Journal of Mundane Neurotic Dreams

The past few nights I've been dozing off to a meditation CD of bells and having these dreams. Not quite fantastic, but a Chekhovian, Woodie Allen short movies with a mixture of Fellini. I don't quite know what these dreams signify but I might as well write them down and wait until more is revealed. Maybe someone has insight into the meanings here?

Dream #1: I'm in Publix purchasing chocolate frosting and gum. I'm wearing a suit and overcoat. It's raining outside. 

I'm at the counter and the clerk ignore me. Throwing a mini-fit, I toss the frosting container on counter. I apologize and explain I'm stressed. I lie and says I'm being laid off from my job, which I know isn't true. She says she's stressed and her father lost his job. We both end up crying. She tells me to pay what I want for both the frosting and gum. I hand her $1 and ask if that's enough. She nods. I hand her $3, slip frosting and gum into my jacket and exit out of automatic doors. 

All of a sudden I'm wearing a jogging outfit.  There are a bunch of friends from grad school sitting in concrete park of skateboard ramps and beside a long row of benches. I'm wearing some sort of sweatpants capri hoodie. Engage in stupid conversation. Start talking about art.  

Dream #2: I'm flying out of NYC with a friend we're put up in an extremely fancy hotel and the presidential suite which is as long as an arena with enormous Sultan size beds with mountains of pillows and fans. No walls just bed after bed. I'm informed that I'll be charged $200. Annoyed but I'm also worried that I might be at the wrong hotel. We're sharing this enormous room with an elderly couple who are excited to talk with me. The woman notices the jewelry I'm wearing and wants to know more about my sources. I tell her I get my jewelry from two main sources: Beds of Paradise in Union Square and another place I can't remember. I agree to get some jewelry and become her trader. 

My anxiety increases that I'm supposed to be near LaGuardia. Anxious, begin looking up flight # and try to use smartphone. Every time I begin to look up jetblue I get diverted into a cinematic ad that takes several minutes and can't be deleted. I try to remember the phone number for Jet Blue. 

My roommate/friend comes back from a night out on the town with a bunch of friends who are loud. Our presidential suite is suddenly small, a normal size room. I leave the room and decide to move to a different hotel. I end up at another hotel but I still can't figure out what flight I'm supposed to get on. 

Vendors of Love

I had an unusual dream and I wanted to write this down before forgetting:

Abigail, one of my friends, asked me for help in rewriting a song. We were at a resort in the cafe/store. She put a bottle of blue Mountain Dew on the counter and I read the lyrics from a yellow note pad. Something was off about the song's first line. It was too literal and stiff-sounding.

I said 'you remember the first line to TLC's "Waterfalls." A bunch of tourists chimed in 'yeah.' We started singing the song (mumbling through sections we didn't understand). Then I said 'yes, that's what it should be like.' That was gist of my advice.

I put something on the counter to purchase and they kept trying to charge me for the Mountain Dew, which I was adamant about not taking. The soda sat on the counter for over a day and they kept trying to charge it to people. No one wanted to buy it. Finally the clerk laughed and just put it back on the shelf. End of dream.

When I awoke I hadn't even heard my alarm. I missed it by over 2 hours but felt restful. I walked to the bathroom and thought about the meaning.

The dream seems fairly straight-forward. I'm aware of the ghosts of several other dreams overlapping and flowing through this 'Mountain Dew' dream but that was the strongest part that stayed with me upon waking.

Perhaps this has to do with conversation I had about 'enabling.' My friend was worried about being an enabler and I asked bluntly 'what does that word even mean for you?' In the context of the conversation, I was starting to get irritated by the awareness that 'enabling' was becoming this vague psycho-babble salve we were just throwing around.

My definition of enabling was five short words: buying something you don't want. I had an image in my head of a marketplace with all these rows of vendors. At each stall, people are yelling offers and waving around their wares. Merchants are selling with all their heart. I don't have to listen to them, much less buy what they're selling. If I do buy what they're selling and I know that I don't want the product...let's say blue-flavored Mountain Dew... then I'm buying it for another reason.

If I continue to buy what I don't want then I'm filling up my life with what I don't need and also keeping this seller in business for the wrong reason. I'm giving them false hope and convincing them to restock up Mountain Dew.

People are always trying to sell something: guilt, shame, childhood fear, delusion, hope, dreams, optimism, grandeur, small-thinking, love, groupthink, anger. Each one has its own stall in the marketplace and the vendor is shouting with a fervid gusto to consumers.  Merchants don't selling their products to ruin my life, they're not evil nor are they necessarily good. They're selling it because someone sold it to them and they believe it has value.

