Is Life a Dream, as Some Spiritual Traditons Say It Is?

© 2010 Peter Free

 

11 July 2010

 

The life equals dream analogy is actually not far-fetched

 

In trying to divorce us from our ego attachments, spiritual teachers from Eastern Hemisphere traditions sometimes say that we (a) exist in a dream or (b) are dreamers dreaming life.

 

Concrete thinkers/experiencers among us scoff.  But the dream analogy has basis in the way our minds work, particularly with age.

 

Wandering away from the Now injects a dream-like surreality into retrospective moments

 

The dream analogy kicks in, when we recognize our minds drifting away from total focus on the present moment.

 

As soon as our mental perspective drifts toward consideration of past moments, it invites us to seek illusory continuity of, or integrated meaning in, our pasts.

 

Arguably, neither exists.

 

This is true, especially for those of us comfortable with ambiguity and less in need of absolutist paradigms to force meaning where there is none.  Our personal pasts, seen this retrospective way, seem disconnected.

 

(Perhaps my erratic occupational and geographic background lends itself more forcefully to this impression than other people’s more unitary lives do.)

 

Hence, the basis for the masters’ statements, “There is no I” or “I am that”

 

Ego is certainly the enemy of contentment.  The less attached to it we become, the more we recognize that the essence of consciousness is awareness.  Awareness operates without the (unnecessary) baggage that comes with a sense of unified and separate I-ness.

 

Consequently, if we are looking backward and evaluating the meaning of our lives (while having matured beyond the need of a coherent “I” to unify what is seen), the dream analogy becomes more forceful.  Our lives ─ like the erratic, often inexplicable, wanderings of a dream ─ flowed where they would (and will) for no obvious reason.

 

In a sense, the only tie connecting our life’s serially experienced moments is Consciousness adrift on an indescribable current.

 

The caveat to the dream analogy is that our minds are not trustworthy perceivers

 

As I have written elsewhere, our minds are not trustworthy perceivers of anything beyond that which is necessary to keep us fed, procreated, and away from predators (or other painful inconveniences).

 

The dream analogy may be crap.