We discuss many ways of letting go, both through the analysis of dream imagery and as a process on a spiritual path. Yet here is an image that cuts to the chase: when the ways of the past are swept away, if we still cling to them we won’t be safe. It may seem against our nature, but the future (the unknown) is the only oasis that offers sanctuary anymore. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: The meditation dream is one in which if I were to describe what I perceive in the physical sense versus the inner, and I was looking at this inside myself, two different states.
One of it had kind of a sense that you could wake up to in the physical sense, and that would be how you would see things to be. And the other was something so much different and so much more, but you don’t wake up and see that in the physical sense – you can only see it in the inner sense.
So if I was to describe what I perceive in the physical sense versus the inner, the difference would be so different that a person observing, or listening, or hearing this description would feel that what is being portrayed is two different things, two different images.
What I saw was a person who had a particular way about him that I could easily relate to. And then there was a person who had a more quickened nature and was more automatically aware of so much more in the environment. He even looked different from the other person, but they were one and the same. The guy who is so much duller and carried a defined demeanor was the physical me. The guy who was quickened to take in the greater energetic of life was the inner me. Isn’t that wild?
And so then when I went to bed I had this dream and it was again kind of a loud dream. In this dream I am at an oceanside resort; when I say oceanside resort means that the place is on the ocean, but the lounge area is up high. In other words, up a huge embankment and up high there’s like a lounge area, and down below is the ocean. But it’s not an ocean in which the waves lap to the shoreline. It’s an ocean that has a little bit of a quality like a river flow in that it has a movement, a current, that moves from west to east, which is from old towards new.
And so it has this reef, kind of a barrier reef, that stretches out there that encircles this to create this huge pond swimming area down there – and that’s the main attraction at this whole setting. And people swim out there. The current waves don’t affect this area because it’s reefed in, so that the flow that was coming from west to east doesn’t sweep anything away. And so people can swim there and it’s a good setting, and the waters are calm there even though there is that activity beyond it.
What is happening is the water kind of gets into this swimming reef area because the current wave action will cause it to have a little spillage that goes a little over the top, just a little bit over the top from west to east. And so it keeps the water in there replenished and just enough circulation I suppose, but it essentially is still – other than the spray of that coming over the top.
So I am sitting way upon this upper embankment laying on my side on the edge watching and observing all of that activity down below. Then someone makes a comment to me as others are gathered around because that’s what you do up there. This is all part of the setting. How you go from top to bottom is not explained but this is all part of the setting. Someone says to me, “Notice how much dirtier it is in the swimming area than it is out in the ocean.”
And I look and I say, “Yeah, you’re right.” And then I explain it, “The reason why that is, is that the top portion of the waves, the upper part, is lapping over and spilling over the top.” At the top is where you have the pollution, it’s where you have the contaminants. Over a course of time it has clouded the water in the pool, even though the pool at first glance when you look at it is really still and is a wonderful swimming setting, when you really look at it from up high from the part where we’re at and you look out into the ocean and then look at it, you realize it’s a little discolored.
Well, then all of a sudden something happens and the barrier reef to the west where the water current keeps hitting against it, just like it’s made out of ice or something it breaks, it breaks away, and this flow comes gushing through. And now it’s like a river flow and it just sweeps right on through. And I realize, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen?” And someone says. “They’re going to be swept away.”
And that’s when I realize that these people up here are observing this with me but they are all kind of stoned. They’ve had some drink from the lounge or something that has put them into kind of a stuporish condition, because that comment doesn’t seem to have any concern, it’s checked out. In other words, they’re not connected to what is taking place down below, which is scary, which is traumatic.
And so I make the comment, “What can be done about this?” And then I get this nonchalant answer, “Well, hopefully they grab hold of something.” Well, I’m wondering what can they grab hold of, parts of the reef that broke loose there that might be made out of ice? I don’t know quite how that is going to work, and I realize that only the strongest of swimmers of which these are just average people could possibly go against the current here and make it back to the shoreline.
And it’s at that moment I suddenly realize, in all of this observing of things, that I, too, have gotten lost. I’m right on this edge leaning sideways. I can’t go two inches forward or I’ll lose the balance that I have and fall over the edge and plunge to the bottom below. If I was even lucky enough to survive the fall, which is doubtful, I’d be swept away by this current.
And so as soon as I see this I’m kind of like, oh my gosh, and there’s somebody laying right up next to my back and there’s a little pressure there. Just the slightest twitch and off I go. And so I make the comment, “Can you back up a little bit?” Well, the situation is kind of stoned. Nobody pays any attention. They’re in this state of amnesia and then I somehow am able to move just a little bit somehow and tell them: “Can you roll over so I can get out of here?”
And fortunately there’s no one backed up next to them so that they can roll back a little bit and I can get up and leave. And I realize, wow, this is more dangerous than I realize. I could have easily lost my balance and gone over the edge. And so I get up and I walk back from the area and as I walk back I realize that this lounge area that exists up here, that is tied to that down below, there’s this huge kind of strange checkout that exists – and yet at the same time, I realize they’re intertwined, and I realize that how can this lounge exist when that other has been washed away?
And so I realize that after what I’ve been through I need to get out of here. Well, other than this setting that I’m in, it’s all strange and unknown to me. But I’m still trembling a little bit: I hadn’t realized for one thing how precarious I was. I’m somehow thinking that when I’m up on this loft looking down that that should have been okay, but that wasn’t okay.
What I was looking at wasn’t what I needed to be paying attention to apparently; something else needed to transpire, but nothing was going to transpire until I realized that everything was to be swept away, and then I needed to adjust to something anew. And that something anew was going to have to be something that I had no familiarity with whatsoever, because as I looked to what lied beyond this area it was all like an unknown, something that I was totally unfamiliar with, that’s what lied beyond. But that certainly made sense to do compared to the state of shock that I’m still trembling in of being so close to total disaster and not even knowing it. Isn’t that a strange dream?
What I was looking at was a foolhardy thing that was bound to break down. The observation that I was in was likewise more unstable and tenuous than I had originally realized. So, the meaning is, I’m describing a general condition in life that I’m watching. What I see is impermanent. It is polluted. The forces of nature are about to sweep this away and all those who are indulged in this pastime.
Even casual observers who think they are safe, situated high above, are situated on a precarious edge that can slough off at any time. No one is safe. We are all intertwined, even though the amnesic condition of the observers who are in an anesthetized condition, appearance-wise, could suggest otherwise; in other words, in terms of their manner because they’re not facing the particulars.
The main attraction and ultimate livelihood of this resort, whatever you want to call it, which has gotten swept away, what is there? See, after all that, what is there, because they were tied together? And so I’m realizing that I’m not much better off than anyone else. I had been on the embankment thinking that things were okay and I could watch from the embankment. They may have been on some sort of hallucinogenic or stoned, but I had to have been in a trance myself.
I may have gotten off the precarious ledge I was on, in which when I was on this ledge I was in some sort of mesmerized state of observing something and not realizing that I should have realized I’m in a bewilderment. Beyond this area what I notice is an unexplored area in which I have no familiarity. Recollecting where I had been, I find myself ready to take the next step even if it is into an unknown.
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