Dreaming

A couple of nights ago I had such a vivid dream that my wife's pocket book had been stolen, that when I woke I was relieved to realize it was a dream. For a long time I have wondered what to make of dreams. The Bible is full of them and, although Carl Jung among countless others has speculated about them in modern times, we still really know little more about them than we did when Jacob won his way out of an Egyptian jail in the biblical story by interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams when Pahraoh's wise men could not.

One thing I do believe is that dream reality, while perhaps of a different fabric and dimension, has as much claim to being authentic as does waking reality. This because I think there is only one reality and everything, no matter how hard to pin down, is part of it.

I am planning to write a Zone Note this week about having spent more time than usual this winter in the desert. For me the desert comes closest to dream life while I am awake. And the desert figures large in the lives of both ancient religious figures (John the Baptist, Jesus, Israel) and in the lives of modern ascetics. (If you do not receive the Zone Notes and would like to, email me at blayneyc@earthlink.net and I will send them to you).

I have a friend who has been a lawyer and business man his entire adult life and he is now trying to cover all the philosophical and spiritual ground he feels he missed by being immersed in what he calls the material world. I have assured him that hard science, notably particle and quantum physics, has brought the debate about the nature of reality almost full circle, so that the most sophisticated scientists now sound more like mystics than do most philosophers and theologians.

Remember the Everley Brothers' song? "All I ever do is dream, dream, dream...I'm dreaming my life away." Perhaps that is a strategy for going into the deepest dimensions of this mystery in which we swim.