the dream, you were aware that you were dreaming? For some people, this happens quite frequently. If you can remember a time like that, try to recall the sensation of being both in the dream as well as knowing that you were dreaming. What did that feel like? Can you describe what it felt like? Did it feel like there were two of you? What we are looking for here is to feel as much as possible the sensation of being both the person in the dream as well as the dreamer, the person who is aware they are dreaming.

For active and frequent dreamers, you might even be able to recall the feeling of being able to control your dream, somewhat like a video game. Perhaps you have played video games, or those near to you play them. If so, you might be familiar with the concept of a “first person shooter” game, one where the perspective is that you are seeing through your character’s eyes and you see their hands in front of you. Is that what the dream felt like, like you were playing a video game like this, being both the character in the game and the person on the couch playing the game?

You might be able to recall your character in the dream knowing that you, the dreamer, can control the dream. This might possibly be accompanied by a sensation of relief or satisfaction. For some, the dream ends quickly after they experience this. The sense of relief causes the dream to dissolve and often times they wake up almost right away. For others, the most lucid of dreamers, they enjoy the point where they realize they are in control and the dream really takes off. You might think that the real lucid dreamers would control every element of their dream, but experienced lucid dreamers know that it’s much more fun to not control the environment, to just control their “character” and allow the dream-world to unfold before them. Some even think this might be a way to understand future events.

This is exactly the experience you have when you have an awakening (kensho). Before you awaken on your path to enlightenment, you operate as the character in the dream. When your being starts to awaken, it is the same sensation as the sleeping person who realizes they are having a dream. At first, you are only aware that you are dreaming and can only observe the you that is in your dream. The real you, the Presence, is observing your ego, your character in the dream. As your Presence awakens, you learn how to be more aware, and eventually you learn how to influence your environment, just like the sleeper is able to learn to control his dream. (The movie “Being John Malkovich” is a great exhibit of this process.)

Some people become very proficient at controlling their dreams. This is called lucid dreaming and literally anyone can learn to do it. (There are many resources on the web, just google “lucid dreams.”)

Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Abraham-Hicks, The Secret, and What the Bleep Do We Know discuss the concept of manifesting your world. The lucid dreaming metaphor can be directly applied here. Just as the lucid dreamer can learn to control every aspect of their dream, these sources would say that you can learn to manifest every aspect of your world.

Well, that’s it. This is a brand new concept to me, as I just came up with it tonight and banged it into the computer as soon as I could get to my hotel room, so I’m sure it could use some tweaking. But as we are all truth seekers, I’m sure that the collective (Borg/Universe) will provide an improved version. I welcome the constructive criticism as my objective is to find a method to awaken the most number of unconscious persons as possible.

Thanks for your help.

Sean

PS – If you haven’t yet discovered him, please seek out material by the late, great Alan Watts. He is my inspiration and reason for awakening.