I had a dream last night, one which has repeated itself in different variations over the years. I would guess that many people have had the same type of dream.

I am in a strange town, on a side street, alone, inadequately dressed, and aware that I am hunting for my car. But I don't know where I left it. Being unfamiliar with the town, there are no landmarks by which I can tell where I am, and I have no sense of where to look for my car. It is useless to ask someone for help, because I can't give them the information which would allow them to assist me.

This sense of isolation, lostness, almost hopelessness, goes on for some time, as I wander around looking for anything that will give me the slightest idea of how to get out of this predicament. In addition, I am cold, shivering and miserable, angry that I have gotten myself into this fix in the first place. And the crushing sense that all of this is really happening is overwhelming.

Then, slowly, I rose to the awareness that I was in my bed, safe, warm, unlost, and that the whole painful experience had only been a dream. It brought with it an amazing sense of relief, of peace, of gratitude.

It occurs to me that some day I am going to wake up slowly to the realization that I am safe, warm, and unlost in the spiritual world, and that the painfully real experience I have just completed was only another physical life. That awareness will bring its own amazing sense of relief, peace and gratitude.

We need to remember that our true life is spiritual, and that our physical life is as fleeting and insubstantial as a dream. In fact, there is a direct correlation here - our physical life bears the same relationship to our spiritual life, as our dream life does to our physical life. What our dream life does for our human awareness is the same thing that our physical life does for our essential spiritual being. They are both instructive and they both contribute to our growth, but on vastly different levels. And in the same way that our human mind generates many dreams, so our spiritual self generates many physical lives.

Lucid dreaming is the awareness that we are having a dream while it is still in progress. It is said that not only does the ability to dream lucidly imply a higher degree of evolvement, but that knowing we are dreaming gives us the power to direct the dream's development, so that it can be most beneficial.

From that knowledge, we should desire to live lucid lives, lives in which we understand that the physical experience is merely the dream state of the spirit. As we learn to live more lucidly, we will be better able to direct our lives so that, rather than blindly following wherever they happen to lead us, we can take more control and choose a direction which will involve the most creative and meaningful spiritual growth, both for ourselves and for others.

Posted 2-02-09

Copyright: John W. Sloat 2009