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When we’re dreaming, we don’t know it’s a dream. We’re essentially lost within the perceived reality of the dream. But once in a while, we become lucid. We “wake up” within the dream and become aware that we’re dreaming. And that what we’re experiencing is not “real.”
This is what is happening to myself and many others in our waking reality. We’re awakening to the dream that we are living. The dream that our mind is creating when we’re “awake,” just as it does when we’re asleep.
It’s understandable that we may judge this perspective as delusional without context for such experiences. For without context, we are unlikely to resonate with or consider the validity of such a claim. The story our mind creates about this reality is fixed – much like the story in our dreams at night, until we become lucid – so we reject these seemingly outrageous claims that this reality is yet another dream.
Perhaps you have already become aware of the dream, and this does resonate. Or maybe not. Maybe this doesn’t feel like a dream, and none of this feels true for you. But whether or not it’s “true” is largely irrelevant. What is relevant is what you wish to experience.
If we allow ourselves to consider that the mind is the creator of a dream – the dream that we are living – this opens up the possibility to create our own dream. (And perhaps this isn’t such a far-fetched idea, knowing that our mind already creates dreams as we sleep, and that some are able to exercise creative control while lucid dreaming.)
What if reality isn’t fixed and objective? What if it is created by our perspective? This is the conclusion quantum physics has come to. The double-slit experiment shows us that “reality” merely exists as potential until an observer witnesses it. Until a consciousness observes it and creates a reality.
How do we consciously create our reality? It begins with understanding that this is a dream, and that we can make it any dream we choose through our perspective of it. But not until we take back creative control of our minds. Not until we stop running on other people’s truth. Not until we turn off autopilot.
And how do we do that?
By taking the red pill and becoming aware of our conditioning.
We’ve been conditioned to see the world the way others see it since the day we were born. Our resulting “understandings” have carved deep neural pathways in our minds, and programmed us to see the world through the eyes of others. Taking the red pill – a metaphor from The Matrix for awakening – is making a choice to trust our inner authority. To get in touch with the part of our Self that has access to truths that exist beyond the conditioned mind. This allows us to question what we’ve been led to believe, and to wake up to the ways in which we’ve been conditioned to conform and lose sight of the incredible beauty of who we really are.
The truth of our beauty has never truly left us. It exists within each and every human heart. But we aren’t taught to listen to our hearts, to follow our intuition, to trust ourselves. We’re taught to listen to authority, that others know what’s best, that we are not to be trusted. We’re conditioned to scan for what’s wrong, so we see ourselves as wrong, and doubt ourselves to the point of insanity.
Why are we conditioned this way?
Because we’re much easier to control when we’re lost in self-doubt and certain about the information we’ve been fed.
Listen to your heart.
Connect with your innocence.
Loving and trusting ourselves is the path to freedom.
Self-love is key, and there are many paths. One is gratitude. Scanning for what’s right instead of what’s wrong. Creating new neural pathways that at first run parallel to old perspectives, but eventually run deeper. When we stop searching for what’s wrong, and stop making ourselves and others wrong, we begin to end the war both outside ourselves and within us, and to become aware of the infinite love and perfection that we are.
What is required is a willingness to lay down our defenses. To notice what perspectives we cling to and ask, “Is this way of seeing the world serving me? Is it helping me to be a more heart-centered being? Is it guiding me to a feeling of inner peace and love?” If the answer to any of these questions is no, why hold onto these perspectives?
The mind can be our ally in this process. It can logically look at what we’re doing and say, “Well now, that doesn’t feel very good. Why are we continuing to choose perspectives that don’t feel good? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” We can logically move in a different direction by considering perspectives that may contradict what we think we know and feel good within our hearts.
The heart and mind become partners in our revolution of love. The heart lets us know what feels in and out of alignment for us, and the mind considers new perspectives.
Mind: How does this perspective feel?
Heart: Pretty good, thanks. Much better than the old one.
Trusting ourselves means trusting what feels good. What feels good is our guidance system. We’re taught that we’re essentially bad and shouldn’t follow what feels good because it could lead us to do bad things. But as I experimented with trusting my heart, I began to see that it could indeed be trusted, over and over again. And I learned to love and trust my inner authority above outer authorities.
In the beginning, it is best to trust the inner authority of our heart rather than our mind. But as the mind lets go of old conditioning and aligns with the heart, the internal conflict fades, and we doubt ourselves much less often. And this is when we begin living our soul purpose.
Our heart is the bridge between our mind and soul. And as the mind and heart align, the soul descends to join them, because we’re now able to resonate with its perspective. We’re trusting ourselves, so we can now be trusted with knowledge that will increase our creative power and allow us to embody and share more love, peace, and joy in the world.
As we align with our soul perspective, we see deeper and deeper beauty in ourselves and everything we imagine to be separate from us. The illusion of separation begins to dissolve, and self-love and love of all become One. We become the soulmate we’ve been searching for, and, united as One, we step forward to create the world of our dreams.
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A version of this post was originally posted on TroyCohen.Wordpress.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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