The Dream of God

What is it to dream? What reflections arise while ordinary consciousness sleeps? What is their source? What purpose do they serve? Weighing such questions opens unexpected doors.

Already we see that there is Consciousness behind ordinary (waking) consciousness: the consciousness of our dreaming, for example, and behind that a Consciousness from which our dreaming arises.

Our soul histories link to this ‘Source’ Consciousness. Dreams are its vision-bearers, reminding us of all that ordinary consciousness is unable to receive at given times.

Ordinary consciousness seems ordinary because we have become used to experiencing it in given ways, ordered by the stories, routines and conventions that define ‘ordinary’ experience.

The philosopher Chuang-tze dreamt he was a butterfly. On waking he couldn’t decide whether he was a philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly, now asleep, dreaming that he was a philosopher.

Might we be butterflies also, only dreaming that we are the ones we think we are?

We all know people who wake up happy and then remember who they (think they) are: who they have been told they are by parents, schools, governments etc.

We are happier and more truth-full before such nets of definition bite; more fully who we most truly are.

There is always greater Consciousness behind our stories of the ones we think we are. We are always more than we have been told; always more than can be told. Consciousness is always more than can be told.

As a child I had a game where I would try to imagine how it would be if there was nothing. Day after day, for hours, I would close my eyes and picture the world disappeared.

Sometimes I too disappeared in wonder. Mostly I got stuck at the voiding of a clear sky.

This corresponds to an adult sense of darkness associated with what we call ‘the Void,’ a matrix of pure potential from which all that exists comes into Be-ing.

Be-ing is our name for the Energy/Consciousness that remains after everything (every ‘thing’) has been eliminated.

Why was I ever motivated to play such a game? Why evoke a Void when we never see one, when it’s not part of our ‘ordinary’ experience?

Because we intuit it as a Source of that experience, what philosophers call the Ground of Being (and thus of existence).

I knew about this as a child, not explicitly or because I was ‘intelligent’ but because I dared to wonder, as we all might before learning to forget.

Philosophers remember when they ask ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Why is there existence, Be-ing, anything at all?

Then they answer and even correct each others’ answers. From that moment they start to forget.

My childhood remembering was sustained by wonder, not by a desire for answers. This is how I put in those hours without ever getting discouraged. I thrilled to my task of wondering.

There was something about it that engaged the essence of my soul. There still is. That is why I still talk about the Void, which I could never quite imagine because it was no-thing.

I could only approach it by eliminating things but there was always something left that was clearly no-thing, not any thing, just pure Be-ing, a ‘Void’ that was impossible both to picture and not. 

No-thing, beyond Void, is Consciousness, pure Consciousness: a unitary ‘field’ that we call Spirit, Divinity, God, Transcendence, Be-ing, Mystery, Tao and more.

This Consciousness is before ‘my’ consciousness or any particular consciousness, the Consciousness from which all dreams arise and which they express.

This is fundamental mystery; beyond our powers of analysis and understanding. We can’t engage it rationally but only evoke by indirect, poetic means such as ‘the Void.’

It also presents itself via the indirect poetic means that we call Dreaming.

Dreaming expresses the essence of our souls and an energy of Creation that moves us to become aware. It inspires us to remember the Ground of Be-ing, of our Be-ing, all Be-ing, of Be-ing as such.

This Ground, itself undreamt, is the Source of all Dreaming.

Behind the nothingness of Void, Be-ing already is, eternally. Empty and replete, it holds the codes for all forms. As the Life of Spirit, Consciousness predates existence.

As It creates, movement arises. By means of ‘Void’ It manifests existence. Something is born of No-thing as this (It) happens.

Be-ing is always happening (as No-thing), eternally. 

It moves from nothingness to existence through the medium of Dream, bridging a gap between the creative potential of Void and manifest existence.

Consciousness dreams existence and all Its forms out of Be-ing and into it. As expressions of Consciousness, ‘we’ do likewise. Our consciousness/es also dream forms of existence into Be-ing. 

We are thus both dreamers and dreamt, moved to dream the Truth of our souls alive, to remember our True Dreaming (by Source).

This serves It well, the Consciousness that dreams us, bringing It more abinantly to Life in existence.

Thinking we are the ones we have been told we are, this process is initially unconscious. Attention helps us remember. Dreams serve to remind us of what awaits and why we entered existence.

The aim of existence is to realise Be-ing, not retire into it. Existence is an expression of It’s (Be-ing’s) longing to BE more. Beauty is the first face of its expression, dreamt in Love.

