Drowning in the Sea...

Last night I had a couple of really strange dreams. I think the first one might have been triggered by reading Peter Clothier's posts over the past few days about dealing with death. Both of the dreams I had involved overwhelming amounts of water and both involved people I haven't seen in a while but miss.

The first dream was about Lindsey. I know it's somewhat revealing and I don't normally talk about my relationships on my blog, but we broke up a couple of months ago and I feel like I'm just recently starting to deal with it, which is why she's been showing up in my dreams. We were running around in some ocean bay, but it was like a floating city. In order to get to each different part of the city, you had to navigate these tiny little floating bridges which were riddled with shark-like creatures. We always seemed to make it across, but whenever we'd get anywhere people were always wondering what we were doing together. That's all I really remember about that one. It was kinda random.

The second dream has been really affecting me all day. I dreamed that my whole family was on this huge ship. It felt something like an oil tanker on the outside, but the inside was very luxurious and homey. While we were out at sea, there was a huge hurricane which was inevitably going to consume us all. My dad was there on the inside, and he kept saying things like, "I've had a full life and I'm just going to stay on this ship. I want the whole family to die together, so we all need to stay on the boat." When he said that, I remember crying. Have you ever had those experiences where you are crying in a dream, but it feels so real that you're almost positive you're actually lying in your bed crying in real life? That's what it felt like. I remember replying to dad by saying things like, "I haven't had that life yet! I want to get married! I want to raise my children someday!" And this I remember distinctly: I remember saying, "I want your life, dad!" And now that I'm awake and think about it, it makes sense

I want to be secure in myself, to have a lovely wife with whom I share a loving and trusting relationship, raise wonderful children, have my own home with a yard to mow, have a career, etc. I want all the things my father has had. It was a strange dream and I don't quite know what to do with it all. I suppose I just wanted to get it off of my chest. I'm not ready to die, and I know it.

Zombies!

I have dreams about zombies usually around once a week. This has happened for a few years now, and I'm not really sure why. It's interesting, and last night I had another one. I'll explain this one to you, since it's pretty typical of my zombie dreams, though they vary greatly in content.

Last night my family and I were back at our house in the Lake, which is where my mind still calls "home," even though we moved. There was a zombie outbreak, and all the zombies were at our front door, forcing my family and I to barricade ourselves in our living room. There was a random guy in our house with us who was causing issue. I can't quite recall what he was doing, but I remember being unsafe around him like he wanted to let the zombies in or something. Anyway, he was incredibly unruly, and we were forced to kill him (not the most viable option when using rational thought, but I was sleeping. Cut me some slack). I had a shotgun, and I shot this guy repeatedly in the face, but it didn't seem to be doing any damage whatsoever. On the final shot, it looked like he had a wound from a BB gun in his forehead, and he finally keeled over and died. That left my family and I alone in the room again, poised and ready to fight off the zombies.

That's pretty much it. It's always me and my family or close friends cornered and ready to fight the zombies. I'm never alone. When I think back on it, I'm never really terrified of the zombies, so I can't really call them nightmares. They're just an impending danger we have to get ready for. It feels more like a courageous thing, like I'm ready to fight to the death or take on a seemingly impossible challenge, but never purely scared.

I have no idea what the zombies signify, or why I'm always dreaming about them, but it seems to me that since the dreams are reoccurring the zombies obviously mean something. It's been going on for years now, so it couldn't just be coincidence. I figured maybe I'd put it up here for people to comment on and maybe give me some guidance on why my family is always fighting the undead with me.

Pure Love...

So, on a slightly different note from the previous post today, I thought I would share a dream I had last night that I haven't been able to get out of my head all day. The details are a bit foggy and I have no idea what it means, but it is a cool concept.

So there was a small group of people, myself included, in a room with a pool. For some reason there was an evil creature in the room (think Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) who was attacking us. This creature ended up getting us all sucked into the middle of the pool and said to us all, "Unless you can fill your hearts with pure love, you'll never get out." So I tried to focus on nothing but love and compassion, but I was in the middle of being attacked in a pool by an evil creature, so of course I couldn't focus on pure love. Eventually, none of us got out of the pool and I'm pretty sure we all drowned.

