{"id":5025,"date":"2026-05-28T18:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/?p=5025"},"modified":"2026-06-16T09:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T08:42:21","slug":"shifting-allegiances-of-dream-spies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/2026\/05\/28\/shifting-allegiances-of-dream-spies\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Allegiances of Dream Spies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I dreamt that the dream guides set up a little stage play to teach me something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two former spies met each other after decades of separation and chance encounters. The man looked like the actor Daniel Craig and the woman like the actress Julianne Moore. They were in the working-class kitchen of a stage-play flat whose only furniture was a kitchen table and two chairs. Imagine that each had played many roles: a diplomat, a teacher, factory worker, scout leader \u2014 whatever was required to accomplish a given mission. Wealth has no meaning to a person who can own nothing, who might find himself hiding in a dumpster as readily as lounging on the deck of a yacht. They seemed at home in this run-down apartment, even while wearing expensive (1940-style) clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t remember the details of what they talked about, only my conclusions as I tried to reconstruct what the context of their conversation was. They were meeting for one last action or campaign, but each was a mistrustful of the other. Neither was sure who was proposing the real campaign and who was merely pretending to go along in order to manipulate the other into participating in an unspoken campaign. Neither actually proposed anything; each seemed to be sounding the other out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem seemed to be that they had changed passports and allegiances so many times, their real allegiances had become opaque to all observers, and fluid to even the spies themselves. The reason is that a spy needn’t renounce one allegiance for another, but can rather play one sponsor off the other. The problem is compounded by the fact that even the spies become a little confused. Each time, one must ‘believe’ a new identity because one must remain in character when genuinely surprised by something. Constant rehearsal of character through inner monologue is essential to a spy’s longevity, but it is also damaging to one’s sanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the two spies appeared middle-aged, they had been active in their careers many decades, and the number of identity changes of each was beyond the limit of memory. Each was operating on habits and reflexes acquired over many identities, but neither collection was attuned to any particular reality. Both characters had therefore become partially lucid and partially mad from their experiences. Each was trying to determine how far to trust the other, in a situation in which trust has no meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was like dream guides had set up this little stage play, which even looked like a stage play, in order to teach this lesson. I can see how this relates to the Buddhist notion of reincarnation, although I continue to reject the idea. There is a more general problem at play here, which is how seriously one takes his identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one inherits his identity largely from family, socio-economic status, history, religion, intellectual fashions, economic incentives and so forth, then an identity is more like a role in a play than it is a personal characteristic. Of course, it can be a personal characteristic, if one insists, but that is the crux of the matter: insistence. One fears being nothing, so one clings to something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A painting by Vincent Van Gogh might be worth millions while a convincing forgery is worth little. People in the art scene must take these things seriously, but what difference does it make to have a genuine Van Gogh or a convincing forgery? They look the same. Answer: The Van Gogh has some magical sheen that comes from enough people believing it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman wearing a sleeveless dress would cause a scandal in 1890. Witnesses would be up in arms, writing dismayed opinion pieces in the local newspapers, shaming such women and scolding the relatives of such women. And yet, forty years later, not so much as an eyebrow would be raised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each time, there is some expectation, and there is the seriousness applied to the expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all face the danger of taking our identities seriously \u2014 of taking anything on our stage more seriously than our mission. What is our mission? Let’s leave it to each individual to decide, only that he\/she must posit that it be independent of history. It must be some goal that no one culture or period of history can define. Imagine that you move from one country to another, go from being poor to rich, from a child to a young adult to a senior citizen \u2014 and there is some goal common to all these phases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that, whatever it could be, the prerequisite is a mind that regulates itself frictionlessly and perhaps even pleasurably (which I have written about under the rubric of mental wealth). This is not possible while one takes himself seriously. There must be some release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dreaming is not a madness. Awakening is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5025"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5358,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions\/5358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}