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We are stuck in an illusion: What’s the Point?*

In a recent nightmare everything is vanishing. I struggle to hold onto something, but the holding only increases the vanishing. 

Why is the society that seemed to support the goodness in ourselves seem to be vanishing? How is it our society is becoming more and more self-centered?

At the core of the problem seems to be fear but not the fear that protects the body but the fear that protects the ego, that which makes us separate from everything else. The beliefs of the Ego-Self are what we use to protect us from this fear and whether they are fact or fiction based they separate us from our fears as well as from each other and the environment around us.

Beliefs are necessary to maintain the illusion of separateness. Without them the separateness dissolves and we become all things. The defense of our beliefs is the defense of our ego, our illusion of separateness. Without them the illusion disappears and we disappear as a thing, an entity separate from all other entities. We will defend our beliefs to the death of all those who threaten them as well as our own death for without our beliefs, what are we but the everything, the whole, the All? And as All we cease to exist as does everything else.

Letting go of our illusions is a form of Kenosis, an act of “self-emptying”. I’m reminded of the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the Christian Bible where a ladder ascends from the earth-bound illusion to the heavens i.e. from the mundane of things to the everything/nothing of the divine.

My ego is terrified for it translates as oblivion as in becoming nothing i.e., no thing. What’s the point? 

It seems that our beliefs not only make us something but also give us a point for being.

This is not to say that one must be stuck in a belief for in a reality of infinite beliefs there’s a lot to experience and just maybe that’s the point.

*This article can also be found in The Book of Dreams blog

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Want to know what the Dark Knight looks like?

It was a dreary, overcast morning when I entered the local coffee shop down the street. It was Saturday, so the usual bustle of people going in and out of the shop was reduced to almost nothing. This was the end of a long and painful walk I had taken that morning, having gotten up before the sun to take advantage of the early morning coolness.

“How are you doing today?” the barista asked as I ordered my coffee. 

My mind was just finishing up with a poor-me-diatribe born of a bruised ego conversation I’d had with one of my daughters earlier in the week. What I wanted to say was…

“As my daughter keeps saying, any time there’s an upset, “This isn’t about you, Dad!” Never mind that I have feelings and thoughts; they’re irrelevant to what’s going on. But she’s probably right. I don’t feel very relevant these days, and wonder if I never was, but my ego was too busy to notice. 

Another side to my irrelevant self says, “So what?” Who’s to care if it’s not about me?

I want to think I’ve lived my life with at least giving and taking in equal measure, if not a little more to the giving side. Still, I’m not the determiner of that because the ego nearly always tries to weigh its experience toward the self-interest positive end of the spectrum. 

Others in the family will write the story of my life that will be handed down, and from what I hear, I’ve failed miserably to live up to their expectations. It also seems a universal opinion that I failed and made it too much about me. But so what? I can’t change it now; soon, my ego will be dead, and how relevant I was won’t make any difference; the damage was done. I’m also not sure that the soul cares one way or the other, either. 

It’s starting to feel like I’ve wasted my once-only time here. But again, that’s the ego talking, and the soul doesn’t care; the ego did its job by giving the soul a vehicle for entering the world.”

But all I said was, “Fine, just fine. How’s yours been going?” And then I thanked him for my coffee and said, “Have a good one!” as my ‘irrelevant self’ walked out the door. It was no use wasting a perfectly good ‘poor me’ and spreading my “down-eristic” self on an innocent barista. 

I have had these Dark Night experiences many times throughout my life. For many years, I used to run from them, which only got me mired and stuck, but now I periodically embrace them as a means of transcending them and moving through into the light.

“How’s your day going so far?”

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

More on the Dark Night of the Soul

There are many ancient myths of those who entered the underworld to save a loved one e.g.  The Sumerian myth of Queen Inanna-Ishtar who went to save her sister, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice who wanted to bring back his wife from the realm of the dead, and Adonis who was sent to Hades by his mother who then recanted and had to make a deal with Persephone of the underworld to retrieve him.