All dreams concern the self-remembering of Love. 

Existence is the Dream of God.

We awaken in this Dream, not from it.

Even God is entranced by the beauty of Her/His Dreaming. God/dess is the vehicle of its manifestation, the expressive form and force of all Creation. 

God/dess evokes a first division in the unitary field of Consciousness that is somehow given in the Unity.

It arises as reflections of Dreaming arise within the Unity, as Be-ing’s longing to Be (more) takes form and creativity erupts. This is n/ever so. Illusions of division forever surface in apparently evolving Unity. 

Division arises not between what longs and what is longed for but between Be-ing’s longing to Be more and reflections of that longing.

Is there ever a first time for this, a ‘time’ before reflection arises in the eternal Now of pure Be-ing/Consciousess?

Such reflection creates an apparent split in the Eternal Unity of Be-ing/Consciousness between What Is and What Becomes, but the nature of What Is (It) is to Become (apparently).

To BE more is the nature of BE-ing. This is a qualitative internal process, as Love is, not a quantifiable expansion.

All appearances of growth and splitting are Illusion.  The Dream of What (It) Is to BE (more) manifests in time via the mirror/s of existence.

Existence is a reflection of fundamental Mystery, created as the Dream of God. It is a true illusion, as dreams are. Only the appearance of splitting is false.

It is an Illusion that existence is other than Be-ing or that our dreams are anything other than manifestations of Consciousness expressing as us.

Existence is an integral manifestation of Be-ing’s longing to BE (more). 

This longing is Love by another name. It is not static, but ek-static. It moves (us, inside and out). Existence arises as an integral expression of Love.

Our dreams are spontaneous expressions of this longing within, heralds of (our) Love even when traversed by (illusory) pain.

And just as Be-ing gets to recognise Its nature in the mirror of its Dreaming (i.e. existence), so we come to fathom ours via the projections of our dreams.

Thus ‘God’ (not God) is our personification of the Unity 0f pure Consciousness/Be-ing, an attempt to gauge Its Mystery beyond any possible understanding.

Such attempts are doomed to success as local priests dress ‘God’ in local colours. We must therefore look past form and costume to limitless Be-ing, to sense the vastness of this Mystery.

Consciousness expresses longing in its Dreaming, as we do. God thus becomes a yang power that projects an impulse to Be (more) and Goddess a yin that binds this longing into form and nurses it to grow.

This duality is the platform of Creation and it doesn’t finally matter which God/dess (Shiva/Shakti) name is assigned to which role.

The apparent tendency to two-ness in Unity is what matters, not the names by which apparently corresponding entities are known.

In the Dream of patriarchal mythos, ‘God’ becomes a Father principle of initiative and will.

Goddess thus becomes a Mother principle of encompassment and incubation, a nurturing force that closes around the Father’s seed and carries it to birth. 

As dreams lend impulse primary form and energy follows intent, so God/dess births existence into Being.

The Mother or Sacred Feminine is a Vessel for this process, the Holy Grail of every birth for every child and universal system.  

The Father’s portion is a maverick wind, an irreducible urge at the Heart of Be-ing’s longing to BE (more), i.e. the Heart of Love.

This longing drives us always to new edges but needs Centre to give beauty and coherence to our quest as It forever calls existence home to revelations of Be-ing: to a remembrance that we never left Be-ing, even in the flush of Its most daring innovations. 

Born to sharpen, existence can also blunt our Awareness of Be-ing. That is why we need to remember. The purpose of existence is not just to remember Be-ing but also to disclose it.

Existence is a Revelation.

Be-ing IS, past beginning and end. It is also who we are, behind all travails of existence.

Existence is not a vain Passion but an Ark of Love, dreamt to carry BE-ing through Becoming to Awareness of Itself forever.

The glory of Being is known through the pathos of existence, stemming from the transience of its forms. Movement plays teacher to Stillness in this regard.

Thus, in apparent separation, I have compassion for those I never meet and miss terribly those taken from my little life. What is this no-thing called Love?

Love is One and Its expressions many: yin-yang, fe-male etc.

It would gather all as One into holding arms until all becomes impossibly condensed (yin) even as It also reaches out, expansive and transcending (yang), so that It also makes forever more (Love). 

Awareness is required to marshal balance. This is mirrored perfectly by Breath, whose inhale-exhale motions are equally vital.

Breath expresses (from) the Heart of Love. Spiritus is the Heart of Love. Whole worlds are born of it, flourishing as the  powers unite in complementary tension, where neither dominates.

