John: Well, yesterday your dream raised a very interesting theme because everybody is confronted with this same issue. We’re all caught between the physical realms and pure energy, between the flesh and the spirit, between our ego identity and the freedom of surrender to something higher, between Nothingness and Creation (for the previous dream, see Free as a Bird).
I, too, was confronted with this theme in my dream. My first take on it was that it was a bit like a repeat dream, so I wasn’t sure I should write it down. Did I really already have this dream, or was it a different dream?
In this dream there is something on my left and something on my right. I have nothing to report about what is on my right. The issue, though, is, can I be in a space on my left in which a pain exists, i.e., that any kind of identification with that space carries a price? How do I pay such a price?
In other words, the space on the right doesn’t cost me anything or have any effect. The place on the left does, and I pay a price for whatever I identify with. This makes no sense to me because I feel like I’m paying for something that doesn’t exist, but the fact that I feel it that way and identify with it – it’s going to cost me. I’m going to have to live it in some capacity and, in doing so, it’s going to exact a price.
In the next dream, I feel like I’ve gone back to revisit this issue because I didn’t quite get it. This time I take a slightly different approach.
I’ve arrived at a resting spot that’s in the middle of the desert. There’s nothing there but this resting spot, i.e., there’s nothing I can see in any direction. The concept of a resting spot is that one is supposed to rest. Well, what am I resting from? Why am I resting?
I look at myself to say, okay, there must be some energetic need for me to rest, but if I keep totally still, there’s no such thing: no pressure, nothing. If that’s the case, I can just be there and there’s nothing to report. It would be emptiness or Nothingness.
Well, I notice that this emptiness is virtually impossible to maintain, or be in. I can “hear” the spot that offers the potential, and yet I have something going on inside with absolutely no means for me to fulfill it in this particular place that’s just a resting spot.
How is it possible to pay the price for what I feel isn’t a complete rest? It isn’t possible, of course, so I suffer the confusion of not knowing how to pay because I am feeling something. On some level there’s an impulse, some reaching out, something inside instead of being totally at peace.
So, there is this resting spot. This is the opportunity. This is where something can be enjoyed exceedingly, and yet there’s something incomplete – even though I can’t put my finger on what that is. As long as I reside in this tone and am unable to just be, at the place of emptiness or Nothingness that this space represents as a resting point, I suffer.
If I were in Nothingness, not compelled by anything imaginative in my nature, then I would be totally at peace, totally at rest, and I don’t know if there would be anything to report. I would be able to be in the moment of this resting place where nothing exists. But, who can be like that? Who is able to be in a place where nothing exists in which the state is totally at peace?
When I wake up I have to notice some energetic that still probes, from some aspect of my nature, which is still bouncing or poking around, that’s compelled in some way or other and keeps me from simply being.
It’s a hard dream to report, with the only image being a resting spot in the middle of a desert where I’m unable to rest. You know, to be totally at rest you can’t be anything, and yet there’s still something going on in terms of how you feel yourself, or how you denote yourself, which compels you to have to act or react, and yet there’s nothing there to act, or react, against or to channel this energy toward. It’s a perplexing struggle.
We’ll have more to say on this subject in our next post: The Feeling of Nothing.
