(5)

I had a dream of snow.  That's all there was – just me, standing in the middle of a field of snow, white flakes drifting, falling, flying all about me – everywhere, everywhere.  It was not day, it was not night; there was no source of light except for that which came from the whiteness of the snow.  At first the flakes fell softly, gently; then they came faster and faster, darting, whirling, filling my eyes with particles of white; it was as if the whiteness all around me was disintegrating – above me, below me, on every side.  A wind began to shriek in my ears; it grew louder and louder until at last it filled me completely, until both it and the snow seemed to exist not only outside me but also within.  And then it was all inside me, the flying snow and the howling wind; it was all within me.  And at the very instant that I became aware of this, and felt that I could stand that blinding, shrieking rush of white no longer – I woke up.

The dreams I have while sleeping are, I know, a processing of waking reality, an interpretive representation of the objective world as shaped by the emotional and psychological responses I have to it.  But what if life itself is a sort of dream?  Now it would be my waking reality which would have to be viewed as the interpretive representation.  But – of what?  Of some reality, apparently, in which there existed a self potentially even more "awake" than the self I am now.  And what would be the purpose of this "dream" that I live?  Continuing to use the dreams I have in this reality as a source for analogy, the purpose would be, apparently, a matter of processing the psychological and emotional experiences of that more "wakeful" self.

The logic of the dreams I have now is an emotive logic.  Based upon my psychological and emotional interpretations of waking reality, it connects these interpretations to sensory data and creates from the combination new, evocative landscapes for me to explore.  Dreams may yield valuable information on both positive and negative aspects of how we experience our existence; they may make manifest important psychological blockages and offer insights that help us break through them.  Ultimately, however, what all such analysis leads us to is the discovery of the dream self's own experiential reality.  For when one or more of the elements which make up a dream are, so to speak, "seen through" (recognized as being a mere projection originating from within the psyche), we find ourselves occupying the conditional state known as lucid dreaming.  Here the dream-self recognizes that its existence, and the existence of all the particulars of its surrounding environment, are constituent factors of the dreaming process.  Since coming into a recognition of this knowledge is one of the major effects of dream analysis, it would likewise seem to reveal one of the most important functions of dreaming.  It may even be that it defines its crucial value.

Still, if it is true that life is but a dream, then the question remains as to how it would be possible for me to "wake up" into an experiential knowledge of its dream quality.  Would not the trigger point of this "waking up" lie within the psychological field of some personage greater than myself (having a relationship to me similar to the one I have with the figures of my own dreams), which must in some sense now be termed "asleep"?  I can never, using this terminology, "wake up"; only that aspect of myself currently smothered in the fog of sleep would have the power to enact such a possibility.  But let us suppose that the primary goal of dreaming does not lie with the dreamer, but with that which is being dreamed.  Let us acknowledge that the dream-self that I now am need not necessarily adhere to the same laws as govern the figures I myself dream – or at least that these laws are not necessarily perceived in exactly the same way.  And finally, let us do away with the notion that whatever self might be conceived of as dreaming me might in turn itself be dreamed, and that the figures which appear in my dreams may also be having yet other dreams.  Let us instead narrow our sights to these proportions:  to wit, that the reality within which I currently exist may fairly enough, if still but tentatively, be called a dream; and that the purpose of this dream is not to cause a waking up from itself but to it.  Now let us broaden our sights to include just one metaphysical possibility:  that there may exist, either somewhere within this realm of dreaming, or within myself as the focal point of this dream, some as yet untapped potential for accelerating my present consciousness into a state of lucid dreaming.

It is at this point that the question arises as to how I might enter into the state of "lucid dreaming" while yet still awake.  Using my own dreams as points of reference, I see that there are two possible routes which might lead me into this condition.  The first of these involves, presumably, solving those psychological riddles being presented to me by my waking reality.  But this it would seem I cannot really do; for the proposition assumes that my waking reality is nothing but a dream, manifested by some hypothetical "greater self" currently "asleep."  This being the case, the reasoning, or causality, behind all that I see happening around me is, in its largest and most profound sense, a "mystery" which will always remain unfathomable to me.  But there is another reason as to why the experience of lucid dreaming may occur.  Its trigger depends upon something happening within the dream that is at strong variance with some internal knowledge of the dreamer.  For instance, I once dreamed of myself attending a birthday party at which I was told that I had just turned twenty-two years old.  However, I was not twenty-two at the time of the dream, and being told that I was caused to be felt within me a discord of such intensity that even my dreaming self was forced to recognize it.  The result was that I "awoke" into the recognition that I was in the dreaming state.  In this state I knew that I was dreaming even while the dream was taking place; at this point, there was nothing left but the validity of experience.  This opens up a second possible route one might take – the route whereby a sense of discord is set up between reality as we believe it to be and the truth of reality as it really is.

