Green Mist Theory 08:08

Tags

dreams, escape the matrix, reality, The matrix

All this came to me, fully realised, in a dream.

You created a machine, a robot cyborg of flesh and blood, the movies etc. are clues or faint echoes of this truth.  We think they are fantastic fantasy but they are nowhere near as exciting as the truth:  We were ‘mist’ (we are energy) and we created a vessel that can cry and feel and we created the world we live in.  But then we got distracted by our bodies and sex and forgot.  (I even got/get distracted by that in the dream/my dreams).

Look in the mirror, at yourself crying, at your face melting, at it going through all ages.

Me to my mum: ‘Mum, are you awake?’  (Use of the word ‘Mum’ as a mindfulness bell (or spinning top, or programmed pendulum) as I don’t call her that).  ‘Is there a club for people who are awake?  Is there training?’ ‘Yes, in a mental institution.’  Oh yes of course, you’d think I’d gone mad… But it’s everyone else that’s mad, the mad people are the sane ones.  But fair enough, you’d think I’d gone mad if I said ‘None of this is real’.  The trick is, to know the truth but to still carry on living in the world (to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible).  We did this for a reason, perhaps we forget for a reason?  Maybe sex, and beauty etc was a trick we inserted to help us forget.

We made the body like people make robots but then it began to become real (like robot AI stories again) so yes, when you feed something, it grows.  And so we began to feel emotions in our bodies, emotions began to live and be processed in our bodies; so that our bodies became more than just a vehicle to hold the mist in or to transmorgophy the mist.  We only really need to remember this at death, that these bodies were only made up, and that we go back to being mist, and that this adventure was just a dream.

You get more out of the experience of being here by not being locked in a mental institution so it’s best to follow the earlier advice and keep most of this to yourself.

 

My attempts to ‘start a conversation’ and wake everyone up, were hey, let’s talk about being little kids, about when you toilet trained, about toilet stuff, hey, I wet myself once, or what about sexually when you are a child, did you ever, or let’s talk about sexual abuse… (groans from John)  okay, okay, let’s talk about… and John as old, lots of grey hair, beard.

(Not, how you used to always have in your draft manuscript as a footer, ‘all you have to do is meditate’- all you have to do is write, (which you are doing) so you don’t actually have to do anything: stop studying, stop meditating, stop all ‘spiritual practices’).

Looking in the mirror and crying, saying, what if I could create a machine that cried and moved how I wanted and could change its expression, and, and, and, that I could totally inhabit, so that even my emotions would be felt in its fleshy parts, because this machine is flesh not plastic and metal.  Oh look, I did.

Re aliens:  we are aliens.  We transmorgophied, and dropped into, or integrated into, living spacesuits, hence all the sci fi things along this line (no wonder I don’t like them).  They distract us by giving us something that seems fantastic yet the truth is far more amazing- it’s not made up on television, it’s here, in front of the mirror, take a look, if you look carefully, you can see.  (And if you take magic mushrooms, you can literally see)

Bodies are important as they are our vehicle to live on here and do things, so look after them.

Practical application: do my best to look and act normal at work; do as little as possible, for now, out of work, in order to leave space to remember to remember and to write it down.  Cease all spiritual practices.  Allow maintenance, allow reminder activities? Cease seeking behaviours but allow documentation?  My reminder activities:  read my writing, write my writing, old stuff, and maybe new stuff, read books e.g. Russell Hoban and Krishnamurti and Liz Gilbert.  Quiet time, meditation, contemplation, self healing, exploration.  Do healing, do writing, food and exercise of course, no fb just check for messages.

Mum:  ‘People used to say, remember to remember, but I’ve forgotten what that was about.’

But we must have done it for a reason (made these machines to live (love?) in and come down to live in this world) and seeing as when we die we go back to being green mist again, then that must mean that whatever the reason is it is what we do on the planet with physical bodies.

