Dreams = The Present

I really should be working, but I just had this interesting insight that I feel I should write down before it leaves me.

A friend just emailed me to tell me that she forgot to set her alarm last night and, as a result, gained 100 minutes more of shut-eye that should have been used for getting ready and going to work. That extra 100 minutes, however, lead her to - what I might consider - an awakening.

I use the word awakening relatively liberally. It's not the same awakening that Tolle or someone might suggest, but I'm going to use the word here for lack of a better one until I find an alternative.

The situation goes something like this:
My friend had an emotionally difficult experience nine months ago. But, because it was an experience that she, in a sense, brought on herself, she picked herself up and quickly moved on - or so she thought. Nine months later, she heard news of something that related to that emotionally difficult incident nine months ago, and she was forced to confront what she was feeling inside. It got to a point where she felt sick to her stomach.

Then, my friend (smart girl), decided to go home, lay on her bed, and try to work through these feelings and thoughts that she had about the experience nine months ago, and what has unfolded in the past few days. Eventually, she fell asleep, until her dad woke her up this morning, way after she was supposed to wake her up.

Fortunately, this extra 100 minutes allowed her time to dream. In the dream, she was with the people involved in the event nine months ago and everything leading up to now, and they were in the future discussing how they felt.

After waking up and looking back on her dream, my friend had an awakening. So the question is, how did this 'awakening' or epiphany or 'enlightenment' (as she called it) come about?

This is what I came up with. My friend went to sleep with her thoughts. She had feelings and ideas about the situation in her outward conscious. What was making her sick, however, was what her subconscious was telling her. Her subconscious, I think, was being surpressed by her outer thoughts (the thoughts that were occupying her at the moment) that the subconscious was trying to get out causing her to feel sick.

Her dream was the perfect medium for her subconscious. In her dream, although the dream itself took place in the future, all the thoughts she was having was her present thoughts. Not just her outward thoughts, but her subconscious as well. It was the one place in which her thoughts and her subconscious found a common ground, placing her in - sort of - present moment. That present moment caused her 'epiphany' afterwards.

Isn't it weird? I'm not a big believer in coincidences. I don't remember when, but a while back, before college, I came to believe that everything happens for a reason. I was/is, in a way, a big believer in our conventional, wikipedia definition of 'karma' (I say conventional and wikipedia because I know have learned that karma means a multitude of things). I was a believer in the "what goes around comes around." Nothing happens from coincidence. Everything is predetermined. The reason my friend had to cancel dinner with another friend because she was feeling sick, and then decided to contemplate that on her bed, that caused her to fall asleep and forget to turn on her alarm, and then have the extra 100 minutes of sleep that ended up being an extra 100 minutes of a conversation between her thoughts and her subconscious. This is not a coincidence. This was all meant to happen.

and now I have loads of work that I had put aside, and my boss just came in (as I was blogging) to give me sudden deadlines - today and tomorrow!? - that I need to meet, and I refuse to stay after 5:30 pm. So off to work I go.

I hope you have a chance to have a similar 'awakening/epiphany/enlightenment' as a result of carefully planned events in your life.

bjs