How to Be Who We Truly Are: Sometimes, Our Dreams, And Those Closest to Us, Can Show Us Exactly What We Need to See

When I was in college, I was totally engrossed in learning, studying philosophy, psychology, etc. Equally I was involved in demonstrating for everything from stopping a war to getting funds to feed and clothe children. I felt that the life of the world and my life shared the same stream.

 

But right now, in this time in history, the link between most of us and those in power has grown too distant. The sense that what I do influences world events or that life has meaning in and of itself is getting lost. Sometimes, I can feel like one overwhelming cloud is darkening all our lives.

 

But other times⎼ for example, last night. I don’t know why, but even something little can change everything. I went to bed, did a short meditation, said goodnight to my wife and cats. And when I turned out the lights, like usual, the darkness surrounded me. But it was a different sort of darkness, amazingly quiet, except for the soft purring of the cats, and so much like an embrace. The anxiety and worry disappeared. No thoughts were anywhere.

 

And right there, while resting my head on the pillow, I felt in the middle of everything. The quiet of that specific moment encompassed everything. I can barely describe it now, other than to say the night seemed to open to me. All that was needed was to let myself in. And a sense of peace would be waiting for me. And then it was.

 

We so benefit from better understanding ourselves. I’d been having a painful and possibly serious health issue. And last week, I needed to undergo a medical procedure to help heal it. The night before the procedure, I was anxious. Since I had to wake up earlier than normal to get to the hospital, and my condition often interfered with sleep, I was worried about how much sleep I would get.

 

But I fell asleep just fine. And soon entered a dream. Without going into too much detail, my dream-self heard, and then saw through a window, someone outside our house. There was snow on the ground. The person was walking away from me and suddenly fell into the snow. I got up to go out after them. But before I could, the dream changed location.

 

I was in a huge barnlike structure occupied by a group of maybe ten, maybe twenty people. I couldn’t see any of them clearly. And someone was just out of sight, partially hidden. But I could clearly feel this mystery person was important and was getting ready to lead the group in an activity.

 

However, one person in the group, who I felt to be an outlier, an independent sort, started chanting Ooommm. Or AUM. On their own. A few others joined in. I joined in. This was a simple OM, very natural. It’s a practice I first learned in a college improvisational theatre group. Just taking a breath in; and as we breathed out, we let the air pass through the vocal cords and naturally vibrate out the sound. Concentrating on the feel of the sound, we then heard the silence we created in and around us….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

A Silence So Deep We Can Fall into It: A Different Sort of Light

Yesterday afternoon, the temperature was in the high 20’s, with snow gently falling⎼ a perfect time for a walk. The snow turned the sky a deep gray, and almost everything else, even my own arms, white. And it concentrated what I could see of the world into an intimate, silent tunnel into emptiness.

 

When I stopped walking and my steps no longer echoed against the road, the loudest sounds in the world were my own thoughts. And in-between those thoughts, or when they fell from my mind like snow, the silence was so deep I could fall into it. The sound of a woodpecker searching for food, the little stream on the side of the road, the trees scratching their skins against other trees, a distant airplane⎼ all such sounds disappeared into silence.

 

There’s a book by D. E. Harding, an English mystic and philosophical writer, called On Having No Head: Zen and the Re-Discovery of the Obvious. It’s about the author’s experience, and attempt to understand it, when hiking in the Himalayas and he discovered he had no head.

 

For months beforehand, Harding had been absorbed in the question of “what am I?” And then on one very clear day, standing on a ridge of the highest mountain range in the world, he looked into the misty valley below. And he stopped thinking. He forgot his name, his past, his concerns for the future. Any reference to any other time or place, or desire for any other time or place other than this, here, now, was gone. And in this hole where his head should have been there was everything ⎼ grass, trees, the distant hills, clouds, and snowy mountain peaks. A vast emptiness was vastly filled. If other people had been with him, they too would have been included in, and as, his head.

 

Harding said it was like being born anew as a whole, integrated world instead of a lonely head. It was a revelation; not dreamlike at all, but a crystal-clear awakening of the obvious. So peaceful. So simple, really. It might seem that carrying a mountain between one’s shoulders would be a heavy weight. But it was so light, even weightless; a terrible burden dropped into the snow.

 

In my copy of Harding’s book, which I had bought used years ago, was a note written by a previous reader. It was a famous line from the 17th century English poet, Thomas Traherne: “You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.”

 

Such moments change lives. I wonder if the garden we humans may feel driven from was this state. This re-birth. Here love resides. And kindness, joy. Is the state described by Harding what underlies all joy? And does the tunnel of gray silence that appeared on the road I had walked yesterday lead to the headless Himalayas? Can all of us get there? Is this something only past humans could do but is nowadays impossible?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.