So it’s not correct to say ‘none of this matters’ and maybe it’s not actually correct to say ‘none of this is real’ because it’s what we’ve got- it’s all we’ve got, until our bodies expire.    You can spend some time hanging about as green mist (e.g. meditating, doing metta bhavna) and that is very nice but I wonder if it is not what you are here for?  You weren’t given, you don’t transmorgophy into a body and arrive here to sit in a room on your own and play at being mist again.

It’s useful to look down at yourself from the point of view of the green mist.  E.g. when to take a break from the computer, when to leave work on time.

In the dream I kept trying to write this all down but kept falling asleep or not being able to read it back, or kept getting distracted by sex, and then someone said they would read it out to me from a book, so I thought, oh well, it’s in a book, of course it is, I thought I’d thought of that myself…. but it isn’t in a book, unless I write it.

(This really did come to me in a dream, a couple of years ago now.  It’s old, but it’s still pretty good!)

The story so far

Tags

dreams, gratitude, Law of Attraction, meditation, reality, religion, spirit, spirituality, therapy, writing

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness

Chapter 1:  The story so far

 

A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.  Franz Kafka   

For Book, you can substitute Love.  This is my story:

 

In 2009 I drove to work in the morning and watched the pink and gold sky split open.  Driving home in the evening I passed outrageously lit up lorries that looked like fun fair rides.  Somehow I managed to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible.  For the next six years, I followed the trail.  I always joke that it was like Eat Pray Love but without the travel.

I meditated and felt as if my skin was being bathed in soap and soft water.  I saw situations worked out from behind my closed eyelids.  I had the most amazing physical sensations.  I took up Yoga.  I had deep tissue massage and experienced profound physical and emotional release as she worked my knots out until her fingers got down to my bones.

I practiced Paganism and Wicca, I went for walks and stared at leaves, gathered foliage, wrote spells and held rituals every full moon for almost a year.  I was invited to a women and Islam open day.  I bought books and began praying five times a day.  For a few weeks my life was illuminated.

I chanted the Hare Krishna Mantra every morning for three months.  Things led on from each other.  I felt purified, and wanted to feel even better.  I had trouble with someone at work.  In meditation I said, I have no protection against this person.  The answer came: oh yes you do, you have this.

I did an evening class in Buddhism.  Stepping out onto the top floor of the car park after class, the sky filled with birds, the breeze cool and warm at the same time.  Listening to The Stone Roses on the way home:  This is the one, this is the one she’s waited for, yes, I thought, yes, this is it.  But no sooner had I filled the house with Buddhas than I woke up one day and realised I had burned through that as well.  Or it had burned through me, whatever.

I read The Secret and practiced The Law of Attraction.  Not to get cheques in the post or to get parking spaces, but just because it made life easy and more beautiful.  Simple things like walking up to a crossing and it turns green just as I get there.  To the sublime:  Arriving home one night I pulled into the car park, and in the second before I turned into the parking space the headlights lit up the hedge in front of me and I saw a mouse on a branch.   A mouse on a branch!   Almost immediately, the thought came into my head:  I hope you enjoyed that, because it won’t happen again.  I thought straight back, yeah, I did enjoy it, and no, I don’t expect it to happen again, who would.  And I don’t need it to happen again, because I saw it the first time.

As well as experiencing anything and everything I was also searching for a spiritual or scientific explanation that made sense to me.   A unifying theory, if you like.   After about six years of searching it arrived in my mind fully realised in a dream:  we’re all green mist, we created these bodies because without bodies we can’t pick up a pen and write poetry or kiss each other.  But the kissing and the poetry are so distracting that we forgot that we’re green mist come down for a human experience…  but maybe that’s the point.  You can’t enjoy a party if you stand at the door with your coat on and maybe spiritual beings can’t enjoy a human experience on earth unless they fall in feet first and forget their previous incarnation….

