Creativity and Dream

There must be a correlation of my reading " A Billion Customers" and my dream of being in China experiencing various situations. As I contemplated what I have dreamed, everything seemed to be logical and there was no peculiar dream sign that I can reckon with. So, this was an ordinary dream with no signpost pointing to the possible lucidity.

Dream is fleeting! Without catching it in a nick of time, it is almost impossible to remember after a full day's work. It is a good habit to write it down as soon as we are conscious and aware right after getting up in the morning.

If we ask most people about their creativity, we usually get the answer that, "No, I am not very creative" unless you are a bonafide artist. I will say the same of myself. But if you have ever kept a journal of your dreams and look back several years later, you will be so amazed that you even were able to come up with so many different dream scenarios. Dream is a creation of our own mind. It is not only our conscious mind that generate those interesting scenes, brilliant conversations, and mind-boggling theatrical scheme, it is a reservoir of human collective unconscious that we are able to tap into the creating process. Now, wouldn't you say you are most creative in your dream?

It is very well documented that many famous scientists, inventors, artists or best-selling authors credited their most creative Masterpieces to their insightful dream scenarios. To cultivate remembering dreams and to learn to be conscious and aware of our dreams do have practical uses in our daily life. In our dream, we are truly unlimited!

A Boat Ride? - A Dream

I am practicing my usual meditation routine by getting up 4:30 am, took one and half hour meditation to 6:00 am and went back to sleep and set alarm to wake up 6:45 am. I got several fragmented dreams.

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I got up early in the morning to discuss something with my son. I noticed that the floor of my home covered with gravel, as if I was walking on a country road. It was just overnight our Pergo floor disappeared. I was shocked and very much rattled to hysteria. I asked him what happened to our floor. He just casually said that he yanked it out last night, and he said the gravel floor is more natural. It was unbelievable....

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We were on a sightseeing tour, one of my brother-in-laws offered ride for us to go around town. He suggested that there were two routes to the other side of the town and he knew the fastest route. We will across ocean and can get there in ten minutes. Good, I like boat ride! So, we were waiting for him to somehow arrange a boat, but instead he asked us to get into his car. We looked at each other quite amused! We are going to across an ocean with a car? He said, "Don't worry, I have done it many times". While we hanged on our dear life, he was easy sailing over the calm, blueish ocean. When we got to the shore, he said "All right, you can hop out now". We all jumped out of his car and into the water that led us to the sandy beach! Well, we made it all right and nobody got wet either!

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I got up with alarm buzzing off. At first, I did not remember any dreams but as I thought a bit harder, these dreams came up. I was happy that I remember anything at all.

In reflection, these two scenarios can be triggers for my lucidity, but like many dreams that I had in the past, my critical thinking faculty was completely turned off. I failed to recognize the impossibility of its happening in real life.

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Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience, yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality. In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about, and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state, it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years, we live two hundred."

-- Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku

Cell Phone, my dream sign

At the end of the day, a lots of people waiting outside of our office anticipating the announcement of Real Estate sale. One of my coworker was also there waiting. I asked the organizer what type of houses were for sale, he said in a strong accent that there were town homes for sale. Well, I said I was not interested in Town home. So I walked out of the area.

I walked toward the parking lot, the more I walked the more I was confused of where I parked my car. While I was searching for it, I took out my cell phone, looked at it and ready to dial for help. I noticed that my cell phone had a block of red markings on it that I did not recognize it before. At that moment, I suddenly realized that "I am dreaming". I was really excited. I thought to myself, I need to find a way to know this is really a dream. It happened that next to the parking lot, there was a booth carrying all kinds of merchandise for sale. I thrust my fist several times trying to smash the displayed merchandises. Well, the merchandise weren't breaking. The lady watching the booth was completely oblivious what I was doing. As if she did not see me at all. Well, the proof was irrefutable that I was dreaming.

"So what do I do in this big dark parking lot?" I thought I like to float up to the sky, immediately I floated up to the dark sky, it was dark, and everything on the ground got smaller and smaller. I noticed there was white dressed angel floating along with me, we spun around several times. Since I did not know how to sustain the lucidity, gradually I found myself fully awake and back to my normal sense.

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This was the first time that I recognize the change of appearance of my cell phone as a signpost of my being in a dream.

