First of all I want to make clear that I’m not trying to convince anybody of my views. This would lead to debate, and that is not what I’m trying to accomplish here. It’s important to me to be able to show how my worldview has changed over the past few years. It started out by opening my mind to more expanded ideas than I was used to. Ideas that look beyond the physical world. Not in a form of blind belief. But rather as working theories, to be tested out in my own life. If a new way of looking would help me find more inner peace, would help me approach the world in a more loving way, I would accept it, still with the intention to discard it if a better, more complete explanation would turn up. Opening up to include the non-physical world and working with that has has helped me a lot to relax, accept, trust and be in the present moment.
To be completely honest, my mind has become more fluid since I started out. Less fixed into one truth. You might think that would give me less certainty, less safety but that is not true for me. The basic premise, that whatever I work with should contribute to a more loving version of me, a more balanced peaceful way of living, is not in conflict with that fluidity. I don’t need absolute truths, just ideas that work for me.
Despite this fluidity, I need to fixate it into one story to be able to express it in this blog. So let me tell you how I think about life right now. It might be quite a stretch to follow and could raise resistance with some of you. Also, it has so many facets, that I can’t explain in a few words how this helps me be more peaceful and loving. But I have to start somewhere.
Another thing is that I myself am still oscilating between the old way of looking at the world, and the new, more expanded view I am leaning towards. And that when I fall back into the old way of thinking, I am confronted with all my doubts and fears again. One of those fears is that I will be rejected for my views, which makes it a stretch for me to be this open with you.
The view that will bring me safety and acceptance is the atheist paradigm. Most of the people that I love and respect are very clear that they adhere to that worldview. I’m leaning towards a different worldview, in which this life on earth is a limited expression of something much more vast. If you would imagine yourself as unlimited consciousness, in which everything is possible, then this experience on earth, in a human body, would be one expression of that. Constrained in time and space from birth to death and within the boundaries of physical reality in which you can’t walk through a wall and in which we all agree that you can travel in a car and get groceries in a supermarket.
When we are dreaming in our sleep, we are living in a projected reality. That reality is much less constrained. We can fly for instance and we find that normal. Time and space behave differently as well. One moment you are here, the other you are there. How did you get there? While dreaming we aren’t questioning any of that. It’s all perfectly normal to us. And when we wake up, we realize it was all a dream. And we were the dreamer.
What if this life on earth, in a human body, is also some kind of dream? That we can wake up to it and see it was a projected reality, with its own rules and constraints, but a dream nonetheless? What stays the same throughout all of these scenario’s? The dream state at night, the human life, or what we experience outside of human life? The sense of “I” perhaps?
I’m beginning to get in touch with what is outside this dream of my human life. Like lucid dreaming. Have you ever experienced being able to influence your dream? That you are experiencing the same nightmare all over again, and that you suddenly realize it is a dream and you are able to wake up at will, or perhaps even slay the dragon this time instead of being defeated?
This lucidity, this influencing of the dream, is what I have been experiencing for a while now. And also the input from beyond the dream. Like a form of communication through a veil that separates the ‘me’ outside of the dream from the ‘me’ inside of the dream. The ‘me’ outside of the dream has a broader overview of what is happening. It can see in many directions, the future included. In meditation this communication gets clearer. I get clearer ideas and insights. Thoughts that show me the next step I can take, or a different perspective on an issue I have been dealing with.
I also noticed that what is going on in the dream, in what we call our normal reality, responds to my mindset. When my mindset is one of fear and I feel the need to control, to prevent bad things from happening, then I will experience that things are getting worse. That instead of things taking a turn for the better, things are going downhill. The more I struggle, the less success I will have. In such a mindset I feel contracted, literally. My muscles are tight as if I’m protecting myself against misfortune. This is why I question attitudes like “war on terrorism”, etc. Will that really prevent terrorism from happening? Or will it make the problem worse? Carl Jung said “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” I think he has a point.
When on the other hand my mindset is one of trust, acceptance, the willingness to work with whatever is presented to me by life and to find a creative way of dealing with that, then suddenly things take a turn for the better. My body feels open, wide, spacious and calm in such a state. It’s not that I have to force myself open. It’s rather that ideas, decisions etc. that are beneficial will feel open. And thoughts or plans that will bring trouble, will feel contracted. I’m learning not to follow those.
There is no fooling the dream. It is relentless in showing me if my openness is authentic or if I’m still holding on to fear. Even ignoring the fear, or pushing through the fear is not going to work. Only welcoming, opening, allowing will do. Until the fear dissolves and clarity shows up, with renewed creativity for dealing with the situation at hand. Until enough mental noise is gone that I can hear the ‘me’ from outside of the dream. I sometimes compare it to being in a lunar module, seeing only what is right in front of me, but getting information from the mothership which has a broader overview.
My current level of awakeness or lucidity is not always stable yet so I’m still often avoiding my fears. Or trying to cheat my way through them. Look, I’m not afraid! And when I don’t mean it 100%, life will mirror those fears back to me. I will somehow meet exactly that which I’m avoiding in my reality. Until I let go.
This new paradigm has reduced my fear of death a bit. Not that it is gone, and how much fear is left I will only know when my life is at stake, but if it is true that we are living in a reality similar to a dream, then death is nothing more than waking up. Nothing to be afraid of. Not that I don’t cherish life though. I’m quite committed to my dream 😉
Perhaps my future blog posts will reveal more of this worldview. I’m kind of surrendering to whatever inspiration will come through. It feels like freedom though, to no longer limit myself to ‘safe’ topics that won’t shake things up too much. That inspiration was drying up anyway 😉 It takes a lot of trust in the ‘mothership’, the non-fysical part of me. But that trust is growing with every risk I take.
Are you still with me? Great! I appreciate your open-mindedness! Are you a developer who has similar experiences or a similar worldview, I would love to get in touch. It would be great to meet people from the tech community who can relate to this. Send me a DM on twitter @mindfuldevs and let’s have a chat 😄