I woke up on the massage table as if I had just arrived there and looked at this new person in the mirror:  hair everywhere, skin glowing, mind wiped clean of all previous concerns.  But you wake up again every moment, and in this moment I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be than right here.

Chapter 12: Green Mist Theory 8:08

Tags

dreams, meditation, mental health, reality, religion

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 12: Green Mist Theory 8:08

This came to me, fully realised, in a dream:

You created a machine, a robot cyborg of flesh and blood, the movies etc. are clues or faint echoes of this truth.  We think they are fantastic fantasy but they are nowhere near as exciting as the truth:  We were ‘mist’ (we are energy) and we created a vessel that can cry and feel and we created the world we live in.  But then we got distracted by our bodies and sex and forgot.  (I even got/get distracted by that in the dream/my dreams).

Look in the mirror, at yourself crying, at your face melting, at it going through all ages.

Me to my mum: ‘Mum, are you awake?’  (Use of the word ‘Mum’ as a mindfulness bell (or spinning top, or programmed pendulum) as I don’t call her that).  ‘Is there a club for people who are awake?  Is there training?’ ‘Yes, in a mental institution.’  Oh yes of course, you’d think I’d gone mad… But it’s everyone else that’s mad, the mad people are the sane ones.  But fair enough, you’d think I’d gone mad if I said ‘None of this is real’.  The trick is, to know the truth but to still carry on living in the world (to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible).  We did this for a reason, perhaps we forget for a reason?  Maybe sex, and beauty etc was a trick we inserted to help us forget.

We made the body like people make robots but then it began to become real (like robot AI stories again) so yes, when you feed something, it grows.  And so we began to feel emotions in our bodies, emotions began to live and be processed in our bodies; so that our bodies became more than just a vehicle to hold the mist in or to transmorgophy the mist.  We only really need to remember this at death, that these bodies were only made up, and that we go back to being mist, and that this adventure was just a dream.

You get more out of the experience of being here by not being locked in a mental institution so it’s best to follow the earlier advice and keep most of this to yourself.

 

My attempts to ‘start a conversation’ and wake everyone up, were hey, let’s talk about being little kids, about when you toilet trained, about toilet stuff, hey, I wet myself once, or what about sexually when you are a child, did you ever, or let’s talk about sexual abuse… (groans from John)  okay, okay, let’s talk about… and John as old, lots of grey hair, beard.

(Not, how you used to always have in your draft manuscript as a footer, ‘all you have to do is meditate’- all you have to do is write, (which you are doing) so you don’t actually have to do anything: stop studying, stop meditating, stop all ‘spiritual practices’).

Looking in the mirror and crying, saying, what if I could create a machine that cried and moved how I wanted and could change its expression, and, and, and, that I could totally inhabit, so that even my emotions would be felt in its fleshy parts, because this machine is flesh not plastic and metal.  Oh look, I did.

Re aliens:  we are aliens.  We transmorgophied, and dropped into, or integrated into, living spacesuits, hence all the sci fi things along this line (no wonder I don’t like them).  They distract us by giving us something that seems fantastic yet the truth is far more amazing- it’s not made up on television, it’s here, in front of the mirror, take a look, if you look carefully, you can see.  (And if you take magic mushrooms, you can literally see)

Bodies are important as they are our vehicle to live on here and do things, so look after them.

Practical application: do my best to look and act normal at work; do as little as possible, for now, out of work, in order to leave space to remember to remember and to write it down.  Cease all spiritual practices.  Allow maintenance, allow reminder activities? Cease seeking behaviours but allow documentation?  My reminder activities:  read my writing, write my writing, old stuff, and maybe new stuff, read books e.g. Russell Hoban and Krishnamurti and Liz Gilbert.  Quiet time, meditation, contemplation, self healing, exploration.  Do healing, do writing, food and exercise of course, no fb just check for messages.

Mum:  ‘People used to say, remember to remember, but I’ve forgotten what that was about.’

