Could Life Be a Dream? Waking Up Inside the Story of Life

...Episode 2 of the "What's Arising Podcast"

What if life was actually a dream? What if we realized that WE ARE THE DREAMER and can then consciously, rather then unconsciously, co-create our human experience?

Drawing from a powerful experience in India, the symbolism of sleeping dreams, lucid dreaming, A Course in Miracles, The Matrix, Inception, and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, he reflects on how the events of life may be symbolic invitations from the soul. If we become more lucid within the waking dream, we may be able to release suffering, forgive more deeply, transform shadow, and return to love.

Our sleeping dreams, filled with horrific to joyful experiences, seem real when we are having them, but when we wake up, we realize they never happened. Many people have also experienced being lucid inside their sleeping dreams, using the dream to receive profound insight into waking life. What if our life was being dreamt up by a 'Higher Self'? What insights and possibilities could arise if we became lucid within life? What if the purpose of life was to wake up within the dream and to transcend the dream?

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, LIFE is but a DREAM"

Transcript

Welcome to What’s Arising?

What if life were trying to get your attention?

What if life wanted to have an intimate two-way conversation with you, to tell you its secrets, guide you out of drama and suffering, and deepen your connection to love, beauty, freedom, joy, and peace?

Would you be willing to open your heart and mind to that conversation with life?

Would you be willing to become fluent in the language of life — to pause, listen, learn, and leap into the possibilities as they arise?

As you listen to this podcast, I invite you to open your heart and mind to what is arising within you while I share what is arising for me and what I notice arising in the world.

Notice any reactions, thoughts, emotions, or felt sense in your body.

Notice where you open and where you close down or resist.

Notice any assumptions, beliefs, or judgments that arise.

Are they true?

Consider suspending them as you practice opening to another perspective.

Notice any deep insights or calls to action that may arise.

If you and I were having a two-way conversation, what would you feel called to say from the deeper part of yourself?

What questions would you have?

Feel free to share those comments and questions in response to what is arising in you.

What could life be trying to tell you?

If this podcast resonates with you, please share it with your friends. And if you sense that I may be able to help you understand or navigate what is arising in your life, you can visit my website and explore ways to connect and work with me.

I hope you enjoy the quiet guest.

Welcome to What’s Arising?

For the purpose of this podcast, and perhaps for future podcasts, I would like to develop a metaphor that may be useful — both for perspective as we go through these reflections, and for your life.

The metaphor is this:

Could life be a dream?

Many years ago, in 1997 in India, I had a wild experience. I suppose I was leaving my body, and I entered an experience of love after a night that had been extremely stressful.

One of the messages I brought back from that experience was:

I have never done anything wrong.
And nobody has ever done anything wrong.

That was completely true in the experience.

Coming back into my body in India, I could not explain it. I did not really know what it meant. But I knew it was true.

And yet, back here in ordinary life, I can look at things I have done that I am not proud of. I can look at the world and wonder, how could I possibly say that nobody has ever done anything wrong?

But in that other experience, it was completely true.

Everything was love.

Everything was okay.

We were all going to be okay.

How could that be explained?

One of the ways I have learned to look at life — and I am still learning this, still practicing letting go, forgiving, and seeing the light side of life — is that perhaps life is like a dream.

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

What if life really were a dream?

This life feels very real. Pain feels real. Suffering feels real. Joy feels real. Beauty feels real. And all the awful things in this world feel real too.

But what if it is all happening inside a dream?

What if we woke up from this life and realized that, in some deeper way, none of it was ultimately true?

When we wake from a sleeping dream, we usually do not remain attached to the story that happened in the dream. We do not hold onto the victim, the perpetrator, the good and bad events, or all the strange happenings in the same way.

What if this waking life is similar?

What if we eventually wake up and everything is okay?

Everything is love.

Everything was an experience we had in a dream.

To develop this metaphor, I invite you to look back at your sleeping dreams, assuming you remember some of them.

For a long time, I did not remember many dreams. Around the same period when I had that experience in India, I met a woman who encouraged me to analyze my sleeping dreams. So I practiced remembering and analyzing them.

If you recall your dreams, you may have noticed that while you are dreaming, they feel completely real.

In the dream, you have a body. You move around. You see objects and people that seem separate from you. You feel emotions. You can become upset, afraid, joyful, or amused. You may even fly. The dream may not follow the same rules as this world, but inside the dream, it feels real.

Then you wake up.

And suddenly, you realize it was not real in the way you thought it was.

