The Other Life

Dreaming as a Practice of Love

You go there every night, but do you remember? Do you dare?

Consider the training Neo received in the Matrix and apply it to dreaming life. Is that air you’re breathing? Are those clothes you’re wearing. Are the people in it real people? You’re a real person. You don’t doubt that. If you’re a product of the brain, would all the people in the dream life be just as real as you? After all, doesn’t that mean you, too, are a product on the brain? Can the brain make a 2 dimensional personality, or are all personalities whole? When you have a nightmare, what precisely are you fearing? A concept, an idea, other, yourself, or are you just experiencing emotions personified? When you fear or love in a dream, is that your subconscious communicating to you in the only words it knows? Emotions and symbols?! Are fears yours, your subconscious, or someone else’s?

Lucid or not, as you walk the dream beach, gingerly placing each step out of reach of the waters that are rolling towards you, receding, teasing you, you do not control the ocean. You can ask for calmer seas, less wind, and you may get that, but it’s not you doing that.

In a lucid dream you can do some amazing things. You can fly. You can summon artifacts, food, change your clothing by thinking, you can…