Dreaming Awake at the End of Time

Birds are singing in the dream, the distant waves of cars passing by, the slight tinge of hunger... It is all happening in the dream we call Consciousness. You are prior to this, you are aware of this so-called "waking state", you are aware of the dream state, and you are aware that there was "no-state" that we call deep sleep. We might say that these fleeting states are different dreams you are having, yet the "ME" only arises when the dream is active. This "Self" that you are has no shape, no size, no color, no weight, no personality, no history, no moods, no feeling, no positive or negative thoughts, no attributes at all by which it can be measured. It is beyond time, beyond space, beyond any category. It is simply THAT which is the constant IS-ness, the constant presence, the ever-present Being that is never affected by the dream, that is never present IN the dream as something attributable. It is this Self that you call "I" yet we tie all these attributes TO "I" - there is only ONE "I" - that is YOU. All other "I"s appear in the dream. That YOU is impersonal - it is the essence of Being. When we tie the dream to this "I", we put conditions on "I" - I have to be better, I have to do this or that. In reality, whatever the dream may be, whatever experience may be, that "I" or ultimate "Self" has nothing to do with it. Self is merely that which knows itself through this dream, that wonderful yet fleeting gift or window by which Life knows itself. Instead of identifying with the components or attributes of the dream, we must, if identification is required, identify with that ultimate formless, attribute-less Self, what we might call Life or Being. And ultimately no identification is needed. You are Life itself, knowing itself, having a dream where Life is expressing and knowing itself through those expressions. There is no need to chase each experience and try to pin an identity upon each one. Identity is with the Absolute, that from which all arises and departs, that which never changes while the dreams come and go. You are the universe itself, Life itself, Being, Being itself. You are prior to the dream and ultimately the dream is nothing more than you own Self.

If you could look behind the thin veil of what you call a ‘person’, if you could truly look into the heart of any or every one, you could not fail to love them. Only our false projections from the mind try to justify why it is not wise to love a stranger, why it is risky. The ego-mind says others don’t deserve to be loved. While hatred and suspicion divides, Love brings all things together in harmony and joy.

My teacher used to say, 'Stay in beginner's mind. Never leave beginner's mind,' because in beginner's mind, the possibilities are infinite. They're open. Anything can happen. You're open to learn anything you need to learn. If your view of something needs to change, you're open for it to change. No matter how deeply you have seen something, no matter how much you think you know something, stay in beginner's mind. Don't get rigid. No matter how great a revelation you may have had, no matter how great an opening in the core and depth of your being, if you stay in innocence, in the mind that's very light, that never takes its ideas as truth, then there will be a much greater potential for your thoughts, as well as your communications with others, to be naturally inspired.

The old Zen Masters had a wonderful way of pulling the rug out from under any place that anyone landed and tried to set up camp. If you said you were a person, they’d point out that the self cannot be found. If you insisted that you were not a person and that there is no self, they would point to the absolute, undeniable uniqueness and beauty of each snowflake, each whirlpool, each wave, each person. If you insisted you had to work hard and practice diligently to awaken, they would point to the fact that you are already awake, that it takes no effort and no time to arrive Here / Now. If you said no practice was needed and that kicking the dog was no different from meditating, they might slap (or kick) you. Wherever you try to land, whatever you grasp and begin to assert, wherever you fixate, the true Zen Master pulls that particular rug out from under you. As people who point to what cannot be spoken, nothing we say is ever the truth, but still, we have to say something. So we use words, inadequate as they all are, and then hopefully we erase them or say something apparently contradictory. I’m reminded of the old Zen koan where the Master says, “Dead or alive? I won’t say!” Or the beautiful Zen expressions: “Not one, not two,” and Dogen’s “leaping clear of the many and the one.” Awakening is not about finally having the right formulation or the right conceptual map. It’s about not landing or fixating or getting stuck anywhere. It’s about having nothing. The thinking mind is always busy trying to get a grip, trying to figure things out. On a survival level, that’s its job, and in certain practical matters, it works very well. But the thinking mind doesn’t always know when to stop. The tendency to grasp onto a formula, to make no-thing-ness into some-thing, to construct a whole reality and then believe in it—this tendency is very strong and deeply rooted. It tends to recur. It’s not always that obvious or easy to see that we’re mistaking the map for the territory yet again. It can get very subtle. So can we be sensitive to this habitual tendency, seeing it as it happens and letting go, now and now and now, daring to find out what happens if we don’t hold onto anything at all, if we let every belief, every formulation and every answer go? One of the things I most deeply appreciated about my friend and teacher Toni Packer was her willingness to look freshly, to question everything, to “start from scratch” as she would say, rather than regurgitating past conclusions. I loved the way she would welcome and invite and enjoy that kind of open questioning and exploring, that way of not knowing. Instead of asserting that she had The Final Answer to How the Universe Works and What This Is, as so many teachers seem to do, Toni would look and listen freshly—right now, in THIS moment—open to seeing something new and unexpected. She would tell us that anything she said could be questioned and/or taken further, that none of it was to be regarded as the word of some infallible authority. She often asked questions rather than making statements, leaving the listener in that placeless place of open wondering and not knowing. Instead of giving us something, she left us with nothing. And that was the greatest of gifts.