Sleeping dreams are full of symbolism. At first, dream symbolism may seem confusing. You may wonder, “What was that dream about?” But when you begin to understand the symbols your psyche uses, dreams can become surprisingly clear.

Sometimes they are even humorous. You begin to see how the dream was communicating through images, metaphors, and strange combinations. It is quite marvelous and beautiful.

Of course, we can also have nightmares.

But even nightmares can be explored. We can analyze them and discover what they may be processing from waking life. They may be helping us process something from the previous day or two — thoughts, emotions, fears, conflicts, or unresolved experiences.

Sometimes dreams may be prophetic, pointing toward something in the future. Sometimes they may be connected to something happening in the collective, perhaps even something we later hear about in the news.

There is much mystery in the dream world.

My understanding is that people can also train themselves to become lucid inside a sleeping dream. They become aware that they are dreaming while still inside the dream. Then they can explore, change the scenario, or even work through problems.

You might take a life problem into a dream, such as an interview with a boss, and try it from different perspectives. You could explore possible outcomes inside the dream.

That sounds fascinating.

But I have become more interested in this waking dream.

What if we could become lucid in this dream?

What if everything happening around us is also symbolic of something else?

What if the soul is living a dream through this person called Richard?

Just like in a sleeping dream, where the dream-body is an avatar, what if this body, this personality, this identity, is also an avatar in a larger dream or simulation?

What if the soul is using this life to work things out?

What if the events of life are reflections of something being processed from childhood, past lives, ancestral patterns, or even the human collective?

If that were true, then everything coming toward me could be understood as symbolic of something the soul is processing. Everything could become an opportunity for the soul to work something out, create something new, or awaken to itself.

If I could become more lucid within this waking dream, would I have a greater impact?

Could I accelerate the processing of old thoughts, wounds, and stories from the past?

Could I let them go and forgive them?

Could I step into a more creative realm of life and a deeper place of service to humanity?

As I let go of personal baggage, ancestral patterns, and attachments to blame, shame, and victimhood, I may become more available to serve the world. I may become more creative, more free, and more awake inside the dream.

What if life is a dream and all those benefits are available?

What if I could navigate life better by noticing what the dream is always showing me?

Life may be saying:

Richard, here is the nightmare you are dreaming.
Let go of the monster.

If I become lucid, I can say:

Oh, that is the monster I created.
I am going to forgive that.
I am going to let it go.

And what if the dream of life responds?

What if I no longer have to be upset because I have processed, forgiven, and let go?

What if I can step into the amazing beauty of the dream of life without carrying so much suffering?

And if I do experience suffering, what if I can analyze it and ask:

What is this suffering about?

What have I taken on?

What is this showing me?

How can I forgive, release, and move into a more powerful place in my life?

What if we are dreaming?

What impact could that perspective have?

What new and more empowering perspective might become possible?

I invite you to play with this idea, whether or not you already believe it.

What if we are dreaming this experience of polarity, polarization, suffering, war, light, dark, blame, shame, and separation?

And what if, by changing my individual dream, I can have an impact on the collective dream humanity is having?

Maybe these patterns of good and bad, right and wrong, blame and shame, light and dark, are things we can wake up from.

Maybe we can even wake up inside the dream and take a very different living perspective on life.

A few books and films come to mind that have influenced me or carry a similar philosophy.

One is A Course in Miracles. It says, in essence, that this never truly happened in the way we think it did. We are having this experience, but it is not ultimately real. One day we will all wake up and notice that we never left home, never left love, and this was a dream we were collectively having.

Another film is What Dreams May Come, with Robin Williams. I do not remember all the details, but I remember being fascinated by the idea of creating a different dream after death.

The movie Inception also points toward this idea, where dreams have layers, and within the dream we do not know we are dreaming. The spinning top becomes a way of discerning whether one is still inside a dream.

And of course, The Matrix also explores the idea that humanity is dreaming inside a constructed reality. I do not relate as much to every part of that metaphor, but I do relate to the question:

How do we become awake and lucid inside this dream of life?

Every time we take a perspective that is not love, every time we become lost in victimhood or shadow, we have an opportunity to wake up from that part of the dream and return to love.

Another useful book is Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, which invites a similar inquiry into our stories and suffering.

I hope you receive something from this podcast.

I may refer to this idea again in future podcasts — the possibility that life is a dream.

For now, I invite you to take that perspective into whatever is happening in the world and in your life.

If you are upset with anything in life, imagine that the upset is a place where you are attached inside the dream.

It may be an opportunity to wake up from that element of the dream and come back to love.

Come back, eventually, to unconditional love.

A place where no one can ultimately hurt you.

Because life is just the dream.