The Dream Is Not Supposed To Be Good

It doesn't matter what is happening in your life. It doesn't matter at all. None of it matters. It is a dream....a dream of consciousness... that you are here to wake up out of.

The dream is not supposed to be good. It's based on separation - how can it be good. It's not called samsara, the wheel of suffering, for nothing. Sure, there are wonderful moments of genuine love and connection, we have never fully left the Heart....but these are passing moments until the truth of us takes up residence.

We strive to make the dream of the ego better. It's a hopeless task. Sooner or later something backfires again. Most of us are long enough in the tooth to see the futility of striving...and still we strive. Our minds can't help it.

This passage from Cave in the Snow, an account of the life of Tenzim Palmo, an amazing Englishwoman who retired to a cave in India for twelve years speaks directly to this...

'There was the occasion one spring when the thaw of the winter snows had begun and her cave was being systematically flooded. "The walls and the floor were getting wetter and wetter and for some reason I was also not very well. I was beginning to think, 'Oh dear, what they say about caves is really true,' and started to feel very down'.

Suddenly the Buddha's First Noble Truth which she had learnt when she first encountered Buddhism struck her with renewed force. 'I thought. "Why are you still looking for happiness in Samsara? and my mind just changed around. It was like: That's right - Samsara is Dukka [the fundamental unsatisfactory nature of life]. It's OK that it's snowing. It's OK that I'm sick because that is the nature of Samsara. There's nothing to worry about. If it goes well that's nice. If it doesn't go well that's also nice. It doesn't make any difference. Although it sounds very elementary, at the time it was quite a breakthrough. Since then I have never really cared about external circumstances."

When things are off in my world of mind I sometimes find it very helpful to remind myself " Oh, yes, it's not supposed to be good, it's not supposed to be any different, it's just a dream... what is it that is eternally perfect and whole." This can spark a feeling of relief, an internal standing up as the truth. The waves of mind about all that's wrong with my life and my body dissipate. Peace and lightness are restored. And all is well for another stretch.

Comments

[Carmen]

I can see where this perspective would be helpful when we are in the midst of pain or suffering. These days, there is just so much gratitude for my life that this seems to be another view altogether. After hearing my expression of gratitude toward Life for all the good and enjoyable things that are present, someone at a recent satsang said she felt gratitude in her life right now, even though there is struggle and chaos. To me, that's the ideal!
Love, Carmen

[Amrita]

Love this image of "the truth of ourselves taking up residence."
A smile comes...even knowing that the mind will never voluntarily leave the premises.

What a concise reflection of this ongoing dance between the mind and the heart, pleasure and pain, opening and closing. It is one thing to know that the words you and Tenzin Palmo write are true...like, that's what the great mystics have always known. I'll tuck that in my pocket where I keep the durable truths to pull out when I am worn thin and need reassurance. And another to really sit still long enough to have the ray of this light penetrate the suffering which seems so real, so defendable. Slowly the taste comes that the suffering is never defendable, but only a puppet show. And when, by grace, those moments arise of absolutely melting into it, there is something so sweet about just being danced by the hand of the Beloved. A single glimpse of seeing that it is only Love pulling the strings...and a tide of ahhhhh! Resting in That which changes everything you didn't try to change. Or sustains everything you didn't try to change.

Ahhhhh...

[madhu]

Yes... calling all of our addictions preferences helps too. It's not the pain, but the thought that pain is suffering. Pain is pain. Suffering is pain coupled with the suffering label.

[Margaret]

Hi Carmen. Thank you for your comment. It is beautiful that you experience gratitude for your life. I remember hearing Byron Katie say that 'gratitude is love lived'. And to come to feel gratitude in the midst of struggle, yes....even more heart-opening.
What I am pointing to in this post is that there is a light of happiness that is available to us, that is who we are, regardless of what the external circumstances of the dream are. Whatever way the Self works with us to draw us back from this external unreality and to really know what's what...that's our unique path. Sometimes it's through pain, for some it would seem to be not necessary at all.
I want to say enjoy the sweet flow of this gratitude. Personally, I don't think there is anything more beautiful than the feeling of a love-filled heart.

[Margaret]

Hi Amrita,

"Slowly the taste comes that the suffering is never defendable, but only a puppet show."

Slowly, assuredly it comes. Thank you.

[Margaret]

Hi Madhu,

It was a grand day for me when I came to be able to sit with pain in my solar plexus and not follow the thoughts and story about it and to see that sitting with the sensation in my body actually felt easier than believing all the tortured thoughts.

Yes, the suffering is the labeling and the story.

And in my experience it takes a mature mind to be able to drop the story and just sit.