We all implicitly believe we are our bodies. However, this is in fact an illusion. In fact, the stronger this illusion is, the unhappier we are, because the further we are from the truth. My story illustrates this from an interesting point of view.
The Dream Perspective
In 1996, when I was eleven years old, I had a dream where I saw my five year old self. Straight away, I realised this couldn't be right and became aware I was dreaming. In fact, I even wanted to show off how smart I was. I went looking for someone to tell and found someone - my school friend.
There is a five year old me somewhere and an eleven year old me; me. This wouldn't have happened to the five year old me because I would have known...
Before I finished explaining this was a time paradox, I realised my friend had frozen stiff in front of me. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, with just his blue irises. Terrified, I stepped back, thinking I was being punished in some way for being a smart aleck. I woke up and lying in bed, stopped myself from going back to sleep for fear of the nightmare continuing.
After that, every time I became aware I was dreaming - which was quite often - I generally avoided telling dream characters I was dreaming or implying they weren't real. Still, I continued to have nightmares in which the dream character froze stiff with creepy things in their eyes. This happened whenever I said any 'smart' comment in a lucid dream to someone in the dream. In a way, this apprehension gave the dream characters a 'weight' they didn't have before.
Waking Life Consequences
I had poor sleep quality and insomnia, as well as implications in my waking life. In High School I became very timid and was bullied a lot. This bullying actually fed back into the dream characters - they seemed to be more like bullies. I tried to get rid of them and the anxiety they caused but didn't get very far.
I even had less confidence in things I was doing, including school assignments, especially in the humanities subjects. This carried right through my career, with some of my University lecturers and employers pointing out I lacked confidence in what I was doing.
Finally Seeking Help
In the end, I wasn't getting anywhere. So I humbly turned to meditation provided by others. I tried a few and all of them mentioned a false self or ego. Through my reflection, I realised that by asserting way back in 1996 the presence of my five year old self was a paradox, I was strengthening the false idea I was my body. The reason I was able to see my five year old self is because both the five year old self and eleven year old self were mere pictures in my mind.
By strengthening my false self I also strengthened the concepts of enemies, critics and punishers. Those concepts, represented by dream characters, were in fact aspects of my very self. And also, the mind of not being good enough or being overly wary of doing or saying the 'wrong' thing.
Negative minds attracted that negativity to me from other people. In fact, it is the false self that is the enemy. By discarding that self, I did not lose to any enemy in waking life or my sleep. In fact, that, too, was weakened.
I previously wrote about how you can have lucid dreams yourself. If you are successful, don't do what I did and assert you already know about yourself. Instead, ask yourself the question:
Who am I, really?
The answer will surprise you. Even if you think you know the answer, it is nothing compared to seeing it for yourself.
These AI generated images from Canva's Text to Image are a great way to convey dreams and abstract concepts, aren't they? 🔥🌟💫