PRIME POST! The Truth, the Dream, and the Teaching (Text Version, Conclusion)

THE DREAM & THE TEACHING

As Fred-the-spiritual-teacher I don’t spend much time with people who have not at least walked through the Gateless Gate, even if they walked back into the dream ten minutes after they first left it. A short visit, even a glimpse, such as I experienced back in 1992, changes everything. Such an experience certainly does not guarantee that a person is going to live as stable Awakeness—there is no such guarantee available. Enlightenment is all about right now—are we consciously awake to this arising? Do we know that this arising is the way that You, Oneness, are presenting YourSelf to YourSelf—in this apparent moment?

That is the line in the sand.

When Conscious Awakeness functions for even a moment through the guise of a human being it leaves an indelible footprint on that human being. You can’t wash it off, and you can’t get it out of your head. Trust me, I tried to do so for years. I tried to write my experience off as a psychotic breakdown, as delirium tremens, as a case of psychological wish fulfillment. Nothing worked.

I knew what it was—awakening is typically self-confirming–and I couldn’t forget it. Ten years later I found myself in a different home, under wildly different circumstances, yet once again sitting on the floor and asking, “Who am I?” My head was simply too far in the tiger’s mouth; there was no going back.

A lot of my students and clients have had such experiences, perhaps long before they talked to me, and some of them have lasted for weeks, months, even a couple of years. And then, somehow—I know how—they started believing thoughts again and “their” awakening went the way of the wind. This can damn near drive a character crazy, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually can. You can absolutely feel crazy, I warrant you that.

Thus a fair number of my Awakening Sessions are really re-awakening sessions. When that thing you still have haunting you in your head is not also showing up in your heart and your life, you call me, sorta like calling Ghostbusters. Instead of getting rid of the ghost, however, we instead work together and bring the ghost back to life. At that point I—meaning Noneness experiencing Itself as Oneness—am working through the virtual puppet of Fredness within the dream of separation. It’s kinda nuts, but it’s really entertaining.

Why would I pretend to be asleep and then hire Myself to wake Me up? I can answer your question with the only true answer to any “why” question there ever is: Why not? (FYI: Why-type questions are exclusive to The Dream. I never ask them. Dealing with What Is is plenty without going into what isn’t.)

Teaching for Me is sort of like what eating food is for Fredness. I do it because I can’t not do it—meaning I’m not really doing it, it’s simply happening. But it will feel like I’m doing it, as experienced through Fredness. And like Fredness enjoying a sandwich, I will come to enjoy the process immensely, on both sides—as teacher and student, as freer and freed, as lost and found. Yum.

And heck, who couldn’t love that great surprise ending?

Just so you know—in case he ever tells you otherwise, which could happen because the character has (an unwarranted) arrogant streak—there is not the first thing special about Fredness. I use that character because it had a lot of the qualifications I needed for this budding situation, and I was abandoning its ongoing story anyway. I had lost all interest in the Fred drama, which had become nauseatingly repetitious. Up and down, up and down. So I took over in 2006 and it’s been a joy ride ever since.

Every last word that I have written in this post so far is of, about, and for the dream. There is no Fred, no teaching, no clients, no students, no awakening or loss of awakening, no Oregon or South Carolina, no duality, none of it. It’s all fiction, every bit of it. Yet this is My experience. I am experiencing Myself as Fredness, Oneness, and Noneness all at the same time.

At least as I understand it, the technical Advaita term for this is turiyatita, which simply means “beyond turiya.” Turiya essentially means consciousness. Nisargadatta Maharaj preferred to say “prior to” rather than beyond. It’s actually more accurate. This “stateless state” is also called parabrahman. I don’t call it anything, I’m just sharing the hearsay and babbling one finds in books. They can never get it right, but I love books anyway. Spiritual writers make such a valiant effort.

Meanwhile, back in the dream lots of stuff always appears to be going on. This is what makes it so rich and exciting. Once I start consciously using a character, the richness increases, but the excitement level is somewhat evened out. What’s good is still experienced as good, and what is experienced as sucking still sucks, but I don’t really get up in arms about either one. After all, I am Unborn and thus Untouched by whatever occurs. Such a deal I have for you!

However, I like a good novel or movie as much as the next god, so I get quite involved, which means that what happens in the dream counts. How the character behaves, even down to how it holds a cup of tea or flicks a light switch counts. Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it’s without consequences. In the dream, cause and effect are fully at play.

Happily what occurs in the dream doesn’t really matter. When I start to function consciously through a given character, my experience can quickly become a laugh riot. The Fred story is one of these, hence the laughing hyena. People wonder why it laughs so much. How could it not?

As Fred-the-spiritual-teacher I spend nearly all of my time in the dream helping dreamers, lucid or otherwise, experience higher levels of dreamness. No character ever leaves the dream. No one graduates out of it. I simply don’t enter it to begin with and thus I am entirely Unbound by its restrictions. In what’s known as a “spiritual awakening” I simply notice through a fresh unit that I was never in the dream to begin with.

