My Dream Life Expose Reality and Spirituality Both As Frauds
Wake up! Why? I never sleep anyway
Dreams life-like quality for the mind-body experience is astonishing. The validity of dreams is measured or in comparison to what? of course, “real.” Contrary to popular opinion: past and present, fact and fiction, reality and spirituality, real and unreal (dreams) aren’t proof of here and there. These extremes unveil a fundamental truth: that they are all the same despite seemingly at polar ends of each other. The misconception, rather, wrong view gives credence to the belief of otherness. The silver line perhaps is Middle Path. See: Dream Within A Dream: What Than Is Reality.
Sometime life seems live, other times it feels prerecorded
I’m not convinced that dreams are separate from real life. I can’t even trust my own sensibility about either. My sense response to dreams are the same as when I’m woke. Yet, there is no fire. How did I feel the burning sensation on my skin in dream life?
Objects of illusion (existence) such as fire apparently are imperative in dream life as it is in real life for a mind-body experience. I don’t know why. Why naturally being a circular question makes it futile to even search for answers. Still, having a curious mind, the allure is irresistible.
Give me purpose or put me behind nothingness of existence
Things, it would seem, projects within existence, where infinite form-patterns, such as habits, experiences and phenomena, shows up as “life.” The purpose of existence, I suspect, doesn’t need or even inherent justification. Perhaps, the illusion of existence is as a lie, it doesn’t require truth, it can regenerate with no purpose or an unknowable purpose, such as stem cells. See: How To Find Out That You’re On The Spiritual Path.
However, when form does arise (life), we draw from our stimuli, concepts about it (real, dreams, death) and think it serves purpose. Purpose in this context maybe too broad to comprehend if at all knowable. So, it becomes evident, the question isn’t as much as what is the purpose of life, but, what is its intention? I speak of life as a living being. Bear in mind that we are with all things, and, although we are separated, we are not separate.
Therefore, a more refined question, than, would be: what is our intention with life (dreams and woke) and vice versa? This points to intention being the Middle Way.
My first real encounter with dream reality
When I was five or six years old, during a late night wind storm I crawled into my mother’s bed in fear of the suspense hyperbolized by tree branches violently brushing again my bedroom window. Safely in my mother’s protective aura and swaddled by the moonlight’s silken cascade through the window. I yawned tenderly and fell in to a gentle sleep.
I woke up in the middle of the night for no particular reason: not to use the bathroom, I wasn’t startled nor up to raid the refrigerator for my usual slice or two of bologna and cheese. Everything is as it was before, nothing was out of place. Though, something felt off. I couldn’t tell exactly what. My mother’s queen size bed is in its exact position, next to the makeshift TV stand with her 12 inch black and white television on top that was turned off. Her closet door is shut as usual. The window curtain is parted to the sides as always, though I didn’t feel a breeze coming through the window screen; and, the moonlight is gone, probably blocked by night clouds.
The eerie calm that seized the room perhaps was from the windstorm passing. Although my mother’s dresser and mirror is where it should be with her personal effects on top, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. While everything appeared normal, something is really off.
The dream unveils a layer of illusion
My eyes were wide opened when the contras in her bedroom changed: it got brighter, than dark. I couldn’t adjust my eyes, though all is visible. The room turned a star spangled blue, tiny crystals peppered the dark backdrop. The bedroom felt devoid of texture: no temperature, it wasn’t hot, cold or even warm; no air pressure or circulation; no humidity, not dry or moisture.
More layers peels off: how deep is the illusion?
The dresser and mirror had a translucent form as if I could put my hand through it. I wasn’t afraid, my mother was next to me. I no longer tried to understand or make sense of what was happening. It was beyond my will and control. Surrenderance guided me to an unadulterated clarity that only a child’s innocence could just receive in the moment. I’d become aware of the vivid illusion projected as the bedroom, the deafening silence, my steel reel experience on freeze frame.
Out of nowhere
It suddenly appeared out the ether. Unimaginably inhuman with pigmentation unlike any hue or combination of the color spectrum I’d ever seen. It hovered in mid air as if it had all the time in the world, and forever stared at me. It had an unplaceable appearance that I can only describe as anthropomorphic. It had marble skulls stemming out all around its animalistic face. It wore majestic garment that exposed its chest, arms and legs: coarse hair or thin fur. It had large sharp ivory white teeth jutting over a rather small canine-like jaw with its legs crossed and arms folded, like a yogi.