But we must have done it for a reason (made these machines to live (love?) in and come down to live in this world) and seeing as when we die we go back to being green mist again, then that must mean that whatever the reason is it is what we do on the planet with physical bodies.

So it’s not correct to say ‘none of this matters’ and maybe it’s not actually correct to say ‘none of this is real’ because it’s what we’ve got- it’s all we’ve got, until our bodies expire.    You can spend some time hanging about as green mist (e.g. meditating, doing metta bhavna) and that is very nice but I wonder if it is not what you are here for?  You weren’t given, you don’t transmorgophy into a body and arrive here to sit in a room on your own and play at being mist again.

It’s useful to look down at yourself from the point of view of the green mist.  E.g. when to take a break from the computer, when to leave work on time.

In the dream I kept trying to write this all down but kept falling asleep or not being able to read it back, or kept getting distracted by sex, and then someone said they would read it out to me from a book, so I thought, oh well, it’s in a book, of course it is, I thought I’d thought of that myself…. but it isn’t in a book, unless I write it.

Chapter 11: Signs

Tags

angels, dreams, gratitude, happiness, healing, Law of Attraction, meditation, mental health, mindfulness, reality, spirituality, The Secret, therapy, writing

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 11:  Signs

 

Those of us who are awake to the Universe but who have not adopted or been adopted by a particular faith have to be flexible, I believe, in where we get our support from.  The whole world is ours but we need to be discerning in order to read our own Bible from the world around us, as it presents itself, in each moment.  It’s like running your fingertips along a fence and on one in every thousand railings there is a message written in Braille that seems just for you.

Perhaps especially for women, with no religion that’s female led or totally okay for women other than Paganism or Wicca or some New Age stuff; and with the toxic nature of much of the news and advertising, we have to keep our ears pricked and eyes wide open for those helpful messages that still abound in listening to Radio 4 on the way to work or seeing adverts at bus stops or watching box sets at home.

I learned almost everything I needed from the streets, the rest I learned from films and books (Mozart in the Jungle  watched during a free trial of Amazon Prime over Christmas).

Starve your ego, feed your soul (sign outside Earlham road Norwich shop)

From the moment we’re born we’re seeking (advert on YouTube)

There is no time for regrets, it’s far better to see where you are now and work from there (my stars in a magazine at the hairdresser’s).

We all search in different ways (advert on YouTube).

Charlie Higson on R2 Chris Evans, he said, if you write something that’s good, it will get published, there’s no magic trick or secret doorway.  (okay, it was advice to kids who want to become writers, but I was listening to it at that moment, so I am taking it).

How do you know it was meant for you:  you were listening/looking at the time, no one ‘put it there for you’ you, I don’t believe, to quote Nick Cave, in an interventionist God, it’s all just us, learning to read our path out of all the billions of possibilities that exist within every second.

Like just now:  I misspelt seeking for seining, I didn’t know what it meant so I went on the online dictionary and there on the home page was the ‘Word of the Day’:  ACCOMPLISH, to finish something successfully or to achieve something.

Maybe that was it, just a little encouragement that I will finish this book, and if you are reading this, it’s because I did.  (and btw, ‘seining’ does not even appear to be a word at all according to the Cambridge online dictionary, it’s just that for some reason* my spell check doesn’t pick it up).

* I needed encouragement?

It’s about being open minded and flexible and the more you notice these things, the more of them appear, so it goes from every thousandth time to every other rail you touch seems to have a message for you….  and then it becomes about balancing keeping your feet on the ground and head in the clouds.

I am noticing that the answers to everything are all around me- sometimes people tell me things directly, sometimes they are chatting or advising each other and I hear.  Sometimes it is less immediately interesting to me and then when I review it I notice things for me.   This is why it is important not to do too much, not to expose yourself to too much stuff, to be discerning about who you spend time with and what you do and where you go, because, although the energies of the universe are unlimited, the hours in my day are not.

