Living the Waking Dream: We Live out Our Lives in the Dream

Contents

WARNING-DISCLAIMER

Introduction

We are just having a waking dream

– that’s all

First Dream

Second Dream

Third Dream

Fourth Dream

Fifth Dream

Sixth Dream

Seventh Dream

Eighth Dream

Ninth Dream

Tenth Dream

Eleventh Dream

Twelfth Dream

Thirteenth Dream

Fourteenth Dream

Fifteenth Dream

Sixteenth Dream

Seventeenth Dream

Eighteenth Dream

Nineteenth Dream

Twentieth Dream

Twenty-first Dream

Twenty-second Dream

Twenty-third Dream

Twenty-fourth Dream

Twenty-fifth Dream

Twenty-sixth Dream

Twenty-seventh Dream

Twenty-eighth Dream

Twenty-ninth Dream

Thirtieth Dream

Thirty-first Dream

Thirty-second Dream

Thirty-third Dream

Thirty-fourth Dream

Thirty-fifth Dream

Thirty-sixth Dream

Thirty-seventh Dream

Thirty-eighth Dream

Thirty-ninth Dream

Fortieth Dream

Forty-first Dream

Forty-second Dream

Forty-third Dream

Forty-fourth Dream

Forty-fifth Dream

Forty-sixth Dream

Forty-seventh Dream

Forty-eighth Dream

Forty-ninth Dream

Fiftieth Dream

Fifty-first Dream

Fifty-second Dream

Fifty-third Dream

Fifty-fourth Dream

Fifty-fifth Dream

Fifty-sixth Dream

Fifty-seventh Dream

Fifty-eighth Dream

Fifty-ninth Dream

Sixtieth Dream

Sixty-first Dream

Sixty-second Dream

Sixty-third Dream

Sixty-fourth Dream

Sixty-fifth Dream

Sixty-sixth Dream

Sixty-seventh Dream

Next to Last Dream

Final Dream…

Postscript: Time to just keep moving

Life is an inquisition on a grand scale

Official Transcript of The Court…

01   A basic understanding of life

02   Being/doing, purpose and will

03   The meaning of a worldview

04   Personal happiness

05   Knowing who God is

06   God and a race of humans

07   Prayer, pronoun and God

08   Meditation and contemplation

09   Flow of thought

10   Jesus and the Buddha

11   The matter of heaven and hell

12   Lucifer: everyone’s fall guy

13   The Old Testament Bible

14   The New Testament Bible

15   Miracles and signs

16   Ritual, morals and rules

17   Toleration and judgment

18   Life: the party

19   Marriage, love and sex

20   God’s church

21   Christian soldiers

22   The winning over of souls

23   End times and false notions

24   Lessons from history

25   Ascending, descending to God

26   Suffering, pain and death

27   Slavery, inequality and racism

28   Overcoming fear

29   The heart of sincerity

30   The truth path to God

31   Personal human evolution

32   The process of spiritual growth

33   The illusion of reality

34   On time

35   Letting go in surrender

36   To be one with the One

Later that night, after dinner…

Finally, a brief note on the

events of the real historical Inquisitions…

Forward:

Chapter One

A beautiful, terrible world

Chapter Two

The solidifying of the Pattern

Chapter Three

First disillusionments

Chapter Four

The dawning of our new reality

Chapter Five

Now…which way to turn?

Chapter Six

No place to run or hide

Chapter Seven

Busting loose, getting free

Chapter Eight

We’re about nothing at all

Chapter Nine

Something to hang on to

Chapter Ten

Glancing back into the past

Chapter Eleven

The reshaping of a former self

Chapter Twelve

The Bright Light of Awareness

Final

Postscript

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

IPI

Intermixt Press International

San Jose – Indianapolis

Books (to date) by Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

Life Notes

Summer Letters

Earth Dwelling

Survival Thoughts for the Continually Depressed

A Quiet Stream

I Was Thinking

How Long Have You Been Standing Here, God?

Living the Waking Dream

Loving Sensual Exchange

My World: The First 50 Years

San Juan: Glimpses in Time

The Inquisition

Forty Songs

Bricks in the Wall

Keeping it Real in an Unreal World

Amistad

Mountain Peaks: Elevated Glimpses into the High Life

Evolution: Facts and Fairy Tales

Worldview 101

Remaking Michael

Reflections of a Mad, Mad World

What do you think?

