Early Risers, My Goodness Me!

I sure woke up early today. I opened my eyes and thought, “Wow, it feels like eleven o’clock.” Sure enough, I looked at my phone for the time and it was 11:00 on the dot. My wife was still sleeping soundly, and wouldn’t get up until after twelve.

Eleventh-hour early riser, that’s me. As I went about my morning routines, I gave myself over to reverie and turned it all into a kind of symbolic thing in my mind.

The eleventh-hour awakening is what’s going on now. You and me, up before the greater part of humanity, apparently, although the rising tide is quite intense by now. What to do, what to do?

One might:

check the weather,

take out the trash,

clean up yesterday’s mess,

take a shower,

walk the dogs,

make breakfast for one’s significant other,

read tea or coffee,

drink the newspaper,

take a whizz,

scratch one’s butt,

make plans for all the glorious and unglamorous things that one is obliged or inspired to do,

go wake someone else.

“Rise and shine, my love! You are so beautiful. Today is a good day.”

Take note: as in the everyday routine cycle, there is nothing ‘better’ about being awake as opposed to asleep. It doesn’t make one special or more needed. It is simply another state or condition we all go through.

What is it to be awake? We think of it, just as in the mundane sense, as meaning to abide in awareness of a more encompassing reality than the supposed dream awoken from. Certainly... perhaps. At least subjectively. But the dreamer may be dreaming something beautiful, ugly, safe, scary, transcendental, trite, exotic, familiar, important, irrelevant... anything. The point is, the dream is real to the dreamer. In your right mind, you wouldn’t invade their dream and tell them, you’re mistaken, none of this is real, you’re not really here. Of course they’re ‘here’ – for them, ‘here’ is their experience, and that is as real as it gets.

Of course, when you encounter a dreamer who desires to wake up from their dream, then what they need is to take their next step on that road, and sometimes you can help with that. Forget your need to prove the person wrong. No one needs that from you the way they might need, say, reassurance that they’re loved and OK and everything’s going to be fine. Affirmation of their inner goodness. They may simply need someone to share with, someone to support and congratulate them within their dream – not for someone to come along and invalidate their dream. That’s so very easily perceived as an invalidation of the person herself.

When you are dealing with egos, you are dealing with minefields of buried pain, where the slightest misstep can trigger an explosion. You’re much better off dealing directly with the person’s authentic self, by being your own authentic self. Vulnerable. Open. Honest. A brother or sister in the same human family. Don’t mind the ego. Know its ways, don’t play its games. You don’t have to engage it on its own terms. That’s called lowering your vibration to the lowest common denominator. That’s a losing proposition for everyone. See the goodness inside and resonate it. It may not come to the surface right away, but you’ll have engaged it. The reminding seed you’ve sown may germinate at any time.

How do you resonate a person’s inner goodness? By demonstrating your own toward them. The truth you hold so precious becomes a poisonous thorn, a bone of contention, a weapon of mass destruction when you use it as an object in your collection. Throw away your collection of truthy-truth beliefs. All you need is the living truth inside you. No words or concepts. Nothing to remember, nothing to carry with you. Just you. Just your love. Lighten the load you carry and others will find it easier to do the same.

Dream will always be with us. Whatever we experience, on any level, in whatever layer, in realm upon realm, there is only one thing we need to remember if there is to be happiness and freedom: Love is. Not these two words you just read; the living truth of it, which is inside you as your authentic being. Trust it like you would trust gravity. That’s called being grounded. There you go.

Whatever dreams may come, let us remember. If we forget, then that is only a chance to remember again. We will never come to harm, for the one who truly dreams as us dwells beyond all dreaming.