CHAPTER 11

Breaking the Bonds of the Physical World

By working with the understandings and exercises offered to you so far, you have made serious strides toward freeing yourself from the tyranny of physicalized perception. Every effort you make to perceive the unknown and unseen creates shifts in your idea of reality. We have suggested that you are the dreamer dreamed, moving toward becoming the dreamer dreaming. Let us examine the implications of this metaphor.

Consider the possibility that the life you believe in is the result of another being dreaming of you as the central character. In fact, let's assume that this other being is a greater portion of you trying to become conscious in its dream. Each of your days is then a moment's dreaming from this vast identity designed to bring you (the dreamed) to conscious awareness of you (the dreamer). This dreamer is so vast that out of each event in its dreams, myriad branching possibilities are explored of which you (the dreamed) know only a small portion. Such dreams create their own time lines and space/time events of which your experience only reflects a small portion.

The objects and creatures that populate these dreams are real. You know that already as you feel the pages you are reading. They have their own perceptions of reality, organized differently, as real as your perceptions are. Each contributes willingly to the experience of reality being enjoyed by all, just as your three billion plus cells contribute willingly to your existence and identity. Indeed, the more willingly each aware morsel of creation engages experience, the more joyfully they perceive reality. Though filled with awareness and a sense of self (however that is organized), each object or creature in the dream is propelled in its beingness by the will of the dreamer to fulfill its fundamental purpose, which is to become fully conscious of itself within the dream.

Play with this metaphor. It is more descriptive of reality than you may think. If nothing else, it can help you to redefine your world and see its non-physical roots more clearly. At the level of soul awareness, you are just this vast and this creative. The imaginative romp of the soul creates an infinite amount of experience. Expanding your present imagination outwards towards this vastness of self may seem daunting to you. You will not lose track of the most familiar aspects of your identity by playing in this huge concept. Indeed, the test of the quality of your ideas is that they bring you greater happiness. Whether or not you accomplish more is much less important than that.

Although you may tend to think of your nightly dream life as an extension of your waking consciousness, with wishes and body content and problem solving and so on being central themes, we wish to offer you another perspective. While your dream consciousness does indeed respond to this stimulation from your physicalized identity, its nature is of a much more subtle degree of perception. This mysterious consciousness of dreams is in fact a very creative one. It lies closer to the awareness of your soul's experience than to that of your waking life. Because it is stimulated by the vast intelligence of your soul far more than your waking intelligence is, dream consciousness functions with information that is fundamentally mysterious to you. That is not to say inaccessible, just mysterious. The sometimes bizarre images and experiences in your dreams represent the impingement of the vast possibilities of the soul's experience for which you have few hooks from your conscious identity with which to attach meaning to them. Developing such frameworks for understanding is merely a matter of practice. The more you expose your conscious identity to this flow of information from your spiritual self, the more clearly the information will be perceived. This works from both directions as you acclimate to a new internal language of metaphor, and as the metaphoric creation of dream consciousness responds to the impingement of waking consciousness. This is the principle of the observer changing the observed. This principle is even more directly visible in the subtle realms of consciousness than it is in the physical world where it is also well demonstrated by your sciences.

The goal, breaking out of the limits of the physical world, can be approached by the progressive blending of waking and dreaming awareness. We suggest a two pronged approach to this enterprise, one more active and the other more passive. The active side is the conscious propelling of your identity toward the metaphoric language of the soul in meditative states. In this process, which is exhibited by the exercises we have been offering you so far, your waking consciousness is in charge.

You thrust yourself into the path of more subtle flows of thought and feeling with an act of will, stepping intermittently aside to accept the impulses available to you then. This act, willing inner silence, listening, pointing the awareness to ask questions and listening again and so on, sets in motion a communication between waking and dreaming states that establishes the language of the waking state as dominant. The metaphoric images you receive are more clear and meaningful to you than the images and thoughts of the dream state (generally).