 

Driving on the dual carriageway, I see ‘DIE’ on the number plate of a lorry and wonder if I should move into the inside lane.  But maybe you just see what’s reflected, i.e., everything is there, but you notice what matches what you are feeling- the number plate matches my anxiety about driving.  Even the Earlham road shop sign (a blackboard with a different message on each day) that I like so much, why am I so keen on looking at it?  What do I want to it to tell me?  So maybe signs are just a reflection of what you feel- a visual interpretation of what you feel;  useful if you don’t know how you feel, but if you do, then perhaps it’s best to look inside not outside.

 

Arriving home late one night, I pulled into the car cark and in the second before I reversed into the parking space the car headlights lit up the bushes in front of me and I saw a mouse on a branch.  A mouse, on a branch!  Almost immediately, the thought came to me:  I hope you enjoyed that, because you aren’t going to see that again.  But that’s not really the point; 1), I did see it, and I am very grateful for the fact that I did;  a mouse on a branch, how many people get to see that!  2) I have the memory; I wouldn’t expect to see it again.  3) There are other things to see: and often in a series, more and more beautiful as long as you are open to this process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8: Big Magic

Tags

Art, dreams, gratitude, happiness, mental health, relationships, spirituality, Work, writing

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 8:  Big Magic 

 

I read Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s book Big Magic, about creativity.  In it she mentions ‘those dreams where you dream you suddenly find another room or rooms in your house that you didn’t know you had’, and I thought, really, that’s a thing?  I have those dreams regularly.  I usually dream about the same flat, not one I have ever had in real life, but in my dreams I return to the same one over and over.  It’s one of those old terraced houses divided into flats; messy, lots of other flats around.  Each time I dream it, I rediscover a whole other set of rooms that are a bit neglected and that I have simply forgotten about.  In the dream I wonder what to do with them, which room to sleep in, what to use the rooms for; I suddenly have all this extra space I don’t know what to do with.

I also have other dreams, where I open a bag of rubbish or I open a drawer and it’s filled with old cat food tins that haven’t been washed and have gone off and are filled with maggots.  I have to somehow make myself quickly pick them up and get rid of them without looking at them otherwise I would be unable to do it.  And I’ve let all the other rubbish pile up as well, I can’t understand it, the cat food tins or the rubbish, and I am appalled.

In real life I can let my car get very messy, tissues, wrappers, dust and stones.  I am somewhat ashamed even though I still do it.  So I thought the dream was about that, that I was ashamed of myself.

Worse still, I sometimes dream about caged animals that I have forgotten to look after, that I somehow inexplicably forgotten I had and that are mercifully still alive despite no food or water.  I thought all these dreams were about shame, or at the very least, clattiness.

So when I continued reading and Elizabeth Gilbert went on to say that those dreams are all about ‘expansiveness and your life having more possibilities than you previously realised’, that was very pleasing to me.  Especially as this was exactly what I had been feeling:  the evening before I had gone out for dinner with two people that used to work in my team, young women on their first jobs, with me the manager of the team and their supervisor.  I had the sweet and rare experience of hearing about what I was like (it had echoes of a child asking its mother what was I like tell me what I was like when I was little…) That was a few years ago so I have probably changed a lot but still, no one really tells you what you are like, you can only guess.

When  I said that I thought that senior management preferred a man in my team to me because he’s always the same, always unemotional, always smartly dressed, and his car is neat and clean and mine is always messy they looked horrified.  Your leadership, your direction, your care, you’re amazing how you get it all done, we were so lucky we had you for support, they both said.  They reminded me of all the different tasks I do and the skills I have, and said that if I ever wanted or needed another job I’d have no problem getting one with the agency they work for.  The agency pays more so I could work less hours.  Listening to them, I felt all the possibilities, being able to do healing as well, expansiveness…  When I used to just think about all the bad stuff- I am messy, senior management probably disapprove of me, without realising, I actually have skills!  One of the women invited me to visit her in Sweden, a genuine invite, and hearing about her life there, how she’d moved there from Suffolk, was so interesting and inspiring and made it sound so easy.  It made it sound so easy to change your life.

