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UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances
And where thy footstep gleams–
In what ethereal dances
By what eternal streams.
To One in Paradise – Edgar Allan Poe
Reality is impossible to pin down. It seems to be a concept that we adopt, which allows us to go about our business. It is the tip of the iceberg of our experience, and like Alice in Wonderland we may feel that if we look too deeply, we will fall into a hole and be hopelessly disoriented. Unless we are quite grounded, there may even be some truth to that.
We look out into the world, and we see what we assume to be reality. The trees are green, the sky is blue, and the occasional bird flies by. We know it is all real because we can go out and touch that tree, and, yes, it is solid and real. At the same time, we know, as scientists will tell us, that it is only because of our senses’ unique way of perceiving the world that it appears as it does. Other species do not see the world in the same way. Further, physicists would point out that all that we see consists of energy fluctuations. If we remove all the empty space between the molecules and atoms, very little would remain. What is real becomes more and more nebulous.
And what of the dream state? In dreams, the reality we experience is as real as that of our waking state. Our perceptual apparatus is asleep, yet we see the dream reality unfolding as though we were experiencing it through our waking senses. We only realize that we were dreaming once we awaken. It is then that we come to the question of outer and inner reality. As Wayne Dyer points out, what you see when you look in the mirror is only your physical form, it is not who you truly are. Who you are is that part that observes what it sees in the mirror, or out in the world, or in your dreams.
The essence of who we are cannot be experienced in the way that we perceive the rest of our reality. To do that, we would have to access the observer who observes our observer – some part that could truly get outside of us to get an external viewpoint – but you can see where that would lead. Like a hall of mirrors, we would never get to the end of the observer observing the observer, observing the observer, ad infinitum. The startling reality is that there is no outside viewing point. That is a delusion of the ego. Ego first creates the illusion of separateness and then imagines there are an out there and in here. This lays the groundwork for a lot of existential angst, to say the least. So how do we reconcile the fact that we are not separate – that we are part of one living, dynamic, cosmic whole – yet we have an ego that creates its own little separate world, with all of the joy, sorrow, comedy, and tragedy that it can muster?
Perhaps the best approach is to think of life as a series of dreams. Every story, theme, relationship, issue, or situation in our lives is like a dream. Much of how we put it together in our heads is of our own making, and like a night dream, eventually, whether it takes days, years, or a lifetime, we will see that it is all transient. We may dive in and play our part passionately, but it is still a dream. Instead of identifying with the ego – the protagonist in all of our stories – we can identify with the dreamer. We can create our lives as if they were lucid dreams; we know that we are dreaming, but we enter into the dreams and consciously direct them. When we do this from the highest place in our being, our direction is always coming from a place of love, kindness, compassion, and the highest good of all. This, I believe, is living a soul-directed life. Such a life is characterized by far less drama, and much more peace, tranquility, acceptance, and love.
Gwen Randall-Young is an author and psychotherapist in private practice. Additional articles and information about her books and transformational CDs can be found at www.gwen.ca,
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