As the magnetic pull of yin moulds the radiant pulse of yang into ever more beautiful forms, Stillness remains the Source, the unmoved but moving Ground where stirring stirs.

The Dream of every human is to balance these forces in ourselves, although historically, we are asked to observe stereotypes that associate men only with yang and women with yin.

Such polarisation induces complex reactions that prevent Stillness and inhibit marrying.

Stillness is. Movement becomes. Movement is the Becoming of Stillness and BE-ing of Being.

Even as Consciousness projects existence, It rests in Stillness as the undreamt Ground from which Its dream projections rise. The Constant thus beholds its own unfolding.

Movement is thus true illusion; a power that inheres in Stillness and expresses as Dream; at-oned in the Spiritual Heart of Being, which is everywhere.

All projections represent energies assuming form, becoming reflections of and for their Source.

Our dreams epitomise this process, for all dreams express energy as form. Behind every dream an energy is asking to be known. All dreams are Masks of God, enabling Mystery to know itself as such: inscrutable, manifold, opaque, transparent, One.

To BE is what we call a verb. We must find Stillness to know BE-ing as such: as process. Neither attribute nor event, BE-ing is the event, a singularity beyond story or qualification of any kind.

‘God’ evokes Mystery in our stories about BE-ing. S/He doesn’t explain It but points to a Reality beyond explanation.

This Reality, sought by all who enter the moving field of existence in fulfilment of Being’s longing to BE (more), is known in the Unity of Heart through experience(s) of Love. 

To BE more, Be-ing must seem to become other than itself by producing reflections that see themselves as Other in time, just as we see others in our dreams although they are wholly our projections.

Identifying with Its reflections, Consciousness creates a sense of separation. We all do this and awaken only when we see through the mirrors of our Dreaming to Reality as One. 

Longing is a quality of the Divine, an expression of Love’s urge to Love more. Love is the essence of BE-ing (more), of a Spirit that would breathe (reach) out and (gather) in.

It is the essence of a stirring that is at first contained but finally engenders pulse, heartbeat, rhythm, pattern, Life. This happens as kala (time) and kama (desire) realign post Shiva-Shakti differentiation.

 BE-ing implies a process of inherence that is also inherently dynamic. Its dynamism powers Dreaming, immaterial as a Father’s Will (yang) to start, until Mother’s Love (yin) binds it tightly into form.

I base this now on universal mythos, allowing that specific Shiva-Shakti refinements must come later.

Dreaming rises up from depths of Soul: a feminine vessel of Consciousness that secretes our masculine urge to BE (more). In the stillness of its depths, Consciousness is unmoved save for this Love. 

Masculine Love pushes always to new edges, instigating repeated feminine cycles of form-building. We seek by this to feel more at One but succeed only when we look past our reflections and through to Source, from which all reflections arise.

Soul evokes a primary level of Creation, the first stage in a process of diversification and self-limiting whereby One disperses itself across Many forms of existence, God’s Dream.

Awakening in this Dream, existing in the Awareness of Be-ing, I AM. Moving in stillness, still within all movements, I AM.  

As an arrow flies, does the insect resting on it also fly? Does the flying arrow move in flight?

So in stillness I, unmoving, am moved by Holy Breath that fills me; so Holy Grail as Holy Womb gathers winds of Father urging and weaves them with a Mother’s Love into existence.

Stillness is the Zero Point of Mother’s Heart, a Portal of Creation through which Father’s Breath forever tumbles into form, in and all around us.

BE-ing is, eternally and without limit. Yet It grows (qualitatively) as Consciousness is remembered in existence. This is how It comes to Be more. There is no Mystery beyond Origin, where Love is known as the Source of All. The aim of existence is to remember Love. 

Existence is of Be-ing: the dance of a Divine Dream that shapes an inevitable evolution of Its already perfect Unity. Our longing is not for Be-ing but of Be-ing; not for the Divine but of the Divine; not for Love but of Love.

We dream to remember Love and bring it to Awareness in all worlds.

                                                                                                          2002-2026+

[I use this piece as a permanent forum for meditative expression, which means that every time a new insight trans-rationally dawns, I refer it to this ever-growing frame for purposes of conscious assimilation and articulation. I keep it to small chunks so particular propositions can be revalued and modified as necessary. Please feel free to use any or all of what is presented here as a springboard for your own reflections. The opening statements are intuitively accessible and likely to have an awakening effect.]