On a more down to earth level, it took away my fear of redundancy, knowing there are plenty of jobs and the world is more than just my current workplace.  It’s such an amazing gift, the gift of peace of mind, and a sign that I am in tune with the universe.

I realised I had it wrong:  those dreams weren’t about my clattiness or my buried shames, they were about the hithererto unknown expansiveness and potential of my own life.   I have nothing to be ashamed of.  At worst, the unfed animals were a gentle chide or reminder about my sometimes neglected creative work…

Because although I am where I want to be writing wise anyway really, in terms of where I was this time last year and where I am now, undoubtedly I am an inconsistent and unfaithful bride to creativity.  I certainly don’t have Liz Gilbert’s dedication and approach; I have other things, true, an absorbing career which is practically a vocation- can you have two vocations, can you have them at the same time?  I suppose so, look at Nick Hornby and countless others.

This time last year (Christmas), I did a little review of life and I had an idea for something to write this year.  Then I got waylaid in Buddhism and other seeking and beyond seeking, even considering that writing was behind me along with all the different religions I had burned through, because, I had decided:  I am to cease all seeking behaviour, and writing is a seeking behaviour.  And maybe it was, maybe it is, but isn’t talking, isn’t breathing, isn’t yoga, and who makes up the rules anyway?

Still, in spite of leaving it (the writing) for a month, three months, I still had a word document, two notebooks and many pieces of paper, including for some reason, notes in my makeup basket, enough to retype fairly straightforwardly into another little ‘My Spiritual Journey’ book- is this a genre?  (Look up- Yes:  It’s called ‘Spiritual memoir’).

On Writing, I tell myself, re this book- ‘you don’t need to find out anymore’ (she says, famously having said that before) ‘just write down what you have found already’.

So I ended up in a place I am happy to be in.  If I worked my guts out I could maybe have something complete in a few weeks-  or at least it feels like that anyway- which is where I’d have been if I had been more consistent- but I never am consistent- which brings me back to Liz- do I need to make a commitment, hold  a ceremony and dedicate myself to writing?  Or do I just commit to completing this project by writing it every day or almost every day, until it is done?  Because I don’t have Liz’s stubborn consistent determination I get or got distracted by my spiritual quest.  Maybe now that (my spiritual quest) is done (or so I think right now) I can concentrate on writing.  I don’t do facebook or watch television, but because I have the career, and the healing, am I dissipated?  Should I just focus on one thing and see what happens if I don’t ‘dissipate my energies’?  But I am talking nonsense of course- I have to work, even she (Liz G) advises it, and I can’t type all the time anyway, it makes my hand ache.  There’s time enough for everything.

The thing that got me writing again after I had abandoned it, was writing a spoken word piece for a friend’s 50th Birthday.  She said it could be about anything, so I wrote a ‘my spiritual journey’ thing, the only thing I felt able to write about.  I wrote it while listening to Rufus Wainright’s song  Go or go ahead on repeat, which he wrote after a crystal meth binge.

Liz G says creative inspiration can either come in a skin tingling rush or it can be quiet and you just get there by following your curiosity and clues and it leads you there.  Or it can be like this…  I read a book, it mentioned a dream, I listen to a song at just the right moment, I recall a dream, I write it down.  And now I am in such a clear eyed clear minded place, isn’t this the perfect place from which to write a book?

Chapter 5 Dreams

Tags

Art, dreams, reality, spirituality, therapy

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 5 Dreams

I dreamt I was about to go out in front of an audience, in a play.  I thought, that’s not me, then I thought, well I obviously chose to do it, I must have signed up, gone to rehearsals and so on, been a willing participant, so it obviously is me now.