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As you reach a state of inner silence in meditation, create in your inner vision the scene of a movie theatre. See yourself at the ticket booth purchasing your admission. Pass through the entrance, handing over your ticket. Go to the concession stand for your favourite treat (anything you like, Crepe Suzette even). Carry your treat down the corridor and into the theatre. Find a seat in your favourite section (treating yourself to the very best in your reverie is a valuable practice in and of itself) and have a seat. Stretch out comfortably in the most enjoyable theatre seat you can imagine and look around you. Conjure as many visual details of this theatre as you can before focusing on the blank screen before you. As the bright light flickers softly like the leader on the film about to be shown to you, ask your inner self, higher consciousness, guardian angels, God, whatever, to show you what you most need to see right now. Relax your mind into a passive state while watching the screen. Let whatever unfolds to do so in its own way and in its own timing. Eventually, it will be easy for you to ask questions but at first, just concentrate on remembering the experience. It is easy to lose consciousness and slip into dreaming even for the practised hand so be patient with yourself and keep plugging away at it.

Once you become adept at remembering the scenes which unfold in your inner vision (writing them down or speaking them out loud is very helpful) you will be able to work on interpreting their meaning. Even though images accessed in this way have more direct connection to your daily life than most dreams, they still contain information from a perspective so much wider than your "normal" point of view, that they may take some considerable time to decipher. They will contain multi-layered metaphors which address your present as well as your past and future. While one layer may have meaning to you now, another layer may need several such experiences and related events in your daily life to become clear to you. Even the profound emotional states that you experience with these exercises may seem reward enough. They will all begin to tie together like independent pieces of a jig saw puzzle eventually.

It is of equal importance to foster an attitude of acceptance of the mystery of this process and a belief that you can indeed come to understand the meanings in the experiences presented to your awareness. You can learn to ask questions and listen for the answers as you go along. How those answers come to you will reflect your personal predilections. Our friend here, for instance, is highly verbal and so he hears words and our long-winded explanations. Others see images primarily or feel motion or e-motion within their bodies. All ways are valid. Accept the rightness of your own way but believe in your right to understand and know who you are. Now, this exercise is predicated on your belief that what you experience in such a state is truly meaningful and bears messages from your spiritual self. Some of this you will take on faith and some will be built upon the evidence that you find as you resonate to the images and ideas you contact. An attitude that allows for your own self to be mysterious and vast will further your understanding. Believing yourself to be susceptible to influence by other beings (boogie men) while in such a receptive state will make things much harder than they need to be. If you do encounter images that inspire fear in you, we suggest you look directly at the fear itself. That is what is real. Fear is not the response in this instance, it is the creative force for such experience. It will point you to the thoughts that will point to the beliefs which you can adjust. Then you go back and test until you can be a dispassionate observer once more.

On the passive side of the equation we suggest you investigate your nightly dream state with a little more respect for the state of consciousness from which your dreams spring. The meanings of your dreams, though, are not as important as the act of remembering them in the early stages. What we are suggesting is allowing more of your dreaming awareness to enter your conscious identity. This begins with trusting that your dreams contain a valid reality which is more inclusive than your physicalized daily world. Though its imagery is wildly metaphorical compared to the more concrete experience in the waking state (or so it seems), it flows from a far more creative state of being which affects more of your Self then merely your physicalized identity. Therefore, its imagery does not apply directly to your life in many instances. That does not disprove the validity of its reality though as much as it does the validity of your perceived reality.

So, to begin with, decide to remember your dreams. Again, writing them down or speaking them out loud will solidify the conscious impingement which facilitates memory. Offer these experiences their validity as part of your growth into spirit. You may look for patterns in them if you wish but hold no attachment to finding them. The purpose is to open yourself to the experience of dreaming. You will quite naturally progress into a growing state of shared consciousness between waking and dreaming awarenesses. Continue to be passive and allow the experiences to unfold. You will eventually begin to know that you are dreaming and at times even understand the layers of meaning that apply to your waking life. This will progress to the point of being able to have a conscious impact on the content of your dreams. All this takes time and practice so be patient with yourself. You may wish to view this layer of awareness as the precursor to your present daily consciousness. In many ways it is just that. This state of being, while it includes many facets of earthly existence such as visual images and auditory experiences, also contains many facets of the more inclusive awareness of your spiritual self. Tapping this experience of your life force moves you further away from the limits of physical existence. It speaks in a language far removed from your waking conscious language. Take the time you need to learn the language and topography of this very different land.

