How like a Song
For a year and a half, I dreamt of a world that superficially resembled the waking world (save for a lack of shadows). What was most unusual about this world was the society of the inhabitants. The first noteworthy aspect is that they were aware they were dreaming.
If you are permanently in a dream world, how do you spend your time? After all, nothing matters. This is a deeply philosophic question that affects us all. We, who have temporary biological lives, on a planet doomed to be incinerated, have nothing that matters to occupy us.
What I observed is that these dreaming people did projects together. Sometimes the project was something simple, like baking a cake that could never exist. Sometimes they would build complicated structures, like a house. Once I pointed out the futility of building a house in a dream world; it might not exist in the next invocation of the dream. Answer: “The house isn’t real, but the building of it is.”
It took me days to fully understand this insight. I still think about it and remind myself of it.
There weren’t many adults in this world, but they were all peaceful, radiant beings. They took delight in mentoring the children, not so much because anything would be achieved by it, but because it was a means of radiating. It seemed obvious that only a small percentage of the girls would be cultivated into such women; the others would fail in one way or another and wander elsewhere. The outcomes of the mentoring seemed quite incidental; the adults had only the goal of celebrating beauty.
When one sings a song, there is no material goal. As soon as the song has been sung, it is gone. So why does anyone sing? Whatever the answer, that answer applies to anything one (freely) chooses to do.
I used to think that domestic chores were tiresome, but after watching these women and their little entourages, I have changed my view a little. Women who had no real chores to do, nevertheless performed chores cultivate their presence of mind. In a dream world, presence of mind is all that can be said to exist. It is the only wealth to be had.
And how can it be otherwise for any temporary being?
This reminded me of the mandalas that Buddhist monks make with coloured sand. These art projects take days or weeks to complete, and in the end, the monks blow it all away. We’re told that this is to remind us of the impermanence of life, but how like the women of my dreams they are! They demonstrate and cultivate presence of mind trough their art. Any material change in the world is fleeting.
A star needs no planets to shine; it is the nature of stars to shine.