To Charles P. Hollingshed (1922-2000)

Who long ago became fixed forever in my awakened consciousness.

Far from the cares and hopes and fears,

Out where the silence is deeper than tears,

Glad as the solitude, deep as the night,

Lost in God’s light.

(Seen on a grave marker somewhere in

Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana,

where Charles is buried)

WARNING-DISCLAIMER

This book is designed to provide basic information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent professionals should be sought.

It is not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author/publisher or reader, but rather to compliment, amplify and supplement other texts. The reader is urged to read all the available material, and learn as much as is possible about life, tailoring the information to the individual path.

Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, the text should be used only as a general guide, and not as the ultimate source of information related to these topics. Furthermore, this book contains information that may no longer be either relevant or accurate, as much as we all would like to think our words and thoughts are timeless.

The primary purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained here.

Introduction

We are just having a waking dream

  – that’s all

I went to sleep last night and had a dream. When I woke up, I tried to remember what it was that I had been dreaming about. But I could not remember. So I thought harder about it. It seemed important that I recall.

Try as I might, it wouldn’t return to me what it was that had been the subject of my dream.

During the day, a few flashes of insight blinked back at me and I stopped to wonder more about it; then I began to wonder about why I was wondering so much. Had it not, after all, just been a dream? Must it plague my subconscious world so much, since our dreams are not real anyway?

But right there – right in the middle of the doorway – stood a glaring problem: Perhaps we simply have not resolved the issues of what are real, and what are not real. Do we really know?

We don’t see well enough to peer through the haze, and into the Face of Truth. We don’t know what we are here to do. We don’t even know why we were placed here – on this remote planet, on spaceship earth. I think if we knew, we might gain some measure of peace about it. There is no logical purpose that continually surges forth as to what our lives are all about – as to what we are here for.

We can’t see it. We can only guess. We can only wonder. We can only speculate.

And so, on and on, emerges the steady stream of waking speculation: Why does the I exist? What is the I here to do? From whence did I come and to where does I go when it is no more? What possible ultimate purpose could there be in the fact of our existence?

Existence: what is it? What makes up our being alive and knowing it? I speculate that it’s a series of dreams, and that’s all – though I guess that’s plenty enough. Thoughts, events, evolutions constantly define and re-define the me that progresses through the days and nights of my being. More than only on occasion, I postulate the question of Am I awake, or do I just now sleep?

That’s a profound question; it’s been on my mind – in one form or another – for most of my life. Maybe I am a psychotic! That could explain it!

Concerning life, and the practice of meditation, the provocative Sri Ramana Maharshi made the profound statement, That which is not present in deep, dreamless sleep, is not real. Well, that may sound to you like so much Eastern mumbo-jumbo, but what did this enlightened sage mean, as he suggested it?

We go to the subject of what it is actually present, in the spaces of deep, dreamless sleep. Do you know the answer that any informed scientist would give? The answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing exists in deep, dreamless sleep. The man seemed to be really making a greater point. What is that point? That it is nothing that is real…simply nothing at all. I agree with him.

And how about you – do you ever do such a thing? Do you wonder about where you are when you are asleep (or awake, for that matter?) I never really have a good answer for this; usually, in fact, only more questions are prompted from it. But more questions are good; more questions equal more answers, and we humans always seem to need answers.

So we keep moving, moving, moving, moving – awake or asleep, we know it’s all some form of awakened dream, or a dreaming awareness, or some intricate combination of the two.

…In this new book, I simply intend to ramble on – personal memoir style again, as I have done in a couple of my other books – about all of this, and plenty more. In between plenty of relatively mindless rambling, there will be what I hope is some unveiling of universal truth, and you might also note, perhaps, the mental and spiritual struggle though so very much of the mundane – which is our truer existence, an existence of just being, doing, thinking, worrying, laughing, running, falling, dusting off, running again, walking, looking, wondering, tiring of wondering, on and on and on.

This is so much of what is going on, deep, deep down in there…

In these dreams I plan to just exist in the floating fluctuations of the dreams, doing it out aloud, however, with the use of all-too-puny, inadequate words, reporting what I see, feel, sense.

So my choice of weapon shall be the use of the language of words, whereby I will try to capture the feelings, sensations, impressions, rising-falling flows of the whole, and the essence, of life.

The dreams (my chosen substitute for the chapters in this book) will flow forth in a period of roughly four weeks – commencing on the 29PthP of June, of the Western calendar of the time, year 2000.

