Row Row Row Your Boat

I think most of us have heard or read about the universe and everything in it being one, we are all one etc, etc. That's all well and good, but I feel quite individual and I found it hard to understand completely. What I mean is, I understand it in theory, logically, but the idea remained stuck in my head for many years before I truly understood it.

Could dreams be the clue to understanding what life is? I think it's very likely. If you look at a dream, as you are dreaming everything within the dream seems very real. You don't know that you're dreaming while you're dreaming (unless you have mastered lucid dreaming). It's true that a lot of the time dreams are very strange, but while you're in them you don't feel that they are.

Now on to the "one" part. Everything within your dream is within you. Every building, plant, animal and person is created by you and is you, because it's coming from you and it's your mind's creation. You may have a dream where you're in a crowd of hundreds of people, every person there acts independently and has their own personality, yet technically they are you. You have just taken on one point of focus within that dream (the character you are at that moment). Sometimes you even step back and view your creation (dream) from a distance. Almost like you're watching a movie, and you aren't specifically one of the characters.

Could it be that the universe, or god, or whatever you like to call it, is just some sort of massive consciousness creating some sort of dream-like reality and each life form is a point of focus for many different experiences? I think that it's probably far more complicated than that, and maybe too complex for us to understand. But I think it might be something along those lines. Possibly consciousness gets sort of duller as we move into a dream with in a dream within a dream.

Maybe we lose some signal quality as we move further down in a sense. For example consciousness changes or gets a little duller as you move from the spiritual world, to the physical world, and finally to the dream world. I say this because when you read about those who have had near death experiences (NDE's), so many of them mention how the spiritual world felt more real, they felt more awake and more conscious. And when you look at being awake versus dreaming, you also see a similar difference. Of course you don't notice this difference until you wake up. So you will not understand this difference until you wake up from this current "life dream".

There are many references to life being a type of dream. For example the song Row Row Row Your Boat. The boat signifies you or your body and the stream is your life journey. You're suppose to row gently down the stream, with the current (the flow of life). If you try to row against the current you will struggle as many of us do. If you try to stay in one place you will struggle; the current will do it's best to pull you in the right direction. If you try to go too fast you will miss a lot along the way. So you should row gently and enjoy the ride. Merrily as the song goes; not stressfully, because life is but a dream.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent on."  - Albert Einstein.

Buddhists also believe that life is a type of dream and waking up to the illusion is known as enlightenment.

Anyway, if life is "but a dream" this doesn't make it insignificant or any less important. There is surely a reason for it, a reason which may be far beyond our ability to understand. But most of us feel, or even know that we have a purpose whether we work out what that is or not. We know we have a reason for being here, some sort of inner knowing.
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Everything in the physical world is impermanent just like a dream. So we can do our best not to get too caught up in the details and row our boats gently in flow with the stream of life. ​

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