The Clarity of Dreams
Today I sat in the sun in a field behind the Knight Library. I listened to the muted sounds from the school of music and the cacophany being created by a group of tai-chi dancers moving in rhythm on the lawn. The whole world existed in a pleasant haze of passive pleasure... a dream... a mirage...

On the other hand, my dreams are rarely mirages. I seem to feel and see with more clarity than I do in waking life. It's almost disappointing. I can think of so many dreams in which I have felt a greater degree of unconstrained sorrow, joy, and anger than I have ever felt one moment in waking life. (Or I could just be repressed ^^) It soothes me to know I have the capacity to experience these boundless feelings. I know they are real I know they are within me... I know the greatest joy and the deepest sorrow... I have even acknowledged my own capacity for raw anger. But I am disconcerted that these emotions cannot seem to manifest in real life. Maybe they're not supposed to... maybe I need them to be restrained so that I can function. But then, every moment in which I am within the throes of these absolute FEELINGS, I feel more worthy as a living being than I ever have from accomplishing anything monetary, academic, or interpersonal. These are personal revelations.

I have stood face to face with my demons and cursed them a thousand times.

I have danced in the flourescent-lit hallmark card isle inside my head with ghosts from the past and shades from the future. We all laughed and spun and embraced in pure, midless joy.

I have wept in unrestrained sorrow over the dead forms of countless friends and lovers and found, in these moments, that I knew and loved their true archetypes more than I could ever say in waking life. In these moments I truly value those dead of my dreams because they are utterly, completely lost to me. (Yes, a lot of people die in my dreams, not neccesarily violently. I often just find out they've died, or are about to die, from someone and the dream becomes a meditation of ABSOLUTE sorrow.)

These are not the power dreams of my Archetype. They are not bound to an element or founded in Wild Magik. These are Human dreams, these are real. Life, more often than not, is more hazy than any of these dreams. What's to say that life isn't the dream and these dreams are real? What's to say I couldn't feel these things in waking life if I only let go? One word, both counts: Fear.

Fear is the mind killer; fear is the little-death...

Fear is that which waking life is about. Fear is that which governs us as Human beings when we cannot be free of it in Dreams. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are who we are and we do what we do based upon fears, big and small. I am not consciously afraid, most of the time. I am happy... I am sad... but I am hazy because I am afraid to let go. Afraid that it would draw me out, that it would make me somehow not able to be where the other people are... that living in absolute clarity would make me unable to communicate with the world- absolutely alone. It's like the thought that's illustrated in the quote from "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" in Thursday's post. I think that while these pure emotions are also real; human, so is the fear that guides me and restrains me in waking life.

When I say we live in fear, I don't mean we are cowards (though we may be) or that we even hold back on purpose (though we might)... I just mean to say that there is a part of ourselves that we can't let out because of that fundamental, social Ego. Only in dreams can we fall face-first into our fear and come out into a world where it doesn't exist... where not only is intergalactic warfare a plausible occurance, but an instant of absolute joy or sorrow is not uncommon either.

I tell ya, after nights like these- whether I find myself euphoric or sobbing- waking life is just a little lame. Does anyone want to join me in leaving this place behind for a waking life that is free of fear and making a new world where these absolutes can exist? Hm... on the other hand, I don't think that's possible... I don't think we can live without the restraint of fear... I don't think evolution would permit it. Then, we've been exceptions to so many rules...

But I can still only defy the gravity of the Real in my Dreams.

I think it's time for a nap.