Then, on the morning of July 25 – less than a month from now – I plan to board an airplane to Indianapolis (where my body sometimes exists) from my home in San Jose, where my body also sometimes can be found.

I will finish whatever I have started at that time. I will not change the order of events, nor will I car much to edit. Thus, flow of content will likely be unpolished, unorganized, but disruption-free in that state of being.

This will be an experiment in observation.

I don’t know much of what I plan to say yet; it will come to me; the thoughts will come; they always do. These thoughts to which I refer – some from a highly awakened conscious state, some from the product of meditation, some from the groggy, semi-consciousness of just-recovered deep sleep, some from who can say? – all emerge, and will be recorded as gray-on-white, with the hope of tapping into an existence that we usually fail to capture and examine as we carry out our busy lives.

In one sense, all we really do is exist in space and time. We are all part of an awakened dream that we have arbitrarily labeled as our life. And we are all dreamers; we are all participating in some form of the dream, at one level or another. We are all evolving in the dream, some arriving at final outcomes of oneness, others to conclusions of separation.

I am stirring a bit more now…and see it is time to wake up, and go to sleep again. Please come along with me…the adventure is about to begin.

First Dream

Having just arisen, I am still fatigued. Today, the earth is again on my mind – ah yes, the earth…this blue, swirling planet, our home.

The watery ball is old – it is very, very old. Depending on whom you listen to, the earth is older by some counts than others, but what’s a billion years to you and me? If it’s four billion years old, or if it’s five billion years old, what’s the difference? Ancient is ancient; there is no difference that matters to us.

While it can be established that the earth is old, it also can be determined that, by comparison, we humans, as inhabitants upon it, are not old. We, in fact, are relative newcomers to the earth.

Could we have been some kind of Afterthought?

Are we the Afterbirth of planet earth?

It is shocking to note how many people they project existed, say, twenty-five hundred years ago. It is estimated there were about one hundred million people on the earth at that time. Compare that to the six and a third billion souls of today. So, for every one of them, about sixty more of us moderns are represented now!

In fact, the earth is populating so rapidly (humans that is, many lesser animal species are gone, or on their way out) that somewhere, shortly after the start of the nineteenth century, she managed to mother human soul number one billion. A billion human souls on earth…

Here, now, and in less than two centuries later, six times that have been delivered to life. I personally was a conceived product of the year 1950 in human history. At that time, there were about two and a half billion of us running around. In only fifty short years we shoot from 2.5 billion, to six billion? Unbelievable, that’s all. What is going on here?

Oh, my God – so, we’re taking over. We really are. People are taking over the planet, you could say. And how are we going to manage this takeover? How long can we stay in control? Wait a minute, who said we are in control of it? We most certainly are not in control of it…are we?

We constantly ponder our human plight, and we can’t get off this homo sapiens kick we are on. Maybe because the pondering that is being done is human pondering, our obsession with humans on earth is only natural – we are, after all, of human stock!

But roll the film back for a minute. Roll back – back away from yourself, your home, your community, your city, your country, your hemisphere – then back it up further still. Back up until you can start to gaze down on this pretty, blue, hurtling rock-ball itself – roll it back until you’re up there, in space – now you’re in space and you are still backing up.

From out there, in your vision, the earth is no bigger than the diameter of a dime, now the head of a pin and continuing still, to fade.

Where is humanity now? In proportion to everything else, where have we gone?

Forget everyone else! Where did you go? Where are your little friends you hang around with? Where is the President of our United States, and the senate, and house, and the cabinet? Where is the Atlantic Ocean? Change the perspective that radically and all of a sudden you are obliged to start taking a different view of the whole picture.

We are not what we think we are; we are not so significant. This is not our world, not our planet at all; we’re just in fact along for the ride. In one way of seeing it, we’re just passengers and cargo, spinning, on a spinning planet, in a rather remote part of space. We are all going from who-knows-where to who-knows-where? Does anyone know where we are going? Do you know where you are going?

Oh, you do?

You suggest to yourself that you are in hopes of going to heaven. Or maybe you are going to hell (if, naturally, you don’t hurry up and change your ways.) Very funny, yes, you are going to heaven or hell, because you adopted some view of some other person who convinced you in some way that it was so. Well how the hell can they know?

