Disorientation is a guide
“What you are seeking is also seeking you.”- Rumi
In a dream I am sitting in the corner of a restaurant at a table. I don’t have anywhere in particular to go. A waitress tells me that the place is going to close shortly, but I ignore her words and continue to sit at the table. She comes back and tells me I’m out of time and I need to get washed. She wants me to take a shower and lets me know that I ought to clean up. I realize that I look like a bum. As I get up to do that, she insists that the restaurant is closing. I walk around the corner to where the shower is and discover that it is closed. I turn around to go back to my table. The lights have been turned off and I only find darkness. I wonder if the objects that I left there still exist.
I wake up with a feeling that I don’t have a clear orientation and that I’m out of touch with my surroundings. I have a number of small dreams that hammer me with images that are meant to show me how to learn the levels of the unseen. The dreams shape my thoughts about the outbreath which I begin to see as something like an elevator that brings things down. I’m aware that the inbreath is less experienced because it is unconscious. I sense that this realization has to do with spatiality.
In this next dream I am at a peculiar ceremony that resembles a wedding. A symbolic ritual is taking place. I’m aware that ceremonies symbolically represent more than what’s seen. I relate the meaning of this dream to how we start meaningful things in life with a ceremony that is meant to bring something forward from the unconscious. The ceremony in this dream has layers of symbolism. I realize there’s a connective flow wanting to permeate. And I say in the dream, “Do it now.” At that moment a cake is cut and I kiss both sides of the cake and think that I am kissing something beyond. I feel something flow through. This tells me that the aliveness and what we see in overallness is symbolic. I am being shown various ways of perceiving the permeation and noticing that it is everywhere all the time, but usually it is veiled.
In a dream I appear at a house to find that the main door on the second floor. I have a feeling that my mind senses know this, and I sense there won’t be meaning in it. Then in the dream I am transported to a lower door where there’s an angelic presence that opens the door and says, “Honey.” I had to be there in that split-second. I thought to myself that this is where the permeation is. The dream is saying that I am designated to the upper door if my mind sense is orchestrating the direction. If I chose this door, then permeation would have been choked out, unable to enter through the mundane perceptions. The permeation is always there in the overallness wanting to make itself known, but does so in ways that are hidden from the mind senses. The lower door was the secret.
In my dream about the doors, I’m also trying to connect to the idea of fate. The dream shows that we must contend with what is coming into our lives, and see what’s coming in as the numerous variables that affect how everything is. The dream image of trying to find a house contains variables that are available and unoccupied. I sense that there is a house, but which house? Will I be stuck in a house that’s facing an alley? What if one house is empty and two are full? I wonder how I can make use of these choices.
In another dream someone is asking me for something. It reminded me of what happened the other day when a friend asked me a question, and the minute I heard his question I knew the answer. Then something immediately veiled it. I was shocked and felt it was rude to put a veil before me and obstruct my sight. I’m supposed to be connected to a permeating that causes this flow to come through. I thought that if the doorbell rings, then it must be answered. The last seconds of the dream knew this. In that split-second time stopped, spatiality parted and a window opened and then closed again in that split-second. I felt myself let go. I was free of the mind senses that keep veiling me and everything that is permeating. I understand that the permeation, although veiled, is always there. It’s veiled because God remains always a secret.
Interpretation
In the dream in which I’m disoriented in the restaurant I’m wandering without a clear orientation about going one way or another and I’m out of touch with my surroundings. Nothing is drawing me, nothing is compelling. The dream is pointing out that in spite of appearances and circumstances, there is a permeation that takes on an outward appearance in the overallness that can quicken the presence of what is lying dormant. The dream suggests to me that I need to see things in a new way—through reverse psychology. In the dream I’m out of flow and through this reverse psychology I see that I’m not adhering to overallness which is what is needed. I feel that in the dream I am being shown that the permeation can be glimpsed reflectively on the inbreath or outbreath, providing that the interval has also been touched. I had been saying that the oxygen-breather who is unaware of the intervals is stuck in a mind sense --but this is a black and white thinking that is not right.
The overallness is an experience of the mind senses. The mind sense is felt in the inbreath and the outbreath but these breaths ignore the full cycle of breath which is needed for us to obtain knowledge of the overallness. Wisdom is what’s needed for gnosis, not knowledge. Knowledge is applicable to the overallness. Wisdom is broader, and in gnosis we find the unseen permeation that’s behind it all.
To express this another way, mankind’s pursuit can be likened to drawing a small circle and claiming this to be consciousness. In a meditation I was shown that what is more true is from a small circle spiraling outward and ever widening.
Without the stillness of the intervals of our breath our view is divided and this division creates an above and a below. This division places us in a kind of purgatory and suffering, as what we seek is always out of reach. When we experience the stillness of the intervals of our breath then we integrate the inner and the outer. If we think of this as a clock, we have to change the direction of the hands from clockwise, which is rooted in the illusion of the overallness, to counterclockwise, so that we may glimpse permeation.
Our consciousness clockwise movement in overallness is a kind of purgatory. Our focus on controlling time and space keeps the unseen permeation veiled. Gnosis and the unseen cannot be perceived if the overallness is all we know. We could say that we’re oxygen breathers, in that we focus only on the inbreath and outbreath, so all that our mind senses aspire to know is the overallness. This mind sense pursuit does not lead to wisdom, which comes when we shift our focus to the intervals of breath. If we’re to meet God, we’ll do so where inner and outer come together as one, where the breathing cycle and the intervals have a beginning and an ending that are one and the same.
The bliss that the yogis describe at the moment the inbreath turns to the outbreath is technically no different than the longing and the yearnings that create the marriage between the two. We could say then that where the outbreath turns to the inbreath we’re at the farthest point from where the inbreath turns to the outbreath. However, that’s also an illusion in terms of time and space. We can place time on the outbreath and space on the inbreath, but this leaves us still in an illusion of time and space which are concepts of overallness. We need to touch the unseen, the nothing but nothingness.
Suggested Contemplations
Watch your breath with curious awareness. Do not count the inbreath or the outbreath. Instead let your mind be at rest and notice how it feels to be present and breathe.
What is it like to breathe with curiosity? Pretend for a moment that this is the first time you have ever breathed. How does it feel in your heart? How does it feel in your belly?
Pay attention to what it feels like to breathe in. How does it feel when the inhale is complete? Hesitate for a moment savoring the sensation of fullness, and then exhale gently. What does it feel like to reach the end of the exhale? When you pause there what does it feel to inhale again?
Be aware of sensations and emotions that arise. Stay with this experience as long as you like and then write in your journal about how you felt while simply breathing and noticing the intervals. Try and make a long list of the feelings that the intervals brought forward.
Let all sensation rest in curiosity. Make no decisions or conclusions. Rest in the idea that the breath is more mysterious than what we may so far understand.
“Dreams are the impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and runs into an impasse.” - Carl Jung
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