Am I living in a dream world? Gurdjieff says, “man is mechanical, man is asleep.” This has always rung true to me. It’s easy to see how forgetful and mechanical I am. All I need do is think about the same stupid arguments I have with my husband all the time. If I was more awake, I wouldn’t fall into those familiar traps, right?
But something on a different level has given me a chilling message.
It’s connected with waking up in the morning and recording my dreams. To begin with, I didn’t want to do this. I’d stopped trying to remember dreams some time ago. However, a new homeopath asked me to do this, and I’ve taken it on as a task.
What’s interesting, is that it goes against the grain, so it feels like work to record them. Yet once I buckle down each morning to capture something of my previous night’s dream, I get better at remembering.
It’s a matter of waking up and making the effort to keep one foot in my dream world until I get to my journal. Sometimes the dream is slipping away yet I make myself sit down in front of the page. If I do, and write whatever comes, it can lead me back to where it’s drifting in my memory banks. I’m surprised at how much a dream re-emerges as I’m writing. It becomes vivid again, as if I’m there.
Then I put away the journal and wash up.
Here’s the scary part:
A couple of times, as I’ve prepared to go downstairs for the day, I’ve had the distinct sense that I’m still in a dream. That the day I’m walking into is also a fiction, just another dream-state following me into the kitchen.
This is no longer a notion that Gurdjieff once spoke about. I am experiencing the taste of my waking life “asleep.” And like a dream, how do I get out of it? How do I “wake up”? Because most of the time I don’t think I am living a dream. But what if I am?
What this has left me wondering, is, what about all this inner work I think I’ve been doing to “wake up?” Have I been doing that in a dream state too? Does it even count for anything?
Gurdjieff warned that if we did not take the work seriously, we would die “like dirty dog!” It suddenly feels very important to do whatever it takes to wake up from the dream.
“Both Gurdjieff and Bennett insisted that the consciousness that most people assume they have is dream-like and reactional, and real consciousness is behind this façade. It also puts to the test one’s degree of integration of thought, feeling, and sensation.”[1]
To be continued…
[1] Excerpt from Anthony Blake’s The Fourth Way, A Hazardous Path
The more lucid dreams assure me that it counts. Careful you don’t spin your wheels within wheels.
I so appreciate your transparency and humility, Roberta! Your questions echo those that resound in my heart and I feel less alone – grateful for your companionship!
Yes, it’s good to remember that we are not alone. Thanks!