Lesson 10 - Philosophical implications. I was working on this final lesson. It was very late. I went to sleep and had this dream:     The time is the present, but in my dream my son and daughter are very young. Some sort of widespread calamity has occurred and my wife and I learn that we and our children have only one day to live. At first I'm angry and bitter as I attend to the needs of my son while my wife cares for our little daughter. Though I hate that life's end is so near, I don't want to spend my last day on earth filled with anger. I resolve to spend it being loving and compassionate.     Some boys have broken my son's toy car and I help him find the pieces and put it back together. Being helpful and loving enables me to feel good that final day. The difference between being filled with anger and being filled with love is extraordinary. When we arrive at the place where parents and their children are being euthanized my daughter becomes upset. I say to my wife, "Who can blame her? How can anyone not be upset about dying?" Then I woke up.     I understood right away the lesson of the dream and I'll never forget it. Life is short. Love is our precious compensation. Being loving and compassionate is supremely important because it makes our all-to-brief life sweet. This idea is not a new one, but having this dream really brought it home to me. Meaning is not an intellectual concept, it is an emotional response. Conviction and certainty are feelings, not concepts. They are only strongly rooted when rooted in experience.     In many ways our waking life is like a dream. So much of it is imagined. Our rationalizing intellect supports a bogus self image, while hiding things about ourselves that we don't want to admit. We ignore the complexity of the people around us, but pretend that we know them; and we pretend that we know God; and we pretend that we have valid opinions about just about everything, even though we all know opinions are notoriously subjective.     The subjective world is a world of illusion, a partial view of reality, a distortion sustained by our biology, by our ego, and by our social conditioning. Wisdom is being able to see the actual reality instead of the illusion. This is what Socrates was describing in his parable of the cave, where prisoners see shadows on the wall and mistake them for reality. This is the essential teaching of the Buddha and the essence of Zen. Finding our way out of illusion is the ultimate spiritual/intellectual/emotional challenge of life.     Ironically, dreams take us beyond the illusory world of our waking life. They give us a vivid connection to our True Self, to our genuine feelings, and to our inner wisdom.     The powerful, mysterious biological forces of our human organism that ripen us to adulthood, that heal our wounds, that fight our diseases also drive the creative engine of our dreams. By comprehending the profound purpose and imaginative brilliance of our dreams we discover an almost unlimited source of creative inspiration, psychological insight, and spiritual guidance. When we learn to understand and live from our dreams, we move from confusion and illusion to empowerment and enlightenment.   previous - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - related topics home - teachings - history - archives - FAQs