Yet, the moment an experience is evaluated, time rises up to meet it.
Hence, time seems to be the process of experience, evaluation and response. You have an experience, you make an evaluation and you respond from that evaluation.
It seems to you that your day is nothing more than a process of evaluating good and bad experiences and within this process 'time' seems to unfold. If you made no evaluative judgements on your experiences, time would cease to be experienced and what is NOT experienced does NOT exist.
You believe you have an experience and then you provide a response based on your evaluation of that experience. You believe this is nothing more than a basic cause and effect equation.
You remember little of infancy except up to a point at which you then made evaluative interpretations of experience. And it was crucial that you remember your evaluations for future recall. Such is the formation of the egocentric existence.
You now know your evaluations by heart. You can evaluate reality with your eyes closed and two hands tied behind your back, as the responses unfold magically like clockwork. Every sensation is anticipated and prepared for and happens generally as expected within the parameters of chance.
Chance has very strict parameters. You know you can't flap your arms and fly, so there's no point of even preparing for that chance. But you do know that if you step off a 10 story ledge you will fall to your death and so, you'd never take that chance.
But what if this process was altered? What if 'evaluation' preceded experience? What if evaluations already made determined what was experienced?
Yet, you believe the world is dreaming and you are nothing more than a victim of that fantasy. The world is cause and "you" are its effect.
Yet, the world does not dream of your suffering. That's in your mind and no where else. It is exclusive to "you." If you are nothing but a puppet, then why suffer as you seem to? Why would a puppet suffer, knowing it is not real, but made by the world?
Therefore, the question has yet to be answered:
Did the world dream you up or did you dream up the world?
One answer leads to your liberation from the strings.
The other to your death (because you're already dead).
Artwork by George Grie - "Dreams of Flying"
I have a friend who always says you are as dead as you are going to get.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem with reality equals dreaming, is that when you cut yourself, you surely bleed.
One of my first memories in life is being very, very, very small and the atmosphere in my GrandMother's house in early morning was gossamer. It took me many, many, many years to realize that it was the sun's reflection on the lake that made the dawn airs what they were in that valley town. I mention this only, because it was an ever after longing for a perfect morning.
Blessings,
Nahnni
You dream of bleeding.
ReplyDeleteEverything happens as expected.
Try to not expect it and you can't.
In an egocentric dream, everything happens as expected.
: )
mikeS
Well, a 2 year old who runs in front of a train, you know the tragic ending, but did the 2 year old? And what if one has true dementia...and no ego left, only the dream and steps in front of a train, well, tragic ending, but did the dreamer, whose dreaming had stopped, dream it still??
ReplyDeletetry not to spend too much time considering what a 2yr old or a demented mind might experience colliding with a train and focus more on why you're experiencing it.
ReplyDeleteThere is no tragedy in a dream only the superimposing of tragic meanings. In a dream of death everything dies.
This is expected...
mikeS
LoL...I am reminded in some surreal place in the mind, of hopping Krishna devotees in the park and Jumping Jumping Jehosephats beneath revival tents...despite, or in response to, the weeping of the world.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right in theory and reminds me of that story, "The Lovely Bones." When emotion rises in the dream, one forgets that everything dies...in the dream.
But I had the dream while dreaming sleep (dream within dream, perhaps), of the carnival and blue skies and then the closing thud of utter darkness upon being told it was all illusion. Now, I look back at it, and wonder if the searing panic of blackness was the inability to cross the field of illusion...or lack of considering whether both light and dark were equally illusory.
Even an animal fears death. Everything living, therefore, must dream. I find it difficult not to think in layers.
I remember my maternal GrandMother was surprised when she grew older and more infirm. She thought it might be a disease of some sort from which she would recover. While she lay dying, eventually, she appeared even more surprised. To this day, she bombed my assumption of immortality. Oy.
Ahhh...unless it was the dream of everyone else that she would grow old and therefore...die, thereby superimposing one dream on top of another.
ReplyDeleteOr something like that.