If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.
The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less, you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it's all your dream.
Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence.
After reading Arnold Mindell's book several years ago, life as I knew it changed radically. As with the quote from Ken Wilbur above, I began to see my daily, waking life in dream terms. It was often silly, absurd, dramatic, and rich! It was the story of me… and it was full of symbols and archetypes. I began to be interested in why I was choosing certain symbols, and creating a certain dream or fairytale of who I was…errr, am… It became so much easier to drop the seriousness of all things…. I could choose which symbols were meant for me and how I would interpret them. Of course, I always had done that, but without much consciousness about it.
So, am I serious about my life? Well, no… and well, yes. Well and well. That's all that seems to matter. Arnold Mindell doesn't matter to me… Ken Wilbur doesn't matter to me. John Smith doesn't matter to me. And they all matter deeply. Through these eyes and others', I have chosen the story and symbols that matter to (or resonate with) me. But they are not my stories. They are simply great footnotes. Characters woven into MY fairytale. I like to believe that I'm writing my own story…. through my own words, thoughts and symbols…. and not necessarily through the eyes of the most brilliant and wonderful minds “out there” right now….
Every day my life is full and rich… like my night-time dreams are. These things go into my journals, musings, and harumphings. If I'm very alert, I can use these symbols to give me direction…. Because it's MY psyche that picks and chooses the story that I like to believe is mine. And in my story, my psyche guides me towards the purpose I incarnated to fulfill (ok, it's the heroe's/heroine's journey story). It's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Well, until I don't. Then I'll begin to notice different symbols and maybe choose different meanings and different responses…. But if I stay awake, I'll see that it really has no more reality that my night time dreaming. Still, it's a fun way to take up time (which I understand doesn't exist anymore) and space in my mind.
Speaking of “my” mind, who am I, anyway?