Am I Dreaming?

I love to ponder the question of reality.  As I sit with fingers poised on the keys of my laptop with my feet resting comfortably on an ottoman, I savor the sensory pleasures of a steaming hot cup of coffee, sunlight that warms my toes through the window, and the whiff of Spring in the air.  It’s all very tangible, very real, very comfy.

When I go to sleep tonight, the laptop, keyboard, and ottoman will all disappear.  They will simply vanish into the ethers.  Poof.  Gone.  Suddenly my daytime reality will slip away and I will live a different dream, one that is as real as the one with the laptop, sunshine, and coffee.

Sometimes my nighttime dreams are so real, so tangible, that when I try to start conversations with friends or relatives who played a starring role, I am met with a look of disbelief and told that such an event never happened.  It was only a dream.  Or maybe a nightmare.  Really?  Who knew?  Am I crazy?  Maybe.

As I try to discern the difference between real and unreal, another question comes to mind.  When I take my final breath and leave this world, will I awaken into yet another dream and find that this life, this so-called reality that I am currently living will vanish and be nothing more than the vague memory of a fleeting dream?  Will I awaken from one imaginary world and find myself in another—one that is more tangible to me than this one is now?  Or will I find myself sound asleep in a black hole in space?

These are heady questions indeed, but so worth pondering.  I can see that a reader might get lost in all of this talk of dreaming, as I sometimes lose myself in living life amidst the confusion of all of my own dreams.

A lucid dreamer has the ability to change the course of a nighttime dream while it is still in progress.  This is a learned skill, one that I have not yet mastered—but I’m working on it.  In my awake daytime dreams, I call it making in-flight corrections.

Though I may still be in kindergarten with my lucid nighttime dreaming skills, I am making good progress in my effort learn how to turn my current daytime dream—or lifetime, or reality, or whatever one may wish to call it— into happy dreams of love rather than unwelcome nightmares of fear.

I can alter the direction of my world and the world at large by choosing and changing the direction of my thoughts.  I can fill my head with visions of a beautiful harmonious, new world populated by characters who share a common dream of love, of people who know the Truth, who dream the same dream, who believe in the same reality—a reality of a new Heaven on earth.  Oh how I long for the day . . .  we are so close.

Note:  The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us).