Bringing to your daily awareness a greater component of this reality by identifying with dream experience loosens the grip of the physical world on your attention. Taking this realm seriously as part of your spiritual growth is an important step in following your path. It cannot be overemphasized.

Now, once you have begun remembering your dream experiences, recognizing that you are indeed dreaming will become more commonplace quite naturally. The struggle to be conscious in dream states actually acts as an impediment to achieving this goal. Much like learning to both allow trance states and actually participate in their structure takes much practice, so too does being an active participant in your dreaming. Because this is a more passive state, your simple intention is all you need to maintain. An act of will here will be counterproductive. State your intent to remember and then let it go and sleep. Add to this intent your desire to be a conscious participant as you progress. Be very patient but persistent. This is not a struggle so relax with it.

Back at the ranch, every moment you spend in wonder at the meaning of your daily life, why things unfold as they do, how the process of reality creation works, when your thoughts spring from the deepest parts of you and not from your fears or ego based mental process and so on, you push a little harder against the self imposed limits of physicalized perception. This is not a process of isolated moments of spiritual discipline we are discussing. It is more an ongoing redefining of your identity. Every time you look at your life from the perspective of a spiritual being having a physical experience, you expand your limits a little. Each attempt to identify yourself as a whole being, not merely a body, enlarges your self beyond the physical. No matter what you can buy with your money or what pleasures your body can experience, happiness is not a physical phenomena. It is a spiritual phenomena with physical repercussions. You must seek happiness where it lives. The simple fact that happiness is an intrinsic aspect of the being that you are makes its attainment much more fluid and easy than you have been taught to imagine.

Imagine, if you will, that pure and complete happiness is a natural state of being for all humans. Set aside the rarity of people who live such joy. Think for a moment of the implications of such an intrinsic nature. Happiness lies beneath your every experience of life. All you need do to grasp and enjoy each moment of joy that fills your existence is to be willing to allow that experience. Let this thought fill you for a moment. Feel each breath fill your body and expand beyond your skin. Feel the absolute peace of the rightness of your existence. Feel the sweetness that permeates every cell as you allow real happiness to enter your awareness with your breathing. Feel how this world supports your existence as you inhale. Feel how you expand into the world as you exhale.

Now, what are you thinking? Are you allowing a state of joy to fill your universe? Are you instead convincing yourself that such a state does not exist or that, for some reason, you don't deserve the experience? These thoughts are not to be quashed. Look at them. Why do you resist being happy? What do you believe that sets such limits on your joy? If you haven't the right to joy, who does? What really makes them different? At what point do the differences cease? Don't think that because you are at such and such a place on your spiritual path that you are inured to such resistance. You will face your resistance right to the very Godhead Itself. Indeed, totally merging with God into the Oneness will demand you to release your self at last. What you practice now differs only in degree.

Another important aspect of your physicalized consciousness that you can address in your daily life is the habit of looking outside of yourself and believing that any thing exists "out there". To believe that matter is made of energy is only slightly more true than believing that matter is all there is. Your universe is constructed from perception. Every facet of your existence is an act of perception. Nothing exists outside of yourself. Thoughts, feelings, people, things, physical sensations, life and death, all are perceptions. In a very real way, you are making this all up as you go along. This will be a great relief for our friend here who keeps asking this question, "Am I making this all up?"

By beginning from the assumption that each portion of your universe is an idea construct given form from and for your perceptions, you step beyond the boundaries of the physical world. You begin to perceive more of the true nature of your universe. It is your idea of solidity that keeps your chair squarely beneath you, that keeps your body inflated even though you know it is just shy of 100% empty space. If you accept responsibility for this idea of solidity you can begin to perceive so much more of this world. You can begin to perceive the idea nature which underlies all of the created universe. This nature holds the energy of the universe which pulses in and out of form constantly. Challenge your belief in solidity by opening to this idea matrix. Explore this concept and how it affects your beliefs about reality. Explore the fear that your world may dissolve if you begin to sense this matrix and the energy which holds it in place. Just as you do not forget how to walk while you are driving a car, you will not forget how to be in a body or perceive with your physical senses just because you perceive the energy forms of things around you. Just so, you will not dissolve into nothingness when you perceive your own true nature as spirit. You simply expand your perception into the largeness of your being. Thus, you become a conscious creator of your life.

To Chapter Twelve