When I wouldn't listen during the waking hours, something - universal intelligence, perhaps? - pointed to freedom in another way ...

Dream Flying

Some years ago, during the years 2004 – 2005, I was mystified by a series of persistent dreams that were linked by a single theme. Unlike normal dreams, they have remained vivid in my memory. The sequence of dreams left such a strong impression not only because they led to a radically new outlook on life and existence, but also because of the significant manner in which they presented their 'message' to accomplish their apparent ultimate aim. Once the dream-process had seemingly realized its purpose, the dreams abruptly ended and gave way to your standard nightly dream-adventures.

In the dreams I always found myself stranded on top of extremely high buildings or platforms of some kind, surrounded by wide open space and unfathomable depths. Sometimes I found myself on a high plateau, or on the edge of a precipitous canyon and or pit. At times I would find myself leaping or climbing from one level to another. Always, relentlessly present was the deep, vast emptiness that lay just beyond the edge of the 'platforms' on which I found myself stranded. I remember clearly, not really feeling fear as such, but more a realization – perhaps filtering through from my waking life, that it would be foolish to venture beyond the edge and fall into the endless abyss. Yet, at the same time I had a deep inner realization that I could not merely stay on these plateaus either, merely moving from one level to another, peering into the depths between them or into the vast empty space above and around me. There seemed to be a more insistent significance that I did not seem to grasp.

The dreams recurred every few days or sometimes weeks, never exactly the same but always inviting me to step away from the safety of the plateaus into the emptiness beyond. In a curious way – and as sometimes happens in dreams – I always seemed to be lucid, as if I was an onlooker, an interloper; me observing myself.

Since I had just been through an extended period of stress and emotional trauma, I wondered if the dreams were not an expression of a suppressed death-wish of some kind. However, besides the unpleasantness of the preceding few years, I was not consciously aware of any fatalistic thoughts about death. It is true, though, that the human condition and its ultimate end in death had always been an enigma and phenomenon of interest to me. However, I have always assumed – and still do –those to be normal preoccupations of most humans. So, why then was there the repeating theme in my dreams?

Of course I was just being a slow learner.

The last dream in the sequence of related dreams vividly stands out in my memory, not only because of the course of events in the dream, but also because of the transformative effect it had on my waking life - my conscious awareness and perception of the general scheme of things. No, I didn't receive a miraculous answer to the question(s) of life. However, I came to realize that, in my search for answers, I had been restrained and bound to the convictions and beliefs of other people and the accepted norms prevalent in society. In spite of the fact that I had always taken pride in the fact that I considered myself a free thinker, the reality of social and personal entanglement was impressed on my consciousness with absolute clarity.

The last dream started as did the previous dreams: I found myself on a high building with wide open spaces all around and a deep abyss below. I again became conscious of myself having a dream, but this time thinking that nothing would happen to me if I stepped over the ledge. The next moment I was flying through the air without fear of the depths below or the wide expanse around me. I clearly remember thinking: "well I'm fine and this is what it means to be free – but what now?" I awoke with the clear realization that I needed, and could, be free from all of life's imposed indoctrinations and the perceived 'social mandatory requirement' of buying into any kind of religious, political or other socially coded systems. To embrace any moral stance or code was to be a matter of internal inspiration and guidance instead of the more expeditious, externally imposed codes of society.

Being afraid of the dark

How does the story above relate to the theme of this blog and what is the theme of this blog in any case?

Well, let me begin by stating my notion that humanity seems to be absolute petrified of its own existence, probably because so little of it makes real sense. She seems to fear her own lack of true identity with her source (whatever that may be,) her lack of a raison d'être within the bigger scheme of things, and the absence of an ultimate point of arrival or destiny. To compensate, society assumes positions on a variety of platforms, continuously jumping from one to another, fighting and jostling for position, carefully avoiding the dark voids in between.

When I was a young boy I sometimes tried to imagine what it would be like to be a person without any of the standard sensory input: blind, deaf, no smell or taste, and no tactile stimulus. The answer that made most sense, was that such a person would only be able to realize his own beingness if there was some kind of awareness from another source (non-biological in other words.) In my imagination I conceptualized such a person creating 'life' for himself within his own consciousness and in reaction to such internally generated stimuli that would be made available to him. In a similar way, I believe humanity exists purely in a self-created but isolated universe in which biological messages and pure creative imagination are responsible for the coarse structure of 'reality'. We hang on to each and every train of thought, no matter how contradictory, illogical, destructive or purposeless such creations may be. As soon as one system becomes dysfunctional or less usefull, we jump - individually or collectively - to another system of similar meaningless quality. To prevent being confronted with futility of it all, we are in the habit of defending our stance and current beliefs with everything at our disposal: argument, intellectualizing, arrogance, vindictiveness, and aggression – to name but a few, to prevent having to embrace the dark voids in between our illusions.

Personally I tend to think that collective reality - our universe of awareness – is like a closed and isolated system that is subject to entropy, leading to the dissolution of structures in which everything is inclined to meaningless, stagnated chaos.

In order to avoid total conscious stagnation and loss of the traction of awareness, stimuli (from who knows where) seem periodically and persistently, to be injected into the collective consciousness to provide mental and intellectual scaffolding for renewed but recurring social and 'spiritual' systems (i.e. platforms,) which in turn identify us as individuals – at least that is what we think is required. Are these frameworks of reference constantly changing, disappearing, being threatened and renewed over various lengths of time ranging from months to centuries or longer, towards some ultimate aim or purpose? That, of course is the ultimate question.

Unlike the many systems and individuals so evident in our collective humanity, I do not pretend to have an answer to the conundrum that this universe presents. Yes, I may speculate at times. I may do thought experiments and now-and-then make suggestions, but ultimately, I only have questions, those questions are presented and reflected upon in these blogs.