Being Dreams Forgetting [3]
Practice makes perfect
There was this being who lived nowhere at all. This being did not live anywhere because he had not yet imagined anywhere to live. Nine hundred and fifty years ago, Anselm wrote about a being so great that there could be no other that was greater. Anselm’s being was like this being.
For the longest time, this being did nothing but dream. He dreamed many things. At first his dreams felt chaotic, but the dreams gradually became more orderly and more enticing. He was pleased with this, but after a time he got bored just dreaming dream after dream.
Then he tried something different. He dreamed that he forgets he is this being. The dreaming became very intense, often a nightmare that seemed it would go on forever. He was miserable in these dreams because he had forgotten that he was this being who was just dreaming dream after dream. The nightmares were so real, so terrifying, so lonely and desperate! But he always awoke from the dreams and always remembered instantly that he is this being who had simply dreamed it all. Each awakening was ecstatic, beyond the greatest joy this being could ever have imagined. The return to the knowledge that he is this being brought perfect peace just from knowing that he, the dreamer, was beginningless, endless, and beyond all limitation.
But the joy this being felt upon awakening was short-lived, and the moments of joy were separated by more dreams of more struggle, more misery, and more fear. This being only felt truly joyful and peaceful when awakening from the dreams, yet he knew that the measure of this joy was never less than complete in every single reawakening.
Again, he tried something different. He began to dream many separate dreams together as one great dream within which all the separate dreams overlapped each other in space, time, and circumstances: one dream of many dreams together. Because each individual forgets who he really is, each seems to be only one among the many, separated from the others, struggling for survival. Of course, each separate dream eventually ends, and this being awakens. In each awakening, this being remembers again that he is this being. In this way, he is endlessly awakening from countless dreams. In every reawakening he remembers he is this being, he always has been this being, and he always will be this being, always beyond all limit. And the dream of life goes on and on with each life a different path to complete reawakening.
All individual beings experience suffering because they forget for a while that they are this being. But all this suffering is reduced, not multiplied, by dividing it among the many. The suffering of forgetting is made easier by the sharing of it, where all beings work together to reduce each other’s suffering and pain.
Each awakening is a complete and absolute reawakening to reality. The joy of this is in no way diminished by the problems of life. It is perfect awareness of the reality of being this being, of being limitless reality. This being, self-aware and self-knowing, recalls every moment of every dream, not as a troubling recollection of miseries but as a wondrous journey home.
Nothing can reduce the peace and joy of this being who remembers the truth of every dream, that all lives reawaken to the knowledge they are the reality of everything.
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Regarding this story, …
What is reality?
What is this being?
Where is this being?
Where are all the individuals?
Who experiences what?
What is lucid dreaming?