I bury my head in my mother’s back in a feeble attempt to avoid hands that reached out of nowhere, larger than life, and grab me, pulling me towards this creature who remained unmovable in mid air. Unable to free myself, I call out mom, moma! with all my might, till I was breathless. She couldn’t hear me. I realized there is no sound. Only my movement which appeared as loud.
Many arms protruded out of the creature’s torso as it held me close. Its porcupine hairs pierce the pores in my entire body as it blew a mist of acid-like breaths into my porous. The experience was like an allergic reaction to chemicals; the stinging sensation or skin irritation galvanized my whole mind and body. I was paralyzed with eye opened pores in its clutch.
This dream was real to all my senses
This creature flew me to and fro in the bedroom. It was a continuous movement at first. Then my experience turned to snapshots. Each snippet of footage I found myself in another location of the room. Although I was aware of the still moments, somehow, fluidity didn’t evade my mind’s eye. Moment by moment, I watched my mother at each stage: laying on her bed, watching; sitting on her bed, watching; mouth moving, watching; standing up, watching; reaching out her arms for me, watching, as this thing took me farther away and into the mirror.
No longer the watcher or 3rd person pov in my dream: what does it mean?
I never experienced a dream, before or after, where I was the principal or subject. Usually I am the watcher, narrator; basically having a 3rd person pov in my own dreams. Not this dream, however. I wasn’t looking at the event as if it could-be somebody else or feeling as if it really isn’t happening to me – It was happening to me! directly, despite usually I am only an observer of my dreams, or cinematographer; never seeing myself in dreams or reflection from mirrors thereof.
This occurrence had every actuality of a live stream: no retakes, playbacks or rewind. It happened in real time as it’s said. It was not imagination. I had never seen this creature before; not in scary movies, comic books or had cultural exposure to anything remotely resembling it.
My dream reality alibi denied it happened
I appeared on my mother’s bed, absent the “wake up” experience. I was just there, on the bed, alone. It was morning. Sunlight came through the window along with fresh air. The TV was on: The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries was showing. It was Sunday. My mother was in the kitchen making breakfast. I could smell the bacon and eggs. Although I couldn’t smell the cheesy grits. I was sure she’d made it, like she done with all the hot breakfasts she cooked every Sunday before going to church.
While eating breakfast. I brought up what had happened the night before, twice. I’m sure my mother heard me the first time. Her look of concern turned in to chuckles, laughing off my ordeal as a cute nightmare, topping it off with giving me a kiss. Over the years I’d revisit the conversation with my mother. Her response is different every time: nightmare, eating late, scary movies, she was sleep, she didn’t see anything, she don’t remember – not even when I had originally brought it to her attention.
Revelation of the creature I’d faced that night Years Later
One day after meditating in the zendo (meditation room) I met a couple from our Zoom community Sangha who travelled to the temple for the first time from out of state. They each brought a gift for our teacher: a painting and statuette. I froze at the sight of the miniature statue. I fought back the panic attack that begun to overtake my body. It was a striking image of the creature that had abducted me. This entity is called Mahakala. A Tibetan Buddhism deity. Although, I seen this image in paintings and caricatures before, it never dawned on me that it was in fact the same creature. Seeing this life-like figurine brought back vivid memoirs of that bizarre night. See: Inside Outside.
Mahakala’s significance in Buddhism to my relief
Later that day I had asked one of the monastery monks about this deity. He told me Mahakala is a powerful deity in Tibetan Buddhism, embodying the protective and wrathful aspects of compassion. As a Dharmapala (protector), he protects the Dharma and its practitioners, destroying obstacles both external and internal. Despite his fierce appearance, his actions are motivated by a deep compassion to aid sentient beings on their path to enlightenment.
Mahakala is revered across various Tibetan Buddhist traditions and is a central figure in many tantric practices aimed at overcoming negativity and achieving spiritual success. He further shared that Mahakala is also the manifestation of Avalokiteshvara (Bodhisattva – an enlightened being that remains in samsara to help all sentient beings achieve enlightenment).
Conclusion
What are we to believe if not what we see, taste, touch, smell, hear and think? It seems reality, dreams and even imagination all offer us the same objects or stimuli for a way of life through our senses, with slight variation that may only prove to be the difference in frequencies. Where the layers of illusion is a fine tune of our mind dial to tap us into other plains of existence, cutting through belief and illusion; and, allow benevolent beings like the Mahakala to transcend to our realm and protect us.