Zen monks do this by means of the koan.  The koan operates in such a way as to "crack open" the mind:  it breaks down the mind's habitual mode of perception and so causes it to enter into a state of heightened awareness.  I myself have never attempted to solve a koan; confronting myself with one now, I feel like that man who used to occasionally come into the convenience store:  "Ladies and gentlemen!" I might say.  "I have just been asked the million-dollar question:  What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  And what is my answer to this question?  It's C:  "I haven't the foggiest idea!"  But as I meditate upon this koan, I come to realize several things.  I realize, firstly, that in both my thinking and in my behavior, I am, most profoundly, a creature of habit.  It's true that much of my thinking and behavior is odd enough to have put me at variance with some of the norms of society, and to those variances I credit any such insights into the nature of being as I have had.  Still, in a very great many ways, some large and some small, I adhere to the habits and conventions dictated by my social environment; or else I create new forms of thinking and behavior which, although they may be more singular in type, likewise soon become a matter of habit.  I have little ability for the kind of sustained concentration a koan requires – the concentration necessary to see through and thus beyond conventionalized modes of perception.  But what I also notice is that when I'm forced to sustain concentration, an underlying pattern to my waking reality begins to reveal itself.  Or perhaps I should say that a relationship between elements of this reality and my inner feeling about them begins to reveal itself – as happened, for example, in my experience of the robbery attempt at the convenience store.  This was an event so startling and so unusual that it forced me into a state of heightened concentration, both while it occurred and, in memory, for a long time after.  Though I did not mention it before, I was just about to begin reading the help-wanted ads in the newspaper when the robbery took place, for I was already contemplating leaving my job.  In fact, I had been contemplating leaving that job (having become dissatisfied with its routine) for some weeks, but was having trouble getting myself psychologically geared up for the effort.  At which point life seemed to come along and say:  "Thinking of making a change?  Well, here's one damn good reason why you should!"  After some further consideration, involving both the reliving of the robbery attempt in my mind and dealing with its aftershocks in everyday reality, I decided that yes, it was indeed time to quit working at the convenience store.  It's as if the sustained concentration that results from some startling alteration of habitual expectations begins to allow elements of this reality to reveal a deeper, more experientially valid meaning.  Perhaps, when this happens, some measure of heightened awareness may be said to have been achieved.

What working methodology might I devise from these insights?  How do I learn, every day, to "wake up" from what I think I should be experiencing to a clearer, more lucid formulation of reality?  As so often happens for me, this question seems to revolve around moral concerns:  what I think I "should" be experiencing involves, after all, obeying not only the laws of nature, but the laws and mores of human society as well.  But it's not that I feel I have no ability to make choices in my life.  Rather, it's that I feel that the choices I might make are opposed in equal measure to aspects of my life that are beyond my control.  It's not, in other words, that I have no free will but that my free will is, as it were, fated.  It's fated because, of all the choices I might make, I end up choosing only one; and I choose that one because all the elements of my past, all the various aspects of my personality, all the particulars of what I understand, have learned, and know in my own individualistic, idiosyncratic way of knowing, allow me to make but one choice.  Yet always, each step of the way, I might make another choice:  the freedom to do so is always made available to me.  It's as if all the thousand thousand elements that make up my life, all the traits I was born with, all the experiences I have ever had, all the events that have gone on about me, all the influences that have exerted their pressures upon me, have at last brought me inexorably to this singular point in space and time; and yet, since each point of space and time is simultaneously coming into being as well as passing away, all those thousand thousand elements that have combined to create this life and this reality are constantly being reformulated, to be made manifest only via my freedom of choice.  I, who am the sum result of all my past, am thus ever being created anew.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?  If I can characterize myself as participating in the creation of the world in equal measure to its creation of me, then the proper answer to that question might be:  "I have a hole in my shirt," or "This apple tastes sweet,"  for it is by this manner of speaking that I demonstrate how the world – and I myself along with it – pops into being as a pure manifestation of the Here and Now.  Each moment is, as it were, "eternal" – and, to the human sensibility, is eternally ridden with angst; because although it's constantly being recreated according to past experiences and perceptions, I know it to be at the same time something which exists detached from memory, and thus from meaning.  "Memory" I might thus define as a matter of imaginatively reconstructing a knowable meaning.  I constantly reconstruct my reality via the auspice of memory in order to maintain my bearing within it, and so gain the ability to become an active participant.  To "wake up" to this "dream" I live, however, I need only recognize that, although I am each moment the resultant creation of all that is past, I am also endowed each moment with the power to enact my freedom from it.  Embodying this freedom is the means by which I may gain a greater clarity in apprehending reality and the meaning it holds for me.  And the more I am able to draw the prejudicial veils from my eyes with regard to who I am and who I might be, the more energy I have available to create an ever more meaningful reality.  And I would suppose that sexual energy, being the most powerful form of energy I have within me, must be regarded as the most important tool I have available, not only for the more obvious purpose of procreation, but for all other forms of creative endeavor as well.

TO ALL THE LOVERS I HAVE NEVER KNOWN

A

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of

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"Itis the
phrase 'self-reflection' which
de
finesus; itis this qual
ity of
'self-reflection' which al
ways
standslikea barrier be tweenusand
real
ity, frombehindwhich we
long
  tospeak."

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with

a

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