On losing one’s mind | dreams awakening a dreamer

Last night, I was flying, as is typical of me in the sleeping state, soaring effortlessly over seemingly neverending landscapes. I had been flying like this for years, on landscapes like this for years — prior to having ever experienced the sensation of paragliding, and prior to experiencing the beingness of such vast physical spaces in waking life. 

What was different, however, and what has been different most recently, is that there are no psychotropic substances of any kind involved (I.e., legally prescribed, herbal or pharmaceutical, whatever kind whatsoever).

I looked down at a overly developed, well-chiseled calf muscle, covered completely in curly, coarse blond leg hair. A man’s large, solid hands ran their fingers through this golden tuft, and I felt its texture while marveling in how the sun’s rays glistened through it; the pure masculine, beautiful.

The message that’s been becoming self-evident in the last years hit yet again: 

This apparent reality isn’t real. This is all a dream — during sleeping, during waking — we are dreaming.

I am witnessing the apparent experiences of a mind-body. Yet, I am not this body. I am not these sensations. I am not these emotions nor these thoughts, nor the feeling nor the ideation. I am not this mind. 

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The individual mind continuously attempts to claim such experiences as its own, creating a “me,” “my,” “I,” — a self — in the process.

What is this “I,” this “me,” this “my” that keeps getting referred to in light of the sensory experience, in light of the emotional experience and/or intellectual process? 

The self is only very loosely tied to the mind-body from which it arises and to which it refers. Thus, whatever this self may be, whatever this self-created self-referential seemingly infinite loop may be, it can’t be real. It seems to be real, it is seemingly real — but it can not ultimately be real. (Aside: is there any cross-reference here to Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop, still unread, but on the reading list?)

What is real, is that there is a witnessing independent of whatever mind-body from which it seemingly arises, and to which mind-body it seemingly refers.

I am not the sensing, the feeling, the ideation of the mind-body.

I am the witnessing to the sensing and feeling and ideation — I am the thatness which bears witness to sensations, emotions, thoughts.

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Losing one’s mind reveals One Mind.