the lucid emissary

If you have ever become lucid in a dream, stop to think, now, about what actually was happening. The dream character—a body of sorts—is suddenly or gradually inhabited by your waking style of awareness (the onset of lucidity).

This waking awareness then exists side by side with the dream character's mind (which is entirely convinced of the reality of the dream and which has no other reference points) within the dream character's so-called body.

It is NOT that the dream character "wakes up" or achieves some kind of new awareness. The dream character does not change in any way. But it is infused or inhabited by your waking state of awareness. There are still two of you there in the dream, so to speak, and when attention becomes lax, the dream character's more limited awareness takes over and you revert from lucidity back to dreaming.

As you then awaken from the nighttime dream, with its varying degrees of lucidity, into this waking dream, you can see through recollection that there was the projected dream body, which had its own very narrow circumscribed consciousness with which you were identified, and the lucid mind, which, through your waking intention and discipline you inserted into that narrow dream-body self, in order to expand the experience of both the waking "you" and the sleeping "you."

Again, the dream self did not awaken. What happened was that a greater awareness, which was always there (since of course dreams take place within your mind) came to the foreground. What ensues is a vivid exploration of the dream environment—an exhilarating experiment in the manipulation of consciousness and an expansion of experience.

All of these selves... the dreaming body-self, the lucid awareness experiencing the dream environment, and the so-called waking self who opens her eyes in bed in the morning... all of these selves are within one mind. Yet none of them are experiencing the whole or native state of that mind because they are all more or less identified with the state of being within a human body.

The you who is identified with the human body cannot awaken and never will awaken. This "you" is a temporary phenomenon. It is only when you begin to see that you have allowed your attention to be trapped by the idea of actually being that body which you inhabit that you begin to sense that there is another "you" and that, in fact, the phenomenon of "you" is not limited in any way. It is multiple and single at the same time. It is completely shared and yet inviolately individual. It is eternal. It expands in ever increasing gestalts of awareness that are existing simultaneously with this very limited experience of the dream of human life.

Looked at in another way, the dream character (you in a non-lucid dream) is completely convinced of the reality of the dream drama. It feels more or less victimized—by the environment, by the other characters in the dream and by the changeable nature of the dream. Even in a so-called happy dream, there is an undertone of fear, because nothing is stable long enough to be relied upon, and there is a sense of being isolated within a body (fictional though it may be).

When lucidity enters the dream, the dream character is suddenly freed from this limited sense of powerless victimhood by the lucid awareness's understanding that none of this is real, and more importantly that its identity is completely independent from the dream body and its environment. So the fearful awareness of the dream character is replaced by the fearless awareness of the lucid emissary.

Within this waking dream we call life, there is also a lucid emissary. That lucid emissary is also you—infinitely more you than the part that has mistakenly identified itself with the body. The part that identifies with the body is called the ego. It truly believes that it is this body, and that it will not survive the dissolution of the body-formation any more than a character in a video game survives the shutting down of the computer. Its consciousness is just like that of the dream figure in a non-lucid dream.

The main characteristic of the lucid emissary is fearless love and indiscriminate, nonjudgmental appreciation, of this, just as it is, right here and right now.

The main characteristic of the dream-figure (human) identity is competitive, discriminating judgment, a refusal to be satisfied with "this" here and now (because it senses its inherent lack of reality and its own temporary nature) and the resulting fear of dissolution, which it interprets as punishment. It actually has no independent self other than these very characteristics, which it maintains through a constant communal stream of non-stop self-referencing mental chatter.

You are not the human. You are the lucid emissary. You are also the mind within which all of this is occurring. When you find your attention trapped by worry, fear and anxiety about tomorrow, or resentment over today, you have forgotten, temporarily, who you are. You've allowed your mind to become distracted by the concept-production mechanism of the human mind. This happens. It's part of the dream-territory. If you are in distress over it, just go silent. Withdraw your attention from it. Shift your attention to that which is not the incessant internal dialogue. Just come back out of thought, out of concept, to this present moment. Relax into the silent, loving lucidity of your eternal identity.

Comments

[Leslie]

Malware struck again and the compassionate words of Marian came to the rescue. Now...now...now and only now where there is no problem. Thanks again for the infinite number of reminders. God...I hope it's not this 58-year-old-brain that cannot remember or be vigilant enough to not get sucked in to the endless stories.
Love,
-Leslie

[marian]

Leslie, it doesn't matter one bit if you get sucked into the stories. You'll pop back out again eventually. Relax and be kind to yourself.

[Leslie]

Boing -- Thank you Marian.
-Leslie

[Robyn]

This is a lovely explanation. I still can't help but feel lonely. Withdrawing into the stillness is not comforting. I still feel alone. Why is that?

I know it's because of the whole separation dealy. ; ). But knowing that doesn't make it any less lonely. Thoughts?

[marian]

Hi Robyn,
If you watch the loneliness carefully, you'll notice that it comes and goes. You are lonely one minute and the next minute you're hungry, or enjoying scratching an itch. Identification with the body (the dream character) is an endless stream of these sensations, coming and going.

None of them are permanent, but loneliness is certainly one of the most pervasive and sad.

That said, it's not something that you have to try to fix or get rid of, necessarily. Just watch it, question it, and be especially aware of the stories behind it. The truth is that we are not alone, we just think we are.

Notice the concepts your mind is adhering to. If the concept is painful and self-tormenting, it does not belong to you. It's purely a product of the ego. Any self-tormenting thought is a product of the ego, not of truth.

[Leslie]

Hi Marian,
What if extended loneliness or isolation appears to have been a product of a mistake or misunderstanding? For years I have been able to get some solace by being present and accepting that as just what is. And sometimes that is very sweet but ultimately I am brought out into the story of an individual -- again and again -- by this, the weightiest of the stories. Does that mean, after years of trying, that I will not be able to see it through?
With love and appreciation,
-Leslie

[marian]

Hi Leslie,
The person who is trying to "see it through" is the one that doesn't actually exist.

It's the one that is composed of identification with the body and its thought-clusters. So its strivings and seekings and tryings, based on the idea that it is this endangered, isolated body, are all in themselves just temporary states of misunderstanding that cause suffering.

Just come out of that worry about 'seeing it through' into the now, into the silent present. full stop.

[Aileen]

It's so easy to forget that it's not the dreamer who will awaken and that wanting to awaken reinforces the existence of the dreamer. Our unconscious struggle reinforces the dreamer. It's the ego's plan for salvation, which of course will never work. I love your clarity, Marian. Thanks!

[Leslie]

Oh THAT one :^O
Thanks Marian and thanks Aileen.

[Leslie]

Dear Marian,
I would be a sunk duck without these writings...
With love,
-Leslie