"Maybe the things I perceive, the…flowing waters,/ the skies of day and night, colors densities, forms, maybe these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions,/ and the real something has yet to be known."   -Walt Whitman  (1819-1892)

   "You won't remember a thing," the anesthesiologist says as he puts his patient to sleep. But, what will happen inside the patient's dream world as surgeons work to repair his outer body?

   Does it matter to know whether life itself (as Plato said) is all a dream? What is the practical value to such awareness?

   Since we have no control (except for so-called "lucid dreaming") in our asleep state, perhaps this would mean that our management of our awake state is an illusion.

   Religious and spiritual guides tell us to "yield" to a higher power. If everything is a dream, why not get out of the way and let this other energy guide us?

   We say it is because we can't let go. We have to make choices across our conscious lives, don't we?

   The only good choice we have in this world is to let our everyday decisions be guided by Love's energy instead of letting Fear's energy shadow our days. 

   But how do we do this when we are drugged? States of consciousness are what caregivers deal with all the time. If we are "conscious" of our pain, we do, of course, want to relieve it. So we run from the nightmares of our hardest pains toward the soft lap of joy.

   Knowing that our life may be all a dream can be very helpful. Why fight the waves? Let our dreams take us where they may, even if the destination appears dark.

   Sometimes, fighting the dark means doubling our pain. Amid agony, what is wiser: to tense with pain or to relax by using the phrase we sometimes repeat to ourselves – "it will pass."

   Time is a trick. But, the biggest trick of all may be reality.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photographs: "Ocean Dreams #2"; Banner – "Wash Cloth" – both copyright erie chapman 2012