How Does The Waking Dream Work?

This week, I want to use my four posts to discuss what the waking dream implies about the structure of life. Those of you who read this blog know that I define a waking dream as an experience one has during one’s waking hours—not during sleep. It is an experience that is startling or upsetting. Psychologically, it “stays” with the person who experienced it. “I can’t seem to get that event off my mind,” is a typical reaction of someone involved with a waking dream. Examples include close calls with automobiles, upsetting encounters with colleagues at work, disheartening or shocking personal news, frightening encounters with animals, unexpected injuries or illnesses, or even political circumstances. In every case there is an eye-opening event that causes the “dreamer” to obsess about this one circumstance.

If you follow this blog, you know that I treat these waking dreams exactly like a “normal” dream that one has while sleeping, during periods of rapid eye movement. From the many examples of waking dreams I have highlighted it is clear, that when these experiences are analyzed exactly like normal dreams, they yield the same kind of insightful message. It is a message that accurately assesses a situation that, otherwise, may be difficult for the dreamer to grasp. Waking dreams can also offer helpful instruction on how to proceed toward a resolution.

Here is the question I want to ask this week:

Do we make these experiences up out of our own subconscious minds, or is there some sort of collaboration that takes place between the universe and ourselves?

If we make them up, then we can continue to view life from the perspective that most of us have. We see it as an objective experience with predictable cause and effect events. For example, in the morning, we put bread in the toaster and turn the machine on. If our toaster is working properly, our bread changes to toast. That is an example of life in the objective universe, a universe that we all deal with on a regular, consistent basis.

But how about those experiences that produce unexpected results? What follows is a real-life, bizarre event that happened to me: I had to change the wiring configuration on my computer. I disconnected my cat-6 cable from my desktop computer and realized that there was liquid dripping out of the connection. I thought perhaps I had spilled a glass of water onto the computer, but I couldn’t remember when. I meticulously dried everything off, made the new connections, but then checked everything again the next day. To my amazement, the cat-6 cable was soaking wet again. I was stunned! I put the end of the cable into a dry glass to see what would happen. The next day there was a puddle of water in the bottom of the glass.

Did I make all that up? Was it a fluke? Was the universe conspiring against me? Was there a message in that weird happening? Stay tuned!

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