Ellen fell asleep one night and in the stillness of sleep had a fascinating dream:
She had had a chance to be reasonably successful in worldly affairs, but ultimately found it unsatisfactory, in the sense that at the core of everything still lay a restlessness. And she knew that. And even though she had had a fair amount of therapy and "growth," she noticed that beneath the surface there was still this fear of death, of loss and annihilation.
So in her dream she embarked on a spiritual quest. Her gaze began to turn from wholly outer to partially inner, from attempting to manipulate events and circumstances in the outer world to attempting to understand the inner.
Her first and most critical stop was prayer. She prayed for guidance, for direction, for help from she knew not where. She prayed to God as it had been taught to her by the local church, which happened to also be a mosque and synogogue. She asked God to arrange things in order to bring about a result that she would like.
A bit later she realized that it wasn't the world that needed to be rearranged, but her internal self. She began to understand the principle of vibration, that like attracts like, and so she prayed to bring herself to a state of vibration where she would be in harmony with—she would attract to herself—situations, people and events that would be higher in consciousness.
Some time later she went from the mode of asking for things, whether external or internal, to simply reciting a mantra internally over and over all day long. Her goal now was not some result in the external world, but rather a direct result in the inner world: inner peace and rapture, a state of inner tranquility and joy. That state, she knew, would then inform and suffuse whatever was happening in the outer world.
Some time later she went from the "active" or "talking" mode, where some activity was going on, whether it was a prayer or a mantra or pursuing a goal in the outer world, to a "passive" or "listening" mode. She knew now that the universe did not need to be manipulated, and in some sense she began to feel that the universe was already right and beautiful and harmonious as it was, if only her eyes could be cleased.
At first, when she began to sit in silence and listen, her consciousness was filled with a cacophony of voices—thoughts, feelings, desires and so on. She realized that they had always been there, but she had been so distracted that she didn't realize how pervasive and insane it all was, and how it was creating her reality.
So now she began to just sit there in silence, and gradually left behind all sense of doing it for a reason, or to obtain some result of any kind, but simply to wait, to be there in the silence for its own sake.
After awhile the silence began to pull her further inward, like a beckoning siren song. As this happened she noticed that she was gradually loosening her death grip on her concepts, stories, beliefs, judgments and "truths." She began to understand what Sosan, the third Ancestor of Zen, had said: "The Great Way is not difficult for those who cease to cherish their opinions."
As her attachment to all of the mental phenomena lessened, she noticed that she could just be there with anything internally. It could be a violent storm of anger or a long period of boredom, a spasm of despair, a judgment about somebody or something—it didn't matter, she was willing to just watch it, with loving attention but without clinging to it.
Then she noticed after awhile that the same willingness had extended to external events. She was willing for them to be what they were—especially since they were going to be that way anyway.
To her surprise, she found that she wasn't just passively lying in bed all day, but still going through the actions of life—yet from a different place, a place of deep surrender inside to things as they were and are.
The inner silence expanded to suffuse everything in a kind of hidden harmony, and her mind became illuminated. In the energy of surrender to what was, she noticed that she was detached but not indifferent, present but not attached.
She noticed that she was much more available to the moment, and as she was, that it came alive. She began to experience the miracle of each simple moment, right here and now, and the distinction of inner and outer began to disappear.
Then she began to realize that her whole sense of a personal self was a thought-construct, a core belief built up from a lifetime of thinking about herself and who she was and what she wanted. Now that self-concept began to become more flimsy and transparent, until she saw that it was not the reality, and that she didn't actually exist as a separate, isolated entity.
When she saw that, she realized that she couldn't die because she had never really been born as some separate entity in the first place—that she was only one more Face of the only Reality—Suchness, Oneness, Source, Infinity—whatever name she chose to give it.
Further, that this ungraspable mystery was always available inside when she listened, and that it then directed her affairs. She no longer had to decide about anything, because energy would just move and she would "follow" it. Yet even to say that following was there was inaccurate—the One energy was simply moving, here and everywhere, and she got to watch it unfold.
Her mind became illuminated even further and became flooded with light. But not a light that was opposed to darkness, but rather, a light that included both "light" and "darkness"—a different kind of light.
This light was filled with three predominant feelings or sensations: gratitude, trust and compassion. She felt an enormous sense of gratitude just to be here, just to see the sky or the clouds or the eyes of people. A sense of enormous trust that in some mysterious way, which her mind found incomprehensible but her heart understood, that everything was indeed in divine order.
And a sense of compassion arose for all the various "objects" and "beings" and "people" in the world, including "herself." All was enveloped in compassion now, and she understood, appearances to the contrary, that the universe was literally woven out of love, a love that was expressing itself now through her.
As that compassion extended to everything, her fear disappeared, and she realized that it wasn't "her" love or awareness, but that the Ungraspable was awakening to Itself through "her," or rather, that the Infinite was awakening to Itself through Itself—and that love was all there was, and is.
And then she woke up. She marveled at the fascinating dream she had had, and noticed the incredibly beautiful rays of the sun shining through her window.
—jim sloman, for 10/11/01
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