I have needed glasses since the 6th grade, and even though I’ve had corrective eye surgery, I still have trouble seeing clearly. More recently, I’ve had several dreams where all is shadows and shapes, my vision is so blurry. At the Healer’s Retreat last weekend, a man who told me that he made extra cash in college doing psychic readings, made a comment that is helping me to better understand my poor eyesight.
His comment was this: I am living more in the world of the subconscious and the dream than in reality. Now I take that as a compliment, although I could think of about a half-dozen good jokes to make at my own expense. He continued to explain that some of my eyesight problems stem from efforts to “look through other’s eyes” to figure out how to live in this reality. The rules of the subconscious and the dream world are different than in the human earth world and they can be unyielding and difficult to decipher.
When the movie Inception came out, my son Sam was so excited for me to see it. “This is your movie, Mom!” he said and he was right. I loved that movie, other than the violence—well, what the hell, the dream world can be a violent world. Ego is ruthless when it is attacked. So even the violence worked for me. I appreciated that movie, just as I appreciated the insight offered to me this past weekend, because it gives me a framework to better understand my version and experience of this world we are sharing.
Today at breakfast a friend held up the saltshaker to make a point about reality and metaphor and all I could see was the dream symbol—being the salt of the earth and being shaken up, which truly is what gives life its flavor. I should probably apologize to those who spend any amount of time with me because I seem to be falling into this habit of naming ordinary objects as symbols, much like a child learning a new language who goes around pointing at a book and saying, “Libro,” or pointing to a pair of shoes and blurting out, “zapatos!” I feel at least I have an explanation. It isn’t a new language I’m learning, but my native tongue being remembered.
As lovely as this real world is, there is really not much to recommend it over the dream world. It has harder surfaces, pain is tangible, and the sound is turned up louder. No need to fret or check my sanity. I’ve two feet firmly on the ground, or so it appears. But I am rather thankful for the explanation about my eyesight. For so many decades now, what I see has been consistently unreliable. I think I’m looking at the moon rising up through the trees and it turns out to be a street lamp. Keith still teases me about that one.
In hypnosis, I talk people into “sleeping” but in my version of reality, what I’m really doing is waking them up to the dream. All it really takes is a willingness to see everything as if it is a dream, and dreams are simply bits of information about our feelings and our experiences. Life becomes a waking dream, and just as we can begin to manipulate our dreams when we become lucid enough, we begin to realize that we can manipulate our waking reality.
Next time you’re sitting in a familiar setting, the living room or the restaurant, look around and ask yourself what sort of dream would you be having if this were a dream? What program might be on the TV? Who is waiting on you? Let your mind play with the puzzle pieces. You just might be surprised at how quickly you remember the language of the subconscious; you will be dreaming awake.
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