Rising from yesterday's ashes
You are a combination of now moments that your brain weaves into a cohesive ‘story,’ giving you the impression of being a Self with a personal history. In our current world, this narrative is functional, but it’s important to remember:
We are fundamentally a spirit with a body,
Our bodies and the world exist within our consciousness, and
We are actually a higher Self—an awareness that exists beyond our physical body, outside of time, space, movement, or focus.
This world and our bodies are powerfully intertwined with the ego or personal self. Observation and rationality lead us to believe the world is outside of us, consciousness is inside our brains, and our brains are the source of information about an external reality.
However, reports from those who have had near-death experiences, journeyed with teacher plants, been in comas, undergone past-life regression, experienced astral travel, or simply had déjà vu, dreams, vivid visions, or premonitions challenge these assumptions. Such phenomena remind us that observation and logic alone are insufficient to understand the full spectrum of experience. Advances in quantum physics further reveal that our ‘vision of reality’ only scratches the surface of what is actually happening.
In truth, we exist in two worlds. What we call ‘reality’ is, in many ways, an illusion, while what we often dismiss as ‘illusion’ may, in fact, be the deeper reality. The easier path is to accept the material ‘reality’ because logic helps us navigate it. Yet, this can make us what Herbert Marcuse called “a one-dimensional man”— individuals who lack critical thinking, taking their cues from media about what to think, how to be, and what to desire. Our personas, personalities, and identities are shaped for us. Spirituality is hijacked by religion; emotions by unwritten social norms; creativity, fantasy, and intuition by the relentless pressure toward financial and social achievement. Your natural rhythms are replaced by time, your self healing abilities with costly dependencies on external forces and persons, and your guidance towards living your true self replaced by following in the footsteps of others.
We are always present in both worlds, but can only focus our consciousness on one at a time. Most of our waking hours are spent in the ‘illusion’, and all of our sleeping hours are spent in the ‘reality.’ The daily transitions between these states are far more significant than we often acknowledge.
Each night as you prepare to sleep, you leave behind the ‘illusion’ of the day and return to the reality of your timeless self. As you drift off, consciously express gratitude for the opportunity to engage in this illusion with a physical body. Thank your body for allowing your higher self to go, do, and experience throughout the day. In this moment of gratitude, you transition from illusion to reality.
When you wake, the illusion of yesterday no longer exists. Sleep and the entry into the dream world is the fire that dissolves the “reality” of the previous day—including your self-concept and self-judgments—which become ashes scattered by the winds of the morning. As these judgments blow away, you rise with new perspectives like a phoenix: awakening is a daily rebirth into new person with new ideas, a new being, and new missions.
The phoenix rises and falls every night and day, cycling through illusion and reality, until the moment it takes flight into the ultimate reality and leaves these spirals behind for good.
