Where do I dream from

Where do I go

When my body lies here

still

so quiet

I can’t feel it anymore?

My mind is in another place

dreaming with another face

and it is only in those few minutes before I wake

that I feel myself returning.

Yet I was there

and now I am here

I tumbled through thoughts and emotions as real

as I do

when I am daytime dreaming.

I was just present there

and now I’m here

So where do I go

where have I been

And will I go there when I’m dead?

Will I still take all these thoughts I had

When darkness finds me at some future point

do I turn back one last time

and realise

that I’m never coming back.

so bid this body good-bye

and drift effortlessly into another life

of dreaming.

*I was lying in bed last night, having the devils own time going to sleep. I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. For our building company, I have been posting to social media, this blog, competition poetry that I’m entering, and short stories. Plus, yesterday, I was around a lot of people, conversations, and energy. Urk.

My brain was overstimulated. Yesterday morning, I didn’t run – which is always an excellent tonic for overstimulation. Instead, I was in the office as soon as I got up. By last night my nervous system needed desperately to calm down, I was overwound and my brain was like that damn donkey in Shrek – following me along and talking nonsense.

Finally I took a couple of panadol, leaned into lavender oil and fell asleep. But right before I fell asleep, in those few minutes where I could feel the clouds of morpheus rolling in and my entire system shutting down, donkey slipped one last little question in.

“Where do we dream from?”

Which led to another question and another question as I pondered: is this the same consciousness that follows us into and through the death of the body? Once we are asleep we completely lose track of the body, it is numb, dead, gone. Everything is experienced by pure consciousness and then just before we awaken, we become aware of the body again.

I know the mind paralyses the body so that it can’t hurt us as we have dreams that could otherwise cause a physical reaction.

But who is the I that dreams? Who is the I who wakens? Who is the I that knows it is time to get up and is far more reliable than any alarm clock, even when it is an odd time of night or early morning that we have set that internal clock too.

This Consciousness that is aware
of neighbours and the sun
will be the one aware of death
and that itself alone

Emily Dickenson

As long as you identify with that which dies, there is always fear of death. What our ego fears is the cessation of its own existence. Although I didn’t know what form it would take after the death – I realised that the essence of my Being and the essence of my awareness – is beyond death.

Ram Dass

The mind only exists through thought, take away the thought and there is no mind

Sri Ramana Maharshi

And if there is no mind, what is left, except pure consciousness?

I don’t usually think about death first thing in the morning or even last thing at night, but I don’t mind thinking about it. I find the whole thing fascinating.

This is the first time I contemplated what I would take with me, or rather who. I don’t mind if it’s the quiet voice who soothes me when I’m overstimulated. The one that tells Donkey to take a hike, gently. Leads me by the hand to the kitchen, takes down the Panadol, pops a few white tables from the packet, rubs Lavender oil on my temples, stretches, yawns and makes another attempt at sleep. She knows that sleep is more important than all the drivel I am coming up with under the banner of “creativity” in my over active mind.

She knows that true magic flows from the quiet places not the over stimulated chaos. She ignores the moods, the thoughts and drama the over-hyped system delivers. She knows that nothing that I am thinking is real. And she lets me see this too.

I’ll take her along with me for sure, I find the thought comforting, she has been here before, will be there after and she seems to know what it is all about, what happens. My soul is my creator, she breathes life into a thousand bodies that I’ve been. And yes, she is there when I dream, so perhaps she will be there after I die and lead me into the next world too.

Whew! Deep thoughts for a blog post published so early in the morning. And yet, at least, it puts things in perspective for me. The things I thought were serious are sent to the back of the line because first, above all, life. So, off I go to watch the sunrise, feel my heart pump blood through my veins as I run and give thanks that I’m healthy. Have a lovely day X