Either religious or non-religious thought got to you. It settled in to your mind. A carrier (another person) brought to your thinking – to the seat of your emotions – the idea that your final destiny was either that of heaven, or that of hell. These are places somewhat away from the earth, to be sure, and in other times and dimensions which you don’t begin to understand.

If you are going to heaven, I would ask you why, and you would give me your reasons why. I would then like to know why (if you are so sure you are going to heaven) that you don’t spend all of your waking hours trying to get others ticketed, or qualified to get to go there along with you? Surely you don’t want to savor this wondrous place all by yourself? And why are you getting so comfortable in this place called earth (called life) if it is not your final home anyway? Why not sell all you have – or better still, give it all away! Give it all away to me! Go out and share the password to the key to the city with as many people as will listen. Drop me a legalized document in the mail. We’ll make ownership transfer plans – I will care for your goods and properties as you embark on your sacred journey.

…But you won’t. You won’t do it because you borrowed the idea of heaven from someone else and you don’t really believe it yourself. It’s just your second-third-hundredth hand notion of the outcome of the finality of space-time events.

…Now, if you are going to hell, I would ask you why, and you, likewise, would give me your reasons why. You are a bad person – some kind of terrible, wretched sinner – or, you are having too much fun, and you deserve to burn for it all, and it’s all a joke to you because you don’t really believe that any more than the person who believes the heavenly outcomes.

Believing you are going to hell, however, reveals a special kind of ignorance, in my view, for if you really, really believe you are going to burn (some say rot) in hell, why in the hell don’t you do something, anything, which would prevent it from happening to you, that would potentially allow you to forego this outcome?

Hello! Who would want to spend however long eternity is – in hell? You would be completely out of your mind if you knew what you were truly saying and yet you persevered in the opinion that you were going to eventually end up, living down there.

Heaven and hell are inventions we came up with to explain the life we could know after this one. In the East they have invested similar energy in defending detailed concepts of reincarnation – a like-kind outcome, but with different sub-plots, different twists.

…By now, you might have already been offended. I have attacked something sacred in you, perhaps, or I have denigrated life, and the holiness of it. You are contemplating your own position in regards to what you are reading.

To offend is not my intention, I assure you. These are my streams of consciousness coming out; I am merely sharing my inner thoughts with you and, as you are a patient reader, we will continue together and get to thoughts with which you can freely live.

In the meanwhile let me also assure you that the only thing you have to defend yourself with, against my attacking notion of your future outcome (heaven or hell) is your own personal faith – your own individual set of convictions. So, it’s experience against experience, if you will. I say I might be right; you say you might be right. It’s a world of opinions; we both have the right to voice an opinion and if you are open-minded, you will hear me out on mine…

Now here it is: My opinion is that we are dreaming.

We don’t know reality. But that’s what I think about it.

Those of us on the earth circulate endlessly about, in our fuzzy lands of fogginess, or, if you prefer, our foggy lands of fuzziness – fuzzy, foggy; either one describes it; either is as good as the other. We penetrate walls and find they are holograms – not walls at all. We walk through holograms and smack our heads into walls, and have to put cold compresses on our heads to reduce the swelling. What seems real isn’t. What seems unreal is. Nothing is real. Everything is real. Everything and nothing are both real and unreal at the very same time. Life is a paradox. Life is a mystery. You don’t know. I don’t know. We don’t know. Who knows?

So whom can you believe? Heaven and hell are here-and-now states of mind. Which one do you live in?

Second Dream

I woke up today and felt great: this was going to be a fantastic day. I drank some coffee and thought about the day and planned on what I would do, and whom I would see. I pondered about how great it was to be alive. Life was a wonderful experience. My mind and body were in a state of universal oneness today.

As I was heading out for the occasion, I grabbed a taxi and went towards the center of the city. This was a fine day and so I tried not to notice the people lying on cardboard boxes, perhaps still hung over from the night before. This fine day I tried not to see too much of the old people, hands stretched out, begging for a few coins. This fine day I tried not to notice the blind guy, the leg-less guy, the one armed lady on crutches, the deformed child in the wheelchair, the retarded guy playing his guitar – all of this would down me out today.

I didn’t want to see what the Buddha went out and saw; I just wanted to have a good day. Could I have just this one fine day, and not let anyone, or any thought, ruin it for me? I feel so good today!

As the early afternoon tarried, I enjoyed the beautiful sights and sounds and sensations of the city. It was great to be alive. It was marvelous to be in the experience of that infamous moment. I spoke with friends from back home. I encouraged them to seek God, to be happy, and strive to understand their Universe better.

