Doubts and crises

You wake up and rub the sleep out of your eyes – the memory of your last dreams felt real, as if they had been reality – but you know they were dreams.

You have just woken up and meet people – people from your dreams: they are going about their business, they are celebrating and mourning – they are usually in a hurry – they are not necessarily in a bad mood, but they don’t seem happy either.

How do you know that you haven’t fallen asleep again and are continuing your dream? You don’t know, but something feels different. You observe people and you observe yourself and, unlike in the dream, you can no longer understand where the rush comes from and why these people take the world so seriously. You make contact, ask questions and well-meaning friends explain to you that life is very serious and dangerous. They don’t understand how you differentiate between the dream world and waking up – doesn’t everyone have to eat and pay their bills?

You agree, knowing full well that the shirt has no pockets. You nod because you have no answer – they are right and you are probably the dreamer.

And yet you feel that something is wrong with this world, it becomes strange to you, because you know one thing: You are no longer asleep. You see clearly that this game of appearances is nothing but a big stage of vanity and inferiority and all shades of gray in between.

You are looking for the truth, but what is truth and who cares about it?

You know very well that you are not mentally ill. You have never seen as clearly as you do now and you are certain that you can no longer take part in the game of the dream world.

In some moments it draws you in, but even if you make a sincere effort to play along, perhaps for months or years, you know after a few minutes that it’s a game. A false game, like the shell game players who recognize when your attention wanes for a tiny moment and the opportunity for a scam presents itself.

You are tired and even the most well-meaning friends have given up trying to lead you back to the path of sanity. Maybe you want to go to sleep – finally go back to sleep, but that doesn’t help either, because you know that you will inevitably wake up again.

You feel alone and make a sluggish effort to at least fulfill the everyday demands of the dream world; even if you can see with crystal clarity that this will not go on for much longer.

What makes you forget to be connected to everything – to be all one?

What have you missed in the dream world that draws you back to sleep so much?