I know, this sounds like a real yawner, but this blessed event is experienced by all the players as being a huge deal, a truly noteworthy event. Go figure. They will spend their lives trying to get where they already are. See why these characters are so much fun? I outdid Myself with the humans. But I needed a way to undo Myself, to wake Me up here and there and everywhere the fruits were ripe. Thus the clever ploy of inventing spiritual teachers. What a stitch!

When I experience Myself as sameness, that experience is known as the Void. When I experience Myself as a distinct human-based character, that experience is known as the world. Either way it’s still Me, and either way I’m always awake, only in one situation I know I’m Awakeness and in the other I do not. It sounds like a minor technicality, but in fact the difference between the two experiences is enormous.

I enjoy both, or at least I do until I don’t. Yin yang, you know? Round and round she goes.

So notice that if I don’t know I’m Awakeness then My experience—through the hapless character—will be that I am not “awake.” But of course I am still the same Awakeness manifesting as Oneness either way and everything is hunky dory, regardless. It can’t not be! Consciousness is doing a whale of a job; some days I wish I could take the credit.

When I am functioning through a character that is deemed to be “unconscious,” then I, as an apparent separate entity, experience the world of separation. When I am functioning through an abandoned story, however temporarily, then I experience myself as Oneness. Should unconsciousness return, then the unit’s mind will translate the experience into something the character saw, knew, or had, followed by the character’s having lost it. Unbelievable. This experience will become haunting, and day-to-day life may be experienced as feeling worse than it used to because now there’s been a Taste of Truth to compare unconsciousness to. What a ride.

Time to call Ghostbusters.

Understand: anything can happen in the dream. To anybody anywhere at any time. Once you figure out that it’s a dream you begin to see that nothing is impossible. It is here that some presumptuous meta-physicians will step up to give manifesting a go. Let’s first recognize that the meta-physicians are dream characters operating within a dream. Should they actually succeed in manifesting something through wishes rather than works, this is a real curse. I know. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Upon any bit of apparent success, these players are at high risk of spending their time decorating attractive prison cells for the rest of their lives. I only got out of that cycle because I was blessed with being a drunk, so I couldn’t hang onto anything. If my dream had been great, I might not have woken up. Who wants to wake up from a great dream?

I’m not saying manifesting works, or doesn’t work. It’s a DREAM. Anything can happen. But if your attention is focused on the dream, the Divine Hypnosis that the character is stricken with will become more and more difficult to break through until it becomes essentially impossible. But you might have a nice car. Or not.

Goals are much like manifesting. They appear to work pretty durn well in the dream. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. Just notice that they are completely dream-centered (even if they are “spiritual”) and lead only to more and more involvement and attachment to the dreaming, not to mention an obsession with a story of future. But if that’s where you are, have at it!

Free will, like cause and effect, is very much in force in the dream, which we could also call Relativity. From the Universal state, of course, that’s all seen as hooey, just as the Universal state and its laws are seen as hooey from the Relative. The two will never meet and the laws of one will never, ever, even for a moment, migrate to the other. They are the polar opposites, which means that they are both in the dream.

Anything we can describe using a yin yang symbol is in and of the dream. This includes all manner of spiritually-oriented arguments: Is enlightenment fast or slow? It’s both. Is there free will or not? There is the experience of free will in Relativity, and the knowing that it’s nonsense in the Universal. So, again, the answer is both. As seen from the nondual view, it’s always both/and. It is never either/or. Ever hear of the word “paradox”?

Is there life after death? It’s a DREAM is it not? You can talk to your dead grandma within the dream, no problem whatsoever. She may even predict something for you, or share a secret. Why not? After all it’s family.

Telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, or any other siddhis? Dream on, friend. You want it badly enough, you got it. Astral projection or out of body experiences? Sweet dreams and drop Me a card. I have a student who’s a big-time professional astrologer. He’ll tell you in a heartbeat that it’s all about patterns in the dream.

Truth is quite another matter from experience, but Truth doesn’t negate experience. Who cares what’s “real” or not, so long as it’s experienced as real. Have you seen My two little dogs? I love them no matter what they are.

Enjoy it while you can, my friend, because no dream lasts forever. How are Bob and Barb doing in post-awakening? Now there’s a dream I can sink My teeth into! I love to wake Myself up through fresh characters. There is always that beautiful, dumbfounded look of surprise, or shock, and always there is awe and wonder. It’s a hoot.

If you’re dreaming, I hope it’s a good one. If it’s not, give Me a call. Fredness gets the money and the credit, but I promise you, he has not the faintest clue of how to do what he appears to do. I enjoyed pulling that old burnt out bum of a unit out from the bushes of Mt. Tabor City Park, where he was dying exactly 17 years ago as I write this sentence. It was a thrill to sober him up. It was a trial to have him quit smoking. And gambling. And other stuff.

But make him a spiritual teacher! How funny is THAT? Talk about a god with a sense of humor! Of course anything that crazy could only happen in a dream. And it has.