DAY 16
Dreams aren’t all cut from the same cloth. Some dreams are vague, barely more vivid than having a fleeting memory when you are awake. At the opposite extreme are so-called lucid dreams. When you’re having a lucid dream, you have no clue that it is a dream. You are fully immersed in it and, when you wake up, it’s hard to acknowledge that the dream wasn’t real. Likewise, virtual reality is a full-immersion experience. There are few clues to suggest that you are not fully awake.
For that reason, glimpses of clarity, moments of joy, creative insights, and the experience of meditation are precious. They suggest that you are immersed in a vivid, lucid dream. Waking up will come as a surprise—for many people, it’s a shock to realize that they’ve been asleep all their lives. Every passing moment was like experiencing the vivid now. Once awake, however, now becomes a window into pure consciousness. It doesn’t matter what fills the now. What matters is that you are fully awake to it.
Moments when you see through the spell/dream/illusion often happen spontaneously—they come upon you by surprise. There’s no set way to bring about such glimpses; the closest you can come is through meditation. Still, you can prepare the ground today for the seed of metareality experience. At any time, take a look around, smile to yourself, and say, “Imagine, this is all a dream, and I am the dreamer.” The smile is important. It’s like anticipating Christmas as a child. You know something good is coming and, by reminding yourself, you open the way.