Don’t Live Your Dreams, Dream Your Life

Have you ever noticed that the quality and texture of color, sound, and sensation is richer in your dreams? ?That even the most mundane dreams have a sparkle to them?

How can we limit ourselves so profoundly in our waking life when we are reminded of the infinite potential of our imagination every single night?

How is is that we wake up rejuvenated and inspired by this secret life of ours?

In my dreams, I have time traveled. ?I have flown across deserts, I have taken part in secret gatherings and ceremonies. ?I have fallen without injury; I have met lovers and long lost friends. ?I have given birth and met myself as a child; I have died. ?And all of it in nonsensical, magical, vibrant and somewhat strange happenstance.

Every night when we go to sleep, we remember and access the realm of infinite possibility. This realm is the realm of our dreams.

How is it that we have access to infinity in our dreams? ?How do we access the infinite potential of our imagination in our “real” lives? ?How can colors be brighter, sounds sharper, tastes more exquisite, sensations more ecstatic? ?How can we bring the quality of vibrancy from our dreams to waking life?

Good sex? ?

Well, yes, and studies have actually proven the effect of orgasm for women in particular: heightened creativity and a more vivid experience of life.

But I mean something else. ?Something that?includes good sex. ?Something that is the prerequisite to good sex. ?Something that causes dishwashing to have the same effect as a good orgasm.

The answer is presence.

In our dreams, we are fully present with our experience. ?If a rainbow octopus falls out of the sky and calls to us, we answer the call. ?We are not thinking a thousand thoughts a minute, spaced out, forgetting the experience right in front of us (how could we if there is a rainbow octopus in front of us?). ?We are inside the moment, and it is magical.

When we experience something in our dreams, we experience it fully. ?We experience it totally. ?We eat an ice cream cone made of worms and dirt, and we taste it completely. ?If strange creatures appear and start talking to us, we are fully in the experience. ?We’re not analyzing, evaluating, doubting. ?We are not in the mental story about the dream–we are completely inside it. ?Present.

This is why experiences in our dreams feel so rich, so exquisite: we are fully present. ?We are immersed in the magical universe inside ourselves: our own imagination.

In our dreams, the lines of separation between “me” and “not me” blur. ?Sometimes we dream in first person–we are inside the dream character of ourselves. ?Sometimes in third person–we experience the dream from someone else’s shoes. ?And sometimes we are presence itself, watching the entire dream like a movie, inhabiting all the characters in the dream and the space between them. ?Both inside and outside of everything. ?Pure presence.

This pure presence is what can give us access to the realm of infinite possibility in our ordinary, extraordinary, everyday lives. ?When we are completely inside our experience–not aware of it or thinking about it, but completely inside it–we live in the land of infinity. ?The same land of our dreams.

What if we were to bring the same attitude of our dreams to waking life? ?The same sense of wonder. ?The radical willingness to follow the thread of existence as it unfolds moment by moment, sometimes defying gravity, always outside the tiny box of expectation.

Try it, if even for a moment. ?Be present with life. ?It might mean feeling something uncomfortable. ?Or realizing you are alive and not taking it for granted.

In dreamlike presence, we are fully available to meet each bite-size moment as it materializes. ?We are fully here, ready to receive the interplay between this unfathomable life-size movie and the mysteries that lie within our own imagination.

In presence we rest in infinity.?

Presence is the magic of our dreams. ?And if our own presence can be so unabashedly exquisite while asleep, how incredible–how infinite–must it be awake?

?Try it. ?Dream awake, in presence.