Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Bad Dreams

Did you ever have one of those bad dreams that seem to hang on for most of the day?  Like the smell of burned toast that stays in the air long after. All day long you have to remind yourself that the bad feelings are only the memory of a dream? I have been experiencing those dreams for the past week. 
One of them involved a fight with my best friend. It was a very realistic and stressful dream. It took some time for me to realize it didn't happen.  The memory of the fight was just the memory of the dream not an actual event.  But, it continued to bothered me. I could not get the thought out of my mind and began to think that it might be some premonition. Perhaps my freind was actually mad at me and I channelled the idea in a dream, or maybe it was a sign of a fight to come.  
I decided to text him. I said, "Last night I dreamed that we had a horrible fight. Are we still friends?"
I got this reply, "You are my best friend. One of the nicest guys I know, except in your dreams where you are obviously a dick."
That dream was just the first of several nightmares this week. The pattern seems to be the same.  A stressful situation of loss that takes me all day to get past. Last night even that idea became part of the plot. In my dream I said to someone, "'For a minute I thought this didn't really happen, and I only dreamed it."  The person in my dream said, "Oh, you didn't dream it, it really happened." I became even more depressed in my dream state. 
This experience started me thinking about reality. There is no doubt that when we are dreaming, no matter how illogical, we believe it is the truth of what is happening to us.  At one moment in this imaginary universe I caught a glimpse of the truth.  I knew it was not reality but a dream.  However, the minute I express that truth the dream tells me I am wrong and I return to the illogical universe. 
I guess the lesson is: when we have found the truth within ourselves we can not look for validation or proof from the outside. We have to find the truth and hold on to it inside oursleves.
As you were,
Jay

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