M: Each moment contains the whole of the past and creates the whole of the future. Q: But past and future exist? M: In the mind only. Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only…. Q: Your reduction of everything to dream disregards the difference between the dream of an insect and the dream of a poet. All is dream, granted. But not all are equal. M: The dreams are not equal, but the dreamer is one. I am the insect. I am the poet—in dream. But in reality I am neither. I am beyond all dreams. I am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear. I am both inside and outside the dream…I am what I am before, during and after the dream. But what I see in dream, l am not. Q: If both dream and escape from dream are imaginings, what is the way out? M: There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream. Q: If I start the practice of dismissing everything as a dream where will it lead me? M: Wherever it leads you, it will be a dream. The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realise that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs be done.

No matter what happens in experience, you ARE. Your existence does not depend on the nature or quality of experience. Look and see if any experience has ever changed that innate quality of experience that you ARE. Certainly thoughts and ideas have come and gone about the experience - but has WHAT you ARE in essence changed? We are concerned about the affect of experience on our mental state but completely ignore that this WHAT-ness, this IS-ness, never changes. The absolute existence is whole, oneness, never divided even as experience comes and goes. Find your self in that oneness.

Whatever may be disturbing you, simply be aware of it, but don't identify with it. Even the one who seems to be suffering it, even this one is not your true Self. You are the intelligent, spacious awareness in which all experiencing happens and is perceived.

The most profound experiences of openheartedness happen when our minds are overwhelmed by beauty or intimacy, and there's an extraordinarily heartful availability.

You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run.

Spiritual awakening is a remembering. It is not becoming something that we are not. It is not about transforming ourselves. It is not about changing ourselves. It is a remembering of what we are, as if we'd known it long ago and had simply forgotten. At the moment of this remembering, if the remembering is authentic, it's not viewed as a personal thing. There is really no such thing as a 'personal' awakening, because 'personal' would imply separation. 'Personal' would imply that it is the 'me' or the ego that awakens or becomes enlightened. But in a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the 'me' waking up, what we are wakes up from the 'me.' What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

The actions of an awakened being have no personal investments. They simply do what is necessary without identification, without judgment. They are simply a witness. They can continue doing everything but they are somehow unattached inside, so they keep their equilibrium. You, the true seeker, must be the same. You remain universal, even while you are serving the particular. And it is not even something you are doing. It is also just a happening. You are not insisting it is bad or good. You are just spontaneously playing your role. And being unattached, your role is played very well. Each action or gesture is appropriate to the needs of the moment. This is a little clue, a little view into the mind of an awakened being. Their peace is never lost. Their universality is never exchanged for a private concern, even though they can appreciate the varied expressions of consciousness, they are not invested in any particular expression, particularly. These are the vibrations of an angelic being. All their expressions are loving and fair, not shaped or determined by human culture or habit, but by divine harmony and pure will. They may appear to the outsider as doing something personal, but internally their minds are in pure serenity—vast—inscrutable. Who am I describing here? You in your true and natural state.

The taste of no separate self is totally liberating. 'No separate self' does not mean there is a spiritual experience that goes something like, 'I have extended myself infinitely everywhere, and have merged with everything.' That's beautiful, wonderful experience for a separate self to have, but that's not what Oneness is. Oneness is not merging. Merging happens between two and since there is only one, any experience of merging is one illusion merging with another, as beautiful and wonderful as that experience may be. Even when I experience having merged with the absolute, with the infinite, with God, it simply means that my fictitious self has merged with another fiction. Mystical experiences aren't enlightenment.