These myths are examples of the dark night-of-the-soul activity that is archetypal of all humans where we descend into the darkest parts of the psyche to retrieve disowned or lost parts of oneself. In a way, this descent into the darkness and process of resurfacing is represented in the death and resurrection of Jesus that Christians celebrate during Easter named after the Proto-Germanic Spring Goddess Eostre who brought the world out of the cold death that is winter.

One’s nightmares also serve this function: they come from the dark unconscious mind seeking the light of consciousness. 

The dark night of the soul refers to a painful period in one’s life, a sinking into the darkness i.e., depression. Depression can often bring nightmares to one’s dreams. However, as with most dreams, they come in the service of one’s health and well-being. When one takes on or confronts one’s nightmare there can be resolution and healing which is why I use the play on the words ‘Knight’ instead of ‘night’ in the title of this blog.

The process of individuation that Carl Jung saw as the process of self-realization and discovery of life’s purpose on the way to knowing and living who we really are is often forged during these dark-night ventures in both our waking and sleeping lives. Though I don’t usually experience nightmares, when I do I try to engage rather than flee from them to get an idea of what they are trying to bring to consciousness so that I can deal with the issue(s).

Occasional Nightmares can offer renewal or even the ‘rebirth’ of your core self and sometimes a spiritual rebirth through introspection and reflection. Note that one’s descent into this darkness can be quite scary and should not be taken lightly especially if one is experiencing frequent nightmares. If having two or three or more nightmares per week over many weeks one might seek professional help to assess meaning and develop a healing strategy.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

All things spooky

Note that this image can be seen in two different ways i.e., that “consciousness” is internal and stretches outward or is outward and stretches inward.

“There is an Indian fable of three beings who drank from a river: one was a god, and he drank ambrosia; one was a man, and he drank water; and one was a demon, and he drank filth. What you get is a function of your own consciousness.” 



 –Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light,”The Jiva’s Journey,” p. 46

Of what do psychologists and philosophers speak when they invoke the word “Consciousness?”

At a fundamental psychological level some define it as “awareness” or more specifically, ”Self Awareness” that is further defined as knowledge gained through personal perception, the recognition of something felt—that is ‘sensed.’

In the above quote from Joseph Campbell there seems to be another layer implied e.g. something residing between what is perceived and what is processed. In short, something is acting upon the information coming into the individual that affects the processing of it—a filter if you will.  We all have these filters–they are our judgments, expectations, beliefs, philosophies, experiences and memories. These things affect our level of consciousness, our level of alertness to reality if you will. So the quote seems to speak to the type of filter, or the clarity of the filter, being employed.

At a deeper, and more spiritual, or philosophical, level consciousness has been defined as the “Knower” or the “Observer”–something that observes itself, the ground-state of our being. It is, some say, what you experience when you have quieted the mind from its incessant chatter. Others say it is what the chatter is being directed toward e.g. what is listening when you talk to yourself.

At first glance this consciousness, this knower, appears to be located somewhere alongside our mind, the mind that is the ego-thing that’s doing all the chattering. But is it alongside, or even local for that matter? How do we explain the phenomena of distance viewing, or distant communication as when you’re thinking of cousin Harry whom you’ve not heard from in ages and the phone rings? Coincidence or synchronicity?

There’s a great deal of research that’s been done (some funded through DARPA, the federal department of all things spooky that can be used militarily) looking into the reality of distant viewing and finding it to be real under certain conditions. Some people can instantly ‘see’ things that are happening miles away (The Russians just love this stuff!).

Some physicists (e.g. Fred Allan Wolfe, David Hawkins, and Gary Zukav) have played around with the ground-state, or ‘universal field’, idea of consciousness as well as the concept of remote connectedness that is implied by remote viewing and have made some tentative conclusions that consciousness is independent of the sentient creatures it seems to inhabit–so much so that it exists eternally, or at least since the Big Bang. Perhaps we are no more than receivers for signals from outside ourselves, like a radio, cellphone, or TV.

It seems that to the degree to which a person can cleanse their perception filters and thus get a clearer perception of reality this also affects their ability to connect with this level of consciousness. It may even be this consciousness that makes it possible to see things beyond ones temporal location. 

We are definitely more than we see or seem.