" All things are of the substance of dreams"

Ego, my final frontier

As I work day and night on my personal evolution, I find that ego defense is somthing I have been trying very hard to let go but as always it is not without constant inner struggle.

I am in the stage of personal development where the lesson presented to me in the form of daily interaction with other people requires my attention to how I react or proactive in my perceived stressful situation. I have created a buss word to repeat whenever I am in the process of falling to my ego-self "it is all right, it is ok, there is no issue, non at all cause we are one". Well, it does not always work, but it works for fairly good percentage point.

Ego is our final frontier to conquer before we can expand our consciousness to accommodating all things and all people. Believe me, it is one thousand times easier said than done.

An Exerpt from James Blanchard Cisneros' "You have Chosen to Remember"

The ego is a limited belief system within your mind that you have molded and identified as being the real you. The ego survives by establishing boundaries, borders and limits on everything it sees. The defining of such boundaries, borders and limits gives it the illusion that it can tell you what is right and wrong, all in an effort to control you by instructing you on what you are and are not, how you should act and not act, and why you should judge those who challenge it; the status quo. You are taught the right and wrong way to do things, the right and wrong way to react. Because you learn from the outside world, you believe that truth lies outside of you.

Judgment and fear feed the ego, generating numerous perceived weaknesses and limitations you believe you must defend as real. The more time you spend in defense of the ego and your limitations, the more you believe that this is who you are. And because you see this ego as real and representing yourself, you defend it against anyone you perceive as attacking it. In your mind any view that does not support it attacks it.

You perceive the attacks (disagreements with your belief system) on your ego and its illusion as real, and so you become defensive. The more time you spend defending your false or ego-self, the more you reaffirm its reality. The more you reaffirm its reality, the more willing you are to come to its defense. The more you defend the illusion of the ego-self as real, the more concepts and ideas you will encounter in the world that don’t fit into your reality. You perceive different concepts and ideas as assaults to your reality. You defend your ego-self, through the act of judgment. The exercise of judgment separates you from your fellow brother or sister causing stress that may be conscious or unconscious. Stress creates confusion, and a build up of confusion ultimately leads to chaos.

You feel that by defending your beliefs, you strengthen them. Yet the more you defend them, the more they weaken you. The more time you spend in defense of your ego-self, the more time you will exist in a state of confusion. You might give your state of confusion a hundred different names, such as annoyance, anger, stress, sadness, depression, but they all exist because of your belief in the ego’s reality. They all exist within your mind and are fed and kept alive by your belief in your ego-self.

Your tolerance for pain may be high but your acceptance of your ego-self is not without limit. You will come to a point in your life where you will tell yourself that there must be a better way, a more fulfilling way of living that this just can’t be what it’s all about! These thoughts begin the process of awakening yourself to the knowledge of who you truly are.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit - Astronaut Frank Borman

In the "Adventuring with Boldness", the author, Bruce Paton, took us back in time to America's wild wild west and the Arctic region in 19 century, where there were uncharted regions with vast area of desert and wasteland, sub zero frozen mountain, treacherous water, horrendous barren, places that tested humans endurance and determination to the hilt. The exhaustion and starvation are constant companions for courageous explorers, and sometimes food is so scarce that cannibalism was unavoidable for survival.

Now that we are in a civilized twenty first century, everything is handed down to us in a golden platter. We have all the amenities of money can buy, most of the land or water has been mapped out, but behind all these achievement there were stories of human suffering, utter most endurance of harsh environment, and sheer determination to explore the vast land. Some did it for fame and fortune, others for pure human spirit of discovery and adventure.

As far as cannibalism, the thought of it is inconceivable for us sitting comfortably at home surrounded with plentiful of food and entertainment. But out there in the barren desert and freezing mountain where there are no hope of getting any food supply, cannibalism is the final and probably the only means of sustenance. The author indicated that in animal world, cannibalism is common and natural, there is no morality attached to the act. But for human, the survivors of cannibalism experienced profound psychological effect that are deep and long lasting. Often the sense of guilt, remorse and horror lingered for life. That goes to say that survival is the strongest instinct in animal kingdom including us human. Yes, society may condemn the act of cannibalism, but walked with those explorer's moccasin, we might do the same at the circumstances.