If all the world is a marketplace of ideas, then I have a choice over what I buy. If I stock up on shame, then that's not the vendors fault. That's enabling. And by enabling I'm making the world a worse place because I'm sending signals to the vendor to restock and bring back more shame. But if I shop at the stalls that sell love and forgiveness, then those merchants receive the message as well: bring back more.

I think so many of us are fed the rotten fruits of hatred as children. Our parents or teachers or friends fed us these disgusting meals and we didn't know any better. We ate it because we thought the entire world was the Mountain Dew stall in the town square. As an adult we get to walk the entire market.

No one serves an inedible meal and blames their mom from 20 years ago as the reason why they're continuing to buy, prepare, and consume garbage. No one buys an ill-fitting suit and blames the purchase on their teacher from 3rd grade. Yet, we do that all the time with negative emotions from the past. But we don't have to buy them. And our mothers and fathers didn't have to buy them either, but they did because the world convinced them. But we can break the cycle of bad purchases. There's no need to hate the vendor or get into an argument with them either, or convince them to sell something differently.

 We just shop elsewhere and patronize the merchants of love. The stores of hatred have only a few choices. They either 1) restock their shelves with something appealing 2) or they go out of business. There's no animosity in this end. The business world is direct and clear-eyed.

Religions get discontinued like old cell phones when they stop serving a purpose or become obsolete to the needs of the consumer. The Shakers or Mennonites served the world and then no one wanted to buy their ideas, so they went away. The stores stopped restocking their shelves and the factory stopped making the product. Eventually one day someone realizes they possess the last vestiges of a religion or idea and it becomes an antique. They either throw it away or put glass around it and sell it as an antique.

There are so many obsolete ideas in our world today that we enable. They're purchased out of familiarity or a sense of obligation to our identity or tribe. But these ideas no longer serve a purpose or the side effects have become poisonous. Once we stop purchasing these ideas, then we won't have them in our world. The businesses will have to clear their shelves when the due date expires. The vendors will go out of business. The factories and farm will cease to make that product.

This marketplace is replicated on a macro-level to every arena of life: politics, religion, art, entertainment. But the market also exists on the micro-level of our own body and mind. What I'm buying sends signals to the vendors to restock the shelves, who send orders to the factories and farms of my mind.

I have to remember to make the right purchases every day and patronize the ideas I wish to see proliferate themselves. Today I choose love.

Dreams of Dance

I finished "How Yoga Works" by Geshe Michael Roach last night. It was around 2 am of a long day of talking, meeting, and infusing the dharma in everything. I drifted off to sleep feeling light and serene.  The dreams began flowing to me in snippets. Now awake, I can't tell if it was one long dream or a series of vignettes.

I dreamed of animals being kept in the underground subway tunnels. In particular I had an image of deer living in the subway tunnels that would sprint away when oncoming trains would appear.

There was another vignette in which I was walking up these long stairs to different floors. I was seeing people. It was an office cubicle/living space and the walls were glass so you could see right through. I walked through the hallways and the rooms were packed with various people eating, watching TV, playing games.

But the most visceral dream vignette was about dancing. I was home in a luscious, wood-paneled apartment with high Gothic ceilings. It was dark and I lit a red candle on top of melted white wax in a glass container. Suddenly a guy enters with red hair. He's apparently my roommate. I have done something wrong because I apologize. Perhaps I shouldn't have lit the candle.  For some reason my roommate reveals to me that he knows voodoo. I say that I've been running into a lot of voodoo people recently.

I ask him to show me his magic skills. He sits down with the red candle and begins doing some chanting while I walk into the next room and prepare. I crouch with cross-legs (like a ballerina about to spring into a leap). All of sudden I'm dancing, spinning and moving. The dancing becomes more acrobatic. I find myself leaping off the bookshelves, dancing on the sides of the walls.

I am laying in bed having this dream and -at the same time- I can feel my heart beat racing in the bedroom while I sleep. Since I'm having such a good time, I consciously make a decision to go back into the dream and leave my sleeping body. Shrouding my body is an energy field. It's a green light and my body is coated in it with this strong auric field that is a bit heavier than air but much lighter than water. I know that it's a certain special power. I can feel it because I can't break out of it. When I dance this green coat of light moves me. And then it starts throwing me up in the air. I'm aware that -at this stage in the dance- this isn't my body. It's almost entirely the green field of energy moving and my body is being carried like a goldfish in a plastic bag.

I finish my dancing with a leaping flourish. My roommate doesn't look to pleased. I thank him and say that he must be 'truthful' in his magic claims. He frowns and says he could do better. I'm incredulous but anticipate what that 'better' may mean.

My dreams continued all night. I was walking to the subway along with several other people under highway tunnels. I was going up and down stairs. There was a feeling of journey and exploration.

When I awoke my mind was buzzing but my body felt rested. I laid on the side of the better and began doing breathing exercises and some basic yoga poses. A new day.