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Awakening to the Dream
by
Leo
Hartong
Excerpt from chapter 21 of :
Awakening to the Dream
The Gift of Lucid Living.
 Lucid dreaming is a term that refers to
waking up inside a dream, realizing it
is a dream, and then continuing
the
dream with this understanding. Seeing through the illusion of
separation could
be termed lucid living, as it is not you
waking up from
the dream of life, but
the impersonal awakening to the
dream of life.
From which point could
an illusion see through itself as an
illusion?
What could an assumed doer
do to become a non-doer? What
thought could
take the thinker beyond thinking? The answer is nothing and none. Like
Rumi said,
"Whoever brought me here will have
to take me home."
This "coming home" reveals the
illusory nature of the ego, the world, time and space. All this does not
disappear in a blast of white light, but what does disappear is the
sense of separation that constitutes the ego illusion. Although it may
put a glint in "your" eye as "you" delight in this
cosmic illusion, there will be actually no you to delight in it, no you
to see it, and no you to get it. The play, including your role in it,
continues with the altered perspective of knowing, delighting, and
seeing, without an individual claiming these as personal activities or
achievements. What is left is that which appears as you and
everything-your true Self, which is already and always awake to the
dream of life.
This realization happens by itself. No
new knowledge is acquired, but old assumptions fall away. No effort in
the world can make you what you already and actually are. The truth
behind ego is a no-thing-ness too close for investigation, since it is
the very source from which the attempt to investigate arises. Seeing
this makes it clear that the activating agent in all your actions is not
a fictional "me," but the universal energy, or one's true
Self. The belief in a "me," as well as the seeking for
enlightenment, is seen through by no-one as nothing but the playful
activity of this primal activating energy. The cosmic joke in the
journey of the seeker is that the energy that fuels the seeking is
precisely what is being sought. In Zen this is called "riding an ox
in search of an ox." Wei Wu Wei compared it to looking for your
spectacles, not realizing that they are on your nose and, were you not
looking through them, you wouldn't be able to see what you are looking
for.
IT awakens to itself or,
more to the point, IT is Awakeness itself. It is the light in which all
apparent opposites reveal their interdependence and ultimate One-ness;
it is the clarity in which the illusion of separation dissolves. The
witness and that which is witnessed merge into witnessing, while the
illusion of past and future dissolves into the clarity of timeless
presence. As It Is, life has no meaning beyond itself. It is always at
the point of completion and, simultaneously, as fresh as the morning dew
at the dawn of creation.
Advaita/Non-duality
The book 'Awakening To The Dream' is about Self-realization and written
from the non-dual perspective. Many of you who are reading this are
familiar with these words, but for those of you who are not, here is a
short description:
Non-duality is a general term that covers
several -mostly eastern- schools of thought, which point to
the single source before and beyond all temporal experiences and
apparent diversity. While reading texts from non-dual systems such as
Zen, Advaita, Taoism, or Dzogchen, you will find the affirmation that
Self-realization has no promise other than to release you from your
belief in a separate self or ego. That's it. The dropping away of the
illusion simply reveals this as it is, often summed up
in the phrase "Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."
The best known teachers in this field are Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramana Maharshi.
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