You are Dreaming
Are you asleep or awake? What about people you interact with daily? Most will answer that they are awake, and that those around them are awake as well. It’s a simple question with an easily determined answer, or so it seems.
Not all is as it seems. Rather than two states of being, there are at least four. The mind and body can be asleep or awake independently of each other.
With mind and body awake, one is truly awake. With mind and body asleep, one is dreaming. With mind awake and body asleep, one is lucid-dreaming.With mind asleep and body awake, one is sleepwalking. Gradations exist between these four states, ranging from hypnotism and trance to daydreaming and dim consciousness.
The common understanding of what it means to be “awake” disguises the truth. In truth, most who call themselves awake are actually not awake at all. They are either hypnotized, dimly conscious, sleepwalking, daydreaming, or in a state of trance. What all these states have in common is that the conscious core of the individual is absent or passive, blowing like a leaf in the winds of environmental stimuli.
Waking Dreams
We dream while physically asleep. But for many, dreams do not end in the morning. Getting up, showering, eating, working, watching TV–all those are continuations of a dream state that remains essentially uninterrupted, 24 hours a day.
You may realize how in dreams our sense of reality is disabled and we submit our attention to the most ridiculous dramas and scenarios. In dreams, we make the strangest “logical” associations that amount to no logic at all, have little say in what happens to us, do things impulsively, and never question our reality or observe ourselves.
Because people tend to be mentally asleep while going about their daily business, they carry out exactly the same behavior. All that limits them is the stability of their physical environment. Nevertheless, they are just as easily suggestible, capable of false logic, and in passive submission to the environment as during their nightly dreams.
Observe what people do and say, the anecdotes and gossip they speak, how they may communicate via recitations of lines from movies or TV shows, speak in trite memetic phrases without conscious thought or originality, engage in ludicrous programmed behavior, engross themselves in petty dramas, and switch to goofy or borrowed personalities that you never question–as long as you are
asleep.
The world and society is an insane asylum, but everyone is too asleep to notice the insanity. Just as you may not question insane dreams while having them, so do most people not question their insane lives. But, if you observe yourself, return your focus of attention to your present location and moment in time, then observe those around you with this perspective, you will see that they are virtually sleepwalking. Ever wish you could observe another person’s dreams? Well, your wish is granted — just observe others and you will see them behaving exactly as they would in dreams, were their dream environments as stable as this physical one.
The moment you forget yourself and become fully absorbed in what you perceive, you are no longer awake. You have forgotten about your own consciousness and are in a hypnotic trance focused entirely upon the object of your thoughts or perceptions. At that point, your freewill is surrendered and you become a machine, input and output determined by what enthralls you.
The implications of mass somnambulism is obvious. With billions of people asleep, those in power who are awake have the advantage. Sleeping people are easily controlled. Their conscious core exists within a mental prison, harnessed for time, labor, and energy. They possess little or no freewill because they have abandoned the awareness necessary to utilize it.
Escaping the Matrix
The purpose of this article is to urge you to realize that being truly awake is a
very rare state, but that it is vitally important to strive for it, to realize the
necessity of true waking consciousness. Without it, your life is not yours. Without it, you
will die in your sleep, like everyone else. Some say ignorance is bliss, and to die in sleep is a good, but these are words of the insane.
This is one small step toward escaping the influence of the Matrix, the Predator, the General Law. You must realize that most of you have been, and probably still are asleep; that those who sleep are living a lie, and therefore your life has been a lie; that those around you who are sleepwalking, with their petty dramas and mechanical greetings, are not to be taken seriously because they are not in control of themselves.
You are the guardian of the fortress that is your reality, so don’t let down your guard. Entities exist that would gladly rearrange unguarded sectors of your reality. Plan ahead and remember past lessons, but don’t lose yourself in the moment; just
be and
act in the moment, with full consciousness of your own awareness. This is impossible to do all the time, but the more you strive for it, the longer you stay lucid.
Lucid Memories
Lucidity is the key to continuity of awareness and depth of memory. Some people have good memories despite being asleep — this type of memory is purely mechanical and lacks understanding or the infusion of potential creative use, and is no different from computer memory. Computer memory can be easily rewritten, rearranged, corrupted, swapped, or made self-contradictory, but lucidly acquired memory is whole, holographic, and real. This wholeness forms a kernel of objectivity upon which other lucid memories and knowledge can grow, to build within oneself a solid, consistent, and conscious core.
During states of mental sleep, ones memory is subjective. Consequently one’s identity is subjective, consisting of whichever role one plays at the moment. Within the subjective mind exist numerous subjective roles that take the lead upon cues from the environment. Within such a mind, there is no order, consistent growth, stability, or objectivity.
The path to awakening is to make one identity within you supreme over all others, The Identity that is your conscious core, present when you observe your own awareness rooted in the present moment and location. All perceptions and thoughts that pass through this original identity become lucid memories, internally consistent and whole. Staying lucid while living, working, thinking, and creating, accumulates lucid memories. When recalled, such memories are experienced in the present moment, and all such memories thus comprise direct knowledge of reality and time as it truly exists, without past or future. Linear time is illusion, and your conscious core knows this. Lucid memories reflect this truth.
As you practice staying truly awake, more lucid memories are accrued until a critical point is reached when the siren songs grow quiet. Then, very rarely will you be lulled back beneath the surface of lucidity. The strength and will of your true inner self grows considerably and asserts its rightful superiority over internal illusory identities. In tandem, the strength of your presence within the external environment also grows. No longer will you be a passive machine, but an active infuser of creative influences. Not only do the shackles fall off, but the prison becomes an open playground.
Conclusion
This talk of lucidity and true wakefulness may sound simplistic and idealistic, but it is real, possible, and worth pursuing. The works of Gurdjieff, Boris Mouravieff, Castaneda, and John Baines are excellent resources for those who desire to study the mechanics and necessary details involved in escaping the talons of the Matrix. For the sake of your destiny, please wake up.
Montalk.net . 
