John: In this dream, a man and his wife come into a house where I’m staying. They have a dispute with me and shoot me in the gut. They shoot me right here in the side. If you get shot there, you’re basically going to bleed to death.
Where the bullet goes is close, but it just misses the perfect spot that would mean certain death. So I roll up in a ball to try to slow the bleeding and to pretend I’m dying. I can’t subside too quickly because the husband and wife will check. I have to be dying slowly.
The wife is anxious to leave. She doesn’t need to wait around. They shot me. I’m going to die. It’s time to go. Why hang around? She has something else to do, and she eventually gets her way.
They leave and, in pain, I inch my way up to a window. Just on the other side there are children in the yard playing. By the time I reach the window – doubled over and trying to hold my gut intact as best I can, they’re nowhere to be seen. All I can see is the clutter of their toys.
I realize I have to get outside. I’m surprised to see that I can crawl that far. I realize that this house is really close to the highway – I’ll get help from the cars going up and down.
As I crawl to the highway, I see a man and woman on the other side whose vehicle has broken down and they’re attempting to flag down help. I figure that’s pretty fortunate, you know, someone will stop soon. And as I’m dragging myself across the road, a van stops and backs up to see if they can help the couple.
Great, I’m thinking, now there’s something that can carry me away. And just as I get across, I’m shocked to see my brother. What’s he doing over there? Now I’ve got someone who should really be concerned.
So, I’m thinking I’m going to be okay. As I get to the other side, I proceed to tell the people what happened and I even show them that I was shot in the side, you know, carefully, because I don’t want to bleed out of control.
I’ve got a sense that I could black out at any moment, yet I’ve also got a focus that’s keeping me going. Amongst the people there, I’m shocked to see a medical team, too. I feel like I’m explaining the story to all these people in one fell swoop, but most are continuing their chit-chat and acting as if this is no big deal.
Finally I say, “Hey, I’m dying here.” It doesn’t seem to get anyone’s attention. They just completely ignore me as if they can’t even hear me.
Suddenly I see a spiritual teacher off to one side. What a lucky break. Certainly he will see my plight and help me before it’s too late. But after he hears about my problem and its urgency, he ignores it too.
Then it seems as though, instead of being outside, everyone now is in a circular room. But are they? As I look around, it’s like they’re there, but there are black-and-white pictures of the people on the walls; they’re all about the same size and their eyes are fairly pronounced.
Suddenly I get the idea that this can’t possibly be real. No one could totally disregard my situation like that. I mean, how rude can you get? This is the only thing that makes sense to me, because in real life people wouldn’t just leave someone like that.
As I’m thinking this, I start to uncurl my body. I notice that I can even stand up on my feet. Wow! And then as I look at my chest, I’m not sure that I’m even wounded anymore. This is ridiculous.
Now it seems to me that this is all an elaborate joke and everyone’s in on it except me. So I take a black marker pen (having gotten the joke), and I proceed to draw a line around the room through the eyes of all the black-and-white pictures. They are all about the same height on the wall, so I just draw a steady line through their shining eyes, making a circle around the whole room. In this sweeping motion, as I’m drawing the line, I feel as though this is what is required to break the illusion.
Obviously, this imagery shows me an extreme. In a way, this is what the physical world is really all about: nothing actually exists. The whole thing is fabricated; we create it.
When we have a mood, an attitude, whatever it is, it’s about us. We’re told that we are supposed to have such and such a condition in life. We’re told this is the ordeal. Next thing you know you have a bad back. There’s actually a way of healing that, but we don’t heal it – we just suffer it.
Somehow we know that this life isn’t what’s real, and somehow we know that the trauma, tribulations, and all the physical problems are all somehow self-created. Deep down we know it, but we’re caught in it nevertheless.
Because everything is an elaborate deception then, ultimately, it means that I must be all that there is. Everything is for my benefit. If I were to see the whole thing as being like that, I would realize that I am projecting all the theatrics. Yet I’ve also convinced myself that these theatrics have me in their clutches.
So, I guess the point of this mirage-like dream is that, if I connect to the essence from within, that is all there is. For however long l fail to do that, I will keep creating this illusory experience.
