steering the sandworm

I have been thinking about dreams: it is fascinating that there can be this audio-visual and other-senses presentation that is fully convincing, made up out of nothing. Try closing your eyes and doing the same thing? It is nowhere near as complete. So what is going on there? My dreams have places, made up or based on real places, or actual real places, sometimes that I have not yet been to, or that I do not consciously remember. I described a house to my parents that we moved out of when I was 3, based on a dream I had when I was 45. There are people in dreams with complete histories, appearance, voice tone. Conversations happen. Unexpected things happen. Can you surprise yourself while awake? If you play both sides of a Chess game, can you beat yourself?

My point is that the conscious verbal mind is only a tiny bleb on the surface of our total being. So much is happening without awareness that one should hardly be amazed at the wild and outrageous things that people do. If we cannot even create a daydream consciously that is anything like the dreams the Basic Self manages without effort asleep, then it says a lot about how much of the being the ego really is: very very little. Why do people think so highly of their own thought process? This is epic vanity, like Ecclesiastes described, worthy of reciting for thousands of years! Get off your pedestal, imposter!

If you really look at how life functions, and how unconscious or delirious most of waking awareness is, you will probably agree that the egoic self we cling to is often nothing more than an observer, or witness to events. I don't like those terms. Sometimes people write about that point of view as some kind of attainment. I think it is the view of a drunk lying in the gutter. Evict the witness, it is just the ghost of a specter. The being does its thing, on many levels: cells need no help from us. Organs and systems are perfectly capable. The body can find food and shelter, defend itself, reproduce... all without words or planning at all. The mind can capture information, recall, design things, find solutions... without an ego stepping in and micromanaging.

The ego is like trying to steer a sandworm. It goes where it wants to. It is far bigger than we are, and it will take care of itself.