THIS -- AS A DREAM

This place is a dream

only a sleeper considers it real

then death comes like a dawn

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought 

was your grief.

Mevlana Jelaludin Rumi

(1207 - 1273)

Trans: Coleman Banks

Life is a dream.

When I woke up to this awesome reality a few years ago

And the laughter subsided enough,

I thought I'd made the most astounding discovery since breathing.

Then I find today that this guy (Rumi) knew it 8 centuries ago!

Obviously the word has been slow getting out:

Mankind could have saved himself a few wars

And a truckload of suffering about suffering.
I guess the problem is that,
We can't simply read that "Life is a dream"
And file it away with yesterday's news;
Each and every one of us has to get it for himself.
That requires a certain level of commitment and surrender to possibility
That puts us still in an uncomfortable minority.

The experience of "getting it" is very much akin to the experience of waking up.

It's the surprise of the thing that catches you unawares.

When it happened to me
Nothing around me changed;

Nothing within me changed,

And yet nothing has been the same since that moment.

I real-ised I'd been poking around

In a half-seeing, energy depleting, anxious trance.

Perhaps just as surprising was to discover --

Thanks to Papaji --

That part of my inner awareness

That had always been wakeful enough

To know

And wait

For me to "get it."

All I had to do was wake up

And get out of the way with all I think I know

And allow real Knowing
From that nonjudgmental Awareness
To get through to me.

That process of getting out of my own way

Continues........

The dreaming continues,

But
With awareness;

That's the difference.

I am the dreamer, not the dream.

I am not my Self....

I am the watcher 

And the experiencer

Of my Self in full flight.

What a blessed relief!

And joy, too,

Except when I forget
And get caught asleep in the dream
Again

Sometimes
Until I re-member........