Initially, I want to say that this is a metaphor for my spiritual life right now, but I can't be sure. The pool is samsara. Unless we all learn to stop focusing on the hustle and bustle of life and focus on nothing but loving each other, we're all destined to drown in life's busyness.

My Big Lie...

Again, I've been pondering Peter with a two week delay. Let's get started, shall we? We'll start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.

I was never the "cool kid" in school until later. When social groups started forming in about fourth grade, I was left on the outskirts of popularity. Don't get me wrong; I'm not about to tell a sob story or have an emotional unload on my blog, but it's part of the story I mean to tell. I was often mocked and made fun of for being the teacher's pet, not having the cool clothes, whatever kids make fun of each other for when we're young. My parents would tell me, "They only make fun of you to make themselves feel cool!" I didn't understand the truth behind those words for a very long time, so I took their shots and let them get me down.

Flash forward to high school.

I'd been a successful track athlete in jr. high, and I enjoyed it. Naturally, I continued to pursue track (most notably pole vault and sprinting) in high school. Eventually, my body developed and I transformed from the geek into the fastest kid in school. I had become an athlete, and this is where I first got a taste of success over the kids that had always made fun of me. During track season, I was part of the flock with them. They'd cheer me on in my races and we'd get along pretty well. I felt good because they were being civil to me and I knew I was better at an athletic event than them.

It sounds terrible, but beating these guys in athletics was a profound feeling. Being smarter than them wasn't anything I cared about. That's why they made fun of me in grade school to begin with and these guys didn't care about school at all. They did, however, have some stock in their ability as athletes. I had taken them at their own game. Even though we were teammates during the season, I was always competing with them. When I was racing, it felt like I was always racing my teammates. They were chasing me to the finish line. In reality, none of them were faster than me. In my mind, they always won.

Flash forward to the present.

I've been having the strangest dreams this week. I have been dreaming that I'm on the track with these guys again. Even though I never got along with a lot of these guys, I was desperately in love with running. I miss track so much. My college doesn't have a team, so I never put on my spikes and run anymore. I miss the speed, the wind, the crowd, the baton handoffs, the adrenaline. I felt alive when I was racing. I thought at first that these dreams I'd been having of racing on the track were just my mind being upset and missing track season, but I've noticed something strange about the dreams.

It isn't just me running on the track, feeling the rubber underneath my spikes. I'm always racing someone from my school that I never had any problems beating, but I can't stand up to him anymore. He always annihilates me. I've lost my edge. I'm slow again, like I was when I started to get made fun of when I was little. After thinking about this for a few days, another thought started popping into my head.

I recommend everyone read Peter Clothier's blog post from Friday, May 11 2007. In The Buddha Diaries, Clotheir discusses lots of interesting topics, but one in particular has been bothering me lately. The post, entitled "Body-Mind," is about Peter's "Big Lie." At a conference Clothier went to, the administrator was trying to get everyone to discover the one problem in their mind they can't overcome. The essence of the problem is a solid question all of us need to address: Why do I foil my own plans? What part of me gets in my own way and why? All of the story I told above adds to my own "Big Lie."

My "Big Lie" goes something like this: "I'm not good enough."

I've always stacked myself up against other people. I've always had to compete for attention. I felt like I had to beat these guys at their own game in order to earn respect and comradery. Why? Because I had been convinced of a giant sham. I had let myself believe that I'm not good enough on my own. I played their game, and in their game, only they win. It's a theme that I've let dictate my life and effect me. I've foiled myself because of "I'm not good enough." I've let good things go by because I don't deserve them. Isn't that ridiculous?!

From now on, I'm done competing. From now on, I know what I want and I know how to get it. From now on, I'm done not being good enough. God damnit, I'm worth it. I'm worth happiness. I'm done with my big lie, because that's all it is. A Big Lie. Nothing more. I'm good enough being me, not what people want me to be. It feels good to be me.

Na na na na na na na, Sparky. You get to be happy. Na na na na na na na, I give you unlimited time...