Later, logging onto the Internet, I slipped into a note-writing frenzy to various friends and family. I walked and talked and smiled and thought out loud, God, what a carefree day this is.

No rain clouds were in the air and it was going to be an enjoyable experience of weather today, on top of everything and anything else.

I tried not to notice the moochers on the street as they accosted me about their personal needs. I even encouraged a couple of them to go get a job. Now that was some advice they could use. I had worked hard all my life – they can work! Let them work like I did. Let them get it how I got it.

I spent the entire day downtown and felt so good I decided to walk all the way from the center, back home. The long walk occupied the better part of an hour but I enjoyed it. People seemed friendly and the weather was great and I was in a good mood.

…I got home and thought I’d watch some television. My remote control took me past some of those channels where they were asking for money for the countless starving children. This, so far, had been a good day. I watch enough of that as it is. I need to have a good evening to go along with the wonderful day I had. I ate some good food that was prepared – not by me, but for me – and I enjoyed some more of the evening before I determined that I was getting a bit tired.

…Then my mind flashed back to the cardboard boxes on the street as I got into bed. Fresh sheets and pillowcases felt good as I settled in for the night. I stretched out and relaxed. It had truly been an enjoyable day. I dozed off. Several hours passed.

I began to embark on a dark, dark dream.

When I woke up I tried to remember what it was that I was dreaming about. I couldn’t remember. I think I was struggling and trying to get someone to help me and fighting some series of obstacles and trying to get someone to listen – no one would. I think I was battling with God. It was some kind of terrible dream. People were suffering. Life was wretched.

I was glad when I woke up and found myself in the light of a new day. I showered and shook off the weird impressions of my un-awakened moments in the bed.

I shivered – God! That was a really weird dream!

…But this new day was going to be a great day today. I drank some coffee and thought about what I would do with this fine new day of mine that stretched hopefully before me.

Third Dream

Tonight, I went to sleep still again. When I woke up, I realized that the beautiful dream I had dreamed was not real. This was so disappointing; she had been very beautiful. She was in fact like some kind of goddess; I would miss her. Would she – could she – miss me too?

What am I – ignorant – self-absorbed, or both? No matter, I brewed up some coffee and gave contemplation to the new day.

The phone rang. Could it be a goddess calling me? Or maybe God Herself! No, it was my friend from Sierra Leonne. He was in town. We would meet on Saturday. I have not seen him for a couple of months. It will be nice to see him.

A little while later the phone rang again. This time, a crazy little "amiga was on the line. She and I talked for a few minutes and I suggested, Go with some of us today and see a movie." The one that we intended to see, she already had seen, so we talked for a few more minutes and then I told her to have a nice day and said goodbye.

…I then sat in thought on a common notion that was swimming around in my mind: could God call on me today? We sometimes need tangible proof that God exists and we wish God would just call. Oh, how wonderful to speak with God. Oh, how beautiful it is to communicate with the One we have striven to follow, worship, emulate, understand – how wonderful for that One to make contact with us today!

Wait a minute! Hold everything! Maybe God already did call me…and I missed the message in the call.

Where do we get this notion that God is not in us? Since we have never seen a creature, or being, we could point to and say, "Hey! Wow! There goes God! We don’t really know what we are looking for when we say we wish we could see or talk to" God. We are totally in the dark as to what we are looking for.

What does God look like? You are so smart. You think you know. But you have never seen It either. You have never seen a Force that could be contrived as being God. You only are guessing. You are merely making up ideas – contriving notions from inside of your mind – just about the same stuff I am doing.

I’ll be a whacko; are you ready for me to sound a bit whacked out? You may think I need a straightjacket, and you may even regret they don’t bring back burning at the steak (…stake) when I tell you this. Ready? Here goes: My friend, I talked to God, personally, several times just recently. I looked at God – over and over and over again this past week. I heard the voice of God when I lay in my bed and all was silent. I walked past God repeatedly. I spoke into His Face.

I ask you: Where isn’t God? What isn’t God? Who isn’t God? This lack of awareness is ultimately going to kill us. Let’s get it right: God is everywhere…there is no place that God isn’t. I talked to Him on the phone earlier, and then talked to Her on the phone a little bit later…and that was just a short while ago.

