A dream and TGU on freedom

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

6:15 a.m. Either the Dalai Lama or the Pope died. But I clung so hard to this sentence, did I remember anything else of the dream?

Guys?

Either the Dalai Lama or the Pope – and you, dredging for the Pope’s name, came up with John Paul before you remembered Francis.

There was something about a group watching. Maye two groups contending?

Yes there was. They learned that the spiritual leader had died.

And then it was up to them to do something? React somehow?

I don’t feel like I’m very “here.” Nor that I am the “me” I was once. I used to yearn, now I don’t even do that. It is as if I have forgotten the reality my aspirations were aimed at.

Of course this worries you.

Shouldn’t it?

You are in charge of your life’s plan? You know when you need to go left, go right?

Are we not here to choose?

Are you faced with a choice you wish to undo? Or perhaps one you can’t perceive?

I get the idea. What angst I may be feeling isn’t important particularly. It’s what values I choose to embody as best I can. But still that involves how we spend the day, in thought if not in action.

As with the rest of your life, be present now and act from there. “Act,” meaning, of course, think, feel, decide, etc. Your freedom consists in this: At any moment you are free to decide who and what you wish to experience.

Somehow it seems almost a new thought, that there is the record we have made, on the one hand, and on the other hand is right now, and we’re always living in the right now.

In which is your freedom, yes.

Odd how that was never clear to me until just now. And that is the reason to free ourselves from old patterns, compulsions, recordings: so that we can realize that at every moment, we are free.

Freedom may be grasped at any moment, and may be forgotten at any moment, but it always remains because it is in the nature of things.

And soddenly something goes “click!” and I half-remember a dream from a long time ago involving the Dalai Lama smiling at me because I had said something, and the entire experience became so supercharged with energy and benevolent emotion, and it had something to do with someone urging us to “Wake Up!”

I wonder if I can find a record of that dream. I mean, clearly it is in this journal like a fly in amber, but where?

You are as close to that dream “now” as you ever were in any other “now.”

That isn’t how we experience it, though.

Then choose to experience it differently. You could create a rheostat on your control panel called “Dream Recall” and set it higher than you find it. Or you could create one called “In the Ever-Present Moment,” and do the same. Or, of course, you could simply intend without the slight dramatics implied in visualizations.

Dramatics?

What is a visualization but a dramatization of a relationship, or of a potential? We don’t mean the word as a criticism.

All right, then I intend full recall of this morning’s dream, and of that previous dream. Let’s see how far intending will get me.

You do see the point of the dreams? Just as we use two analogies so that the irrelevancies in the analogies will fall away and the common feature be emphasized, so with dreams. You don’t want a movie to enjoy, you want a realization.

The common theme is – Wake Up! You are free and there is no spiritual leader you need, though legitimate spiritual leaders do exist, and deserve your allegiance and respect. But now you need to remember that you all are spiritual leaders, no matter what else you are, and you don’t need to (and it is a waste of time to) wait for a new leader to appear. You are each of you that. Only, “leader” doesn’t mean “collector of followers.” It means more like, “Creator of paths by following your true nature,” breaking trail for others you will never meet, who will never hear of you.

Even as we have been writing this, I have been anxious to get upstairs and type it out and send it around.

And that is your practice. You don’t think of it as a spiritual practice, perhaps, but whatever any of you do that is closest to the bone, and is most satisfying, is your practice, and you will not go wrong by following it.

We are closer to being an electron field, I get, than a herd following a leader. Strange image.

Not a bad one, though. If the purpose of spiritual leadership is to bring yourselves to remember to be Here, Now.

There isn’t need for leaders and followers except in the sense of following an inspiring example.

Yes, only remembering that the very attraction of the inspiration may mislead, if you accidentally transfer your attention from the reminder to the person who served to remind you.

I see that. Thanks for this. Only 45 minutes, but I get that it is time to go transcribe – or is it only that I am impatient to do so?

Whatever you do, whenever you do it, remember: Living in the Right Now is your freedom. Accept no substitutes, neither dogma nor followership nor an unconscious assumption that you are trapped within past patterns until you do X. Freedom is only a choice.

I added “Choose it,” then deleted it as coming perhaps more from me than from you.

People will choose what and when they do, and it isn’t anybody’s business except abstractly. As always, you don’t have the data on what you need to go through (or think they need to go through, which in practice is the same thing).

Hopeful message, anyway. Thanks.