Are dreams something to do with it?  I dreamed of walking though the ruins of a once grand hotel, all red velvet, mahogany and broken mirrors, with arty alternative people, smouldering bonfires, a cool punk band playing in the bandstand.  Twenty years ago this would have been the place of my dreams but I didn’t stop, I just walked on past.  I was hungry, I was looking for toasted sandwiches and a cup of tea.

Are dreams a pictorial version, an easy-read explanation of The Field of Possibilities and how to navigate and understand it?  As well as showing me that the things that I liked 20 years ago, however much I liked them, it is okay to not be interested in them now.

For the first time in forever I haven’t got a to do list or a pile of lists of half done things or scribbles on leaflets.  Stuff is done, put in the diary or on the mantelpiece or does not need to be written down (not that that used to stop me).  This is so much more momentous than it sounds.

‘Fall into the Vortex and let the Universe do its stuff’.  And this is what it does- it sorts everything out with the minimum of fuss, stress and effort (all you have to do is meditate).

I get hot, a lot of heat, hands, feet and heart, tingly, itchy, uncomfortable, like it’s burning through me, burning away all my mistakes, regrets, who I used to be.  Leaving only who I am now, who I am, who am I?  Who am I?  Echoes back, just an echo?  Is anything we experience just a sonar echo, just ourselves, plumbing and gauging the depths, pretending there’s something else out there when really we are all alone.  Except that we aren’t all alone, we have ourselves. 

Last night’s meditation: burning, searing, at my heart, clearing old issues, attitudes to middle age and also accepting my age and accepting that a lot of my antipathy was due to how I felt about myself getting older.  (I used to be very down on salt and pepper bobs, parrot earrings and yoga cliques; I was searching for my own role model)

Scary dream re Sydney bridge wobbly, huge, glass floor, felt as if could fall in, etc, then the morning after I read in a magazine about ‘housewife dreams’- the nicer and calmer you have to be in the day, the more violent your dreams, maybe  it’s the same with getting braver in day= scary dreams.

Call off the Search: How I Stopped Seeking and Found Peace

Tags

depression, dreams, gratitude, love, marriage, mental health, relationships, religion, spirituality, Work, writing

Call off the Search

How I stopped seeking and found peace

I have written another little book and will be putting it out chapter by chapter via this blog.  I hope you enjoy it!

I dreamed I was dead

Tags

death, dreams, reality, spirituality

It was so vivid and believable that it stayed with me for days and forced me to question the nature of reality; not for the first time, but for the strongest and most frightening and potentially disabling.

I thought we had died in a car crash on the A47. A bit of me thought we might still be half alive but very badly injured and for a while I half tried or thought about whether or not I should, or could, get back. Even if I could, would I want to? The pain, the long journey of rehabilitation. Then I thought, well, you probably can’t choose anyway. Then I felt bad for not trying harder, for my son. I thought about him just about to start art school, how awful, but then I saw everyone wrapping around him, friends, the teachers, fellow students, and I thought, he would be okay, it would become part of his biography when they describe him as an artist.

What do the dead people do? Just live on in the world with the alive people, pretending to be alive, or do they move into another universe that looks the same, where they carry on just as if they were alive, seeing their children growing up, even though they weren’t real. Eating and drinking and going to the toilet even though they don’t need to be doing any of that, going to the supermarket, all the things we do, when none of it is real, it’s just made up to pass the time. Are the dead people held there, trying to learn, to see what they would have done, like in Deal or no Deal when they play on even after it is over? But why would we be given a fake world to live in, what would be the point?

After a few days I came to the conclusion that I had just experienced a glimpse of reality-as-created-by-us: our thoughts and actions. Whether or not it is real it is the only one I am in. Whether or not I should be in another one, was in another one, left it, died, whatever, right now I am here. Whatever we are in must be treated as real; it is our thoughts and actions and spirituality that are being practised, tested and developed.