You will not be able to avoid God today. God will be driving your bus; God will be cutting across your path; God will be chirping over your head; God will be rippling across the water; God will be blossoming; God will be blooming; God will be yelling at children; God will be holding His hand out to you in the street; God will be barking at your butt; God will be soaking your umbrella; God will be eating lunch next to you; God will be growling in your stomach; God will be sweeping the storefront; God will be ringing a church bell; God will be flickering through the leaves; God will be zinging through overhead telephone lines; God will be reading the San Jose newspaper on a park bench; God will be baking sweet bread; God will be going to the restroom; God will be blowing in the wind; God will be walking down the street, dressed in what you wore to town today.

You want to see God? I don’t blame you. We all do. So, let’s go out and see God. When you are done showing me where God isn’t, let me show you where God is. God is Everywhere; God is in all things; God is all things. There is no thing that is not God. Show me where It’s not!

…I am so tired now. You must think I’m a heretic or a fanatic – or perhaps a bit of both: a heretical fanatic of sorts. After all, I have seen God in so many places. I have seen God in so many things. I have seen God in so many people.

I have to go to sleep now. I have to dream some more of God. I believe I’ve gotten quite enough of God today.

Fourth Dream

Well, I woke up in a cold sweat. The nightmares I had were so real to me. They (I don’t know exactly who they were – it was like an energy force) bore down on me, and in very hot pursuit. I don’t know what they would have done, had they caught me.

Perhaps they would have thrown me over the big bridge, the one provided conveniently for them in the dream. If I would have hit the bottom, would I now be dead? Ha! I don’t know the answer to that one; it seems that, one way or another, we always manage to avoid hitting the bottom…

Today I will see a special person in my life. I enjoy seeing her and spending time with her. It’s been a few days since I have seen her. I wonder – is she merely a dream to me? Is she an illusion? What is she really to me – just my newest drug, or something yet more?

Is she just a mirrored image of something that is not real? How did I get dependent on her so quickly? Oh, that one is easy…the dependency is an illusion. I figured that one out easily. I wish they were all that easy. Don’t you?

Hey, are you listening? Or are you dreaming too, just like me?

Beautiful dreamer you! Wake up with me and talk to me. So you can’t talk to me? Talk to that of what I am saying. Do it out aloud, to yourself. You know how you talk to yourself. Tell me (tell yourself) how you feel about what it is I am saying. Are you paying attention? Do you know what I am saying, or are you daydreaming too?

I am going to blow my nose and take a hot shower now. Maybe I’ll take the shower first, and then blow my nose. Can you figure out why I would do it that way? Or should I explain this? Okay, here it is then: when you are in a nice hot shower, the humidity from the water loosens up the congestion in the nasal membranes…then, when you get out and blow your nose, it will be a more productive blow.

I sometimes feel a father and mother to those I get to share silly ideas with, through the vehicle of these written works. In return, you often can never tell me anything. I don’t hear from you. I always drop these pearls of wisdom, but as to how you are responding to me, how can I know?

Thus far, I fully realize I have said nothing (as I’m still warming up!) It’s like the anxious, impatient feelings we get when we start dropping the crazy thoughts and sinking into a full, meditative state.

Never fear, though, because coming along soon, might be one of the four great thoughts that made the price of the book well worth it. Look for those thoughts in the midst of the ramblings! They are in there; I assure you, or your loot refunded! I reference the idea here that if a twenty dollar book gives you just four great thoughts, then your life is enhanced greatly – and all at the cost of only five bucks a thought.

What a deal?

…I must have been dreaming through those last few paragraphs. I can’t believe I shared nose-blowing insights with you. I have a great friend. Tina is her name. We are always sharing insight back and forth on such matters. She’s a nurse, and I’m practically a doctor (I base that on all the reading I have done in those big, fat medical books, and additionally, the many self-help tapes I have listened to.) We share lots of stuff back and forth.

At any rate, I got far too personal with you. This book is about existence, not about Michael jumping your butt about not paying attention, and definitely not about the art of the nose blow. I’ll try and remember that – please manage to forgive me. I want to be personal with you and treat all of this like a little fireside chat, with just you and I – and you are on my knee, like a grandchild, listening, while I am sharing the secrets of the universe with you.

…Or maybe I should be on your knee…how much do you weigh?

The other day a girl in a store said to me, Hey, you’re that ‘One with the Universe guy’, aren’t you? I was a bit dazzled, but managed a proud reply that I was certainly he. But then she split without asking any follow-up questions, and I was left to ponder – right there, in my typical anonymity – the ideas of God and Man, and the union between the two.

