I wake up in the morning – where am I? In which life do I exist? Where have I been during the night? Can I choose between two realities?
I live a double life. No, I am not having an affair! Nor do I own a country house, a weekend retreat, and thus live in two different places. I exist in one body, in one place, at one time. And yet I am conscious of having two lives. One life living in everyday reality, in the web of daily existence and another life, within the same body, doing the same things – yet gloriously free.
I can awaken in either state. It seems at this stage that it depends on my dream life, which in turn is dependent on my day life, the experiences, thoughts, impressions that I have entertained during the previous day. And no doubt many other factors and influences that I am unaware of. I can awaken feeling calm and peaceful, no cares, no worries, no troubling thoughts. Or, the other possibility – the one I least enjoy – caught in a suffocating tangled web of thoughts, ideas, worries, literally struggling to breathe.
This has been happening for some time now, this alternation of realities. The beginning so subtle, so below and beyond my consciousness, that I have no recognition of when it started – only of when I became aware of it and started, hopefully, to understand from within what was happening. Waking in one state evokes peacefulness, waking in the other a sense of deep-seated panic. Where am I? How did I get here? Can I choose between the two? Apparently I can. And I do, progressively, but not without great struggle. Sometimes finding peace occurs just naturally, no effort, a waking state. Sometimes it evades me and the other reality prevails. But I can choose, I discovered that only recently. Somewhere, deep inside, I discovered an invisible trigger, an “escape button”, a means of escaping from the dreaded web of everyday life into the inner calmness, the inner peace. Like moving from one world to the next, to a higher reality, without going anywhere.
The secret trigger point lies in my heart, in my inner being. It’s always been there, and it’s there in every one of us. We all have one. But it’s inoperable, dormant, unless great changes in our life, our attitudes, our thoughts and feelings, our state of consciousness lead us on a path to recognition, to waking up. Changes that are permanent, not fleeting. Waking up to the recognition of living two lives, living in two realities. One reality fading away (but always capable of reasserting itself) and another in a state of emergence, coming to life.
The secret trigger stands between the two, allowing me to move out of the reality of my daily web of existence, to a place far away, far higher and yet still within. A place of sublime, never-ending peace. Yearning for that transition, that sense of moving beyond, that is what allows the trigger to function. But only genuinely sincere longing, from the depth of my heart. Not a semblance of it; not just a thought, not just a desire. Longing and focussing on that trigger, that inner “something”; experiencing it, feeding it, bringing it to life.
Then I am swept away, pulled free. And then I can come home.
