Sunday Sermon [Dreams & Illusions]

¡Hola!
OK! The Russian Sex Kitten is tiring of yours truly and in a way, that’s a good thing. I do think there’s a bond that will last, but I can see myself playing more of a mentor role, than a lover. BTW, is it messed up that I think her moms (who’s younger than I am) is FOINE?!! LOL

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-=[ Dreams & Illusions ]=-
“Free your mind, your ass will follow.”

Observe your sleeping dreams and you quickly realize that our minds have the ability to create worlds seem completely real and appear to be outside us. Yet, it’s equally obvious to us when we awaken that all the people and things in these dreams are actually creations of our own minds mistaken for reality. We wake up and we recognize that none of the events that seemed to happen in the dream ever occurred.

We need to recognize the power of the mind to create and destroy worlds. Perception is a mirror not a fact, as I have written before. Yet we buy into the dreams and lose sight of the fact that we create our own heavens and hells.

I’ll offer a good example, so that this doesn’t seem like some mystical blah blah blah. You’re driving your car and someone cuts you off. Immediately, you become incensed! You curse the offending driver and at that point in time there is hate in your heart. You can try to intellectualize it, but if that individual were to appear to you, you would hurt that person. If you doubt me, then pay attention to reports of road rage in which seemingly normal people, people who have never had a history of violence, inflict great harm.

Later, as you’re venting to a friend you state, “He [the driver] made me so angry!”

Think about that: did the person driving the car make you angry? You had no choice? That person climbed inside your head and forced you to be angry, right?

::blank stare::

So you see, there’s a practical application to what I’m pointing at right now. We create our world.

That’s why all the great wisdom traditions emphasize that what we call “reality” is also a dream – a dream from which we have not yet awakened and therefore do not recognize. The aim of genuine psycho-spiritual practice is to help us recognize our dreams and illusions and to awaken from them.

Dreams teach that you have the power to create a world as you would prefer it – as you would see it. And because you perceive this creation as real – there is no doubt in your mind – you act accordingly. Yet here is a world, completely of your making, that seems to be outside of you. In the example of the inconsiderate driver, you have created a reality that is merely a belief. You have no way of knowing the person that cut you off, or why he or she cut you off in the first place. Yet, you behave as if you know all this. You don’t. You’re assuming a reality that has no basis in fact.

In fact, your sleeping and waking dreams are different only in form. One of the first miracles is to awaken to the fact that much of what we take for reality is but a construction of our minds. This is crucial in dealing with illusions (waking dreams). Think of your greatest fear: if you can correctly recognize it as an illusion, its grasp over you quickly loosens. No one is afraid of a mirage. We fear things because we don’t understand them. We don’t understand our fears as dreams. We “forget” that we created the fear in the first place. Is that not an illusion?

What happens is your dream of fear is changed into a dream of happiness. Forgiving dreams are kind to all who appear in the dream and so forgiveness brings full release from dreams of fear.

Forget that it is your mind that has power over all your fantasies and dreams, and you will live as a prisoner, at the whims of all the boogiemen your mind can create. I hear so many people hear talk about god, about how they want to know God, or how God talks to them, blah blah blah. However, I also see these very same people fall into the traps of fear, anger, and hate. What kind of shit is that?

If you want to know god, to have peace of mind, or to be in any way happy, you have to give up all dreams. For if you grasp onto the illusions of anger, fear, and hate then you’re not being spiritual at all. You’re buying into castles in the air, you’re lost I illusion and if you think that’s God talking to you, it just might mean you’ve totally lost contact with reality.

Go beyond the illusion of the waking dream because to awaken from your dreaming is to awaken from your fear.

Love,

Eddie