I really did feel like talking to her about it. But she had to make a hasty exit. It’s mostly a lonely job being a One with the Universe guy. We toil in such solitude you know.

Well, how would you know anyway! Are you One with the Universe yourself?

…I am shutting down now, puffed out already from this line of reasoning. Tapping inner existence doesn’t always mean sharing great truths from the Distant Kosmos. Sometimes you get diamonds; most of the time you get chunks of dusty rock. I got too little sleep last night and the nightmare woke me up; I think I need a small, little nappie.

I haven’t had a nippie, in spite of what you might imagine; I don’t do nippie’s anymore. A nappie, however, sounds good for now. I will stack some pillows and about three stuffed bears, right up next to me. Then I’ll try not to dream about being trapped in the body of Goldilocks – get it?

…Oh, forget it… I should quit saying everything that comes to mind – but after all, that’s the idea of the book. I’m sure things will get better, as we roll along…

Fifth Dream

Today I went on an imaginary bus trip to an imaginary city and saw some imaginary people and ate some imaginary food and walked down some imaginary streets and enjoyed the imaginary wild parrots flying overhead. Then I woke up.

Am I now awake, or do I still sleep?

This is a riddle. Can you answer it?

I can, but I still have a fifty percent chance of being wrong. Yes, I was in a state of awakened consciousness all right, when my body-mind jumped the bus and went to the Costa Rican city of Cartago, where I enjoyed the afternoon. Yes, my mind-body did all those things and yes, they were not things that occurred while I was in the bed. But they could have been; there is woeful little difference. Dreaming and awakening are first cousins. You can’t always tell the difference in them.

Tonight (unless I was dreaming it) a close companion of mine told me on the telephone that she ran into a girl today who used to live upstairs from her in an apartment complex. They commenced to reminisce and she confessed to the girl that, during the entire four years of living there, she had spent the time in some kind of a coma.

The other girl didn’t hesitate to tell her that she, too, had lived in a coma during those same four years; I think that both of them were going through painful separations from long-term relationships. They compared notes and both agreed they were in some form of awakened sleep during those difficult periods of their lives.

I surely get that one, don’t you?

I’m not just making this stuff up about consciousness and waking sleep. Have you ever looked back on blocks of your life and viewed them as though they were some kind of blur?

We never really come out of the coma, mind you. We can exist into hibernation, begin to stir, open one eye, move around, stretch, yawn, shake, tremble, yawn again, mumble a couple of illegible words, and slip right back into hibernation. This cycle frequently goes on for about seventy or eighty years, perhaps, prior to lapsing even deeper into the condition. But this time we never recover from it – it’s a state we call commonly call death.

…I am now home from the bus trip that might as well have never taken place. It was all a waking dream as my life is a waking dream. I can’t tell you much about the experience except that events occurred in it that transpired at certain space-time coordinates that I am not able now to go back and verify. They are trapped, forever, in the past; the bus, its occupants, driver, and all material components, features and aspects…might as well had never been…in fact…were they ever here at all? I don’t know. The day is gone, and the memory of it is slipping fast, right along with it. (You’ll perhaps get this more, with time.)

If you want to know, I think maybe even the bus was dreaming, too. We were all dreaming. It was all a dream. Why do we treat these dreams of ours as reality? I surely don’t know. We should have somehow learned, by now, to see them for what they are…

I should say this, now: You need to be a patient reader…as time proceeds I feel this dreaming world I keep claiming exists will become clearer….

So now I have a stomachache from eating all of that imaginary food over there in Cartago. The "pinto y huebos" (essentially beans, rice and eggs), as well as those yummy bakery items they sell, are causing me some stomach discomfort. When I go on these imaginary excursions, I need to eat less imaginary food while in them. If the truth were known, however, it would reveal that there is no stomachache. I am imagining the stomachache, right along with imagining that I have an aspect of my body called a stomach. Nothing is real. Matter, in the physical world, only appears and disappears, dips in, bops back out, makes its way in and out of the physical universe, and never really embraces and maintains recognizable forms for long.

I guess I am stating that I don’t wish to remain encapsulated in skin and bones. I am better off to transcend this condition. I am deciding now to do this, and am no longer permitting myself to be pushed around by the physical elements in my universe. I am preparing to stop all of this nonsense; it has gone on long enough.

