If you wake from a dream within a dream,
you are still dreaming.
I am tromping around a forest, nothing new there. It is a lovely summer’s day and the sunlight is making beautiful patterns on the forest floor as I move from the muted reflections of the canopy to the dazzling light of the clearings. It is a big forest with a number of ponds and lakes. I can hear the birds singing but can’t see any, also I haven’t seen any animals yet. It is just little old me in this big forest which stretches out before me like it will never end.
Suddenly, everything goes dark and silent. I blink in the darkness, wondering what has happened. I can see slight reflections of my eyelids as I blink in the dark and the slightest of muted light in the periphery of my vision. I take off my headset to see what the problem is. I go and check my computer. There has been a power cut and the power will be off for the next couple of hours.
It is time for some meditation anyway so I close my eyes and begin to meditate. I stop thinking by turning off the mental images and turning off the internal sounds, conversations, and inner monologue. This is not a one time thing and I have to do it repeatedly. Every time I notice I am thinking I turn off the pictures and turn off the sound. At the same time, I am also focused on the sensation inside my body. I notice how the sensation changes the more I let go of the idea of the shape of my body. I am pulling back from existence into the vast expanse that is the mystery.
Say What?
Every Monday at 10 am and 9 pm, Irish time, I facilitate a meditation support group. This is a Zoom call with people around the world where we meditate together. I hold the space and answer any questions people might have about their meditation practice. Before we begin to meditate I often encourage people to change gears before they close their eyes and shift from the perspective that they are a little person in a big world to seeing existence as something they are looking into and that when they close their eyes they are pulling back into a deeper bigger reality. What we normally think of as outer space becomes inner space and what we normally think of as inner space becomes outer space.
This perspective shift doesn’t come naturally so there are often questions about it.
Switching Perspective
When I close my eyes to meditate it is very similar to the power cut in my forest virtual reality simulation. I take off the headset of existence, so to speak, and what was, a moment before, my outer world becomes an inner world that I am withdrawing from into a bigger outer space, a space I previously thought of as my inner world.
It makes the shift easier to let go of the idea of having a head or a back to your body. Because without letting the idea of a head and a back to your body go, when you close your eyes you will forever feel like you are just trapped inside your little head and body.
Here is the video of the virtual forest I described at the beginning. I encourage you to watch it and while you are watching consider what it would be like if you didn’t know it wasn’t real. Would you feel like it is just little old you in this big forest or would you feel like you were looking into something?
To further help you make the shift, here are two little images I made to help answer a question about the inner world / outer world shift for someone in the meditation support group.
Photo by Alex Shuper on Unsplash
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