Wait a minute! Something is happening just now! Yes, I am stirring. I am coming around. I am awakening from my slumber. One eye opens, and then, the other. The light shines in every part of this blue room. It’s morning. It’s time to get up. Another day is underway. I had a dream – something about being trapped in some kind of condition or some deal about being imprisoned or something like that. Wow, how weird. I don’t know; it seems to be fading now. It’s fading away. I don’t remember. It’s gone…

…What do I need to do today?

Sixth Dream

I only racked up four fast hours of sleep last night and so I am really tired now. Goofy dreams in the night are irking me, and the days are flying by so quickly. I don’t know what to think about that – is it good or bad? What is good and bad; someone please for once and for all, tell me!

Today I need to get closer to God. Today I need to meditate more. Today I need to read. Today I need to see the world through a more opened set of eyes. Today I need to recognize God. Today I need to get with it! Today I need to get off my butt and get something done! Today is the first day of the rest of my dream! Today is yet another dream!

Today is just another dream! No matter what I do. No matter how much I read. No matter how much meditation and eye opening and recognizing I do, it won’t change the fact that this is a dream, and I am a beautiful dreamer; my new Costa Rican driver’s license picture proves that.

And oh yes! If they only knew to whom they were issuing a driver’s license…

I have had so much trouble driving cars in the United States. I have lost my license a couple of times, and am always getting pulled over and getting tickets. I have a history of driving carelessly and barely observing signs at all. Those signs are all in clear and legible English! I drive over, under and in between speed limits and worst of all, I have the regrettable habit of forgetting that I am behind the wheel when I am thinking about something more important – stuff like my condition of Oneness with the All, and worldly, terrestrial matters such as that.

And now, here I am, sporting this new Costa Rican driver’s license.

My friend, Carlos, told me he would get it done on behalf of his special buddy, for cheap. Previously, I thought Carlos was mostly full of hot air, but we glided through the process in a totally painless state of bliss. Carlos impressed me, pulling strings with the big shots at the San Jose branch of the bureau of motorized vehicles.

Now, I have this I.D. from Costa Rica, and predominately it shows a picture of this lovely, bald-headed guy with blue glasses – eyes to match – and a big smile, put there mostly by my friend, Harold, DDS.

So, I’m not what I seem. Hell, don’t laugh! You’re a far cry from real reality, too, I bet! Isn’t that true with most of us?

But the officials here in Costa Rica don’t need to know about all of the sidebar stuff. Believe me; they’ve got worse problems to deal with than this metaphysical maniac wandering around, looking at cloud formations, touching things to see if they are real or just fake.

In this land, there are some certified whacko’s living and hiding out. One gringo friend said that the Americans that come here are either, Wanted, or not wanted, in the good old U.S. of A.

Okay…

I am now drunker with fatigue than previously I had suspected. I really need some sleep but I feel like you are tired, too, and telling yourself to get through this chapter before putting the book to bed, and going there yourself. Thus, I feel I should keep on keeping on (another tired cliché used mostly just to annoy) for a while, at least, so that I can finish Dream Six – that actually just started – but also so that you can finish reading Dream Six, so that perhaps, we – both drunken bums in a whipped up state of fatigue – can get some collective shut-eye.

But I have more important things to say. Please then, don’t talk, stay put, and read on – and don’t be offended at how I am when I am sleepy. Just think of how you can be.

The first, other important thing, I would like to issue, is this statement to the Costa Rican government: I have yet to drive a motorized vehicle in your country. I beg you to not confiscate my new license just because you believe some mumbo-jumbo in a book I wrote that probably only sold eleven or twelve copies here in your country.

Having said all of that, I have this to say: I am thankful for the experience of living life; it is not that I am so sure about the reality of life – after all, a hundred short years from now, unless I eventually say something really, really profound, how is anyone going to prove I was even here? It’s just that I have come to understand that whatever this life is – it most certainly should be appreciated and enjoyed accordingly.

We are so serious about it all, and I don’t know why we are that way. We need to take some collective, deep breaths…and a collective chill pill as well, to go with them, and then get a proverbial grip on things.

Let’s do that right now in fact! 1-2-3 breaths – chill – get a grip! Now do it again! 1-2-3 breaths – chill – get a grip!

Ah yes, that’s better. Now we can maybe even think about ending Dream Six, and getting some snooze time in.

How does that sound?

Sorry my friend! I’m still not really that tired! Put a bookmark in