An Exercise
For those who really would like a glimpse into a different way of looking at the world there is an exercise you can do. To perform this you have to be prepared to suspend disbelief. Now many people may think that this will somehow infect them, as if this will lock them into becoming gullible ‘believers’. Others may think it is impossible to suspend disbelief. You may like to consider that when you watch a movie or a TV program you always have to suspend disbelief for a period. Most movies adopt a premise that would be difficult to accept in reality, and even with the most realistic movies you have to prevent yourself asking why the couple who are getting so intimate with each other don’t tell the cameraman to get out! Suspending disbelief for the period of the movie seems to do people no harm. It may actually stretch their imagination.
Now, consider this. When we dream everything in the dream was created by our own imagination. So if you are in a room talking to some people, the room and the people were created by you. However, they were created by an aspect of you that you normally have no contact with. Most people, who don’t do what is called ‘conscious dreaming’, see the elements of the dream as separate from themselves. In the same way, it is possible to see the ‘real’, awake world as a dream. All the elements of the world that you interact with are actually created by an aspect of your mind that you are not normally in contact with. Even other people – and what is creating their reality is the same aspect of a greater mind that is creating your reality.
People who do conscious dreaming are able to change the dream. Similarly, advanced mystics are able to change reality. This is how miracles occur. You don’t have to accept this as true; you simply have to suspend disbelief enough in order not to question it, as you would a movie.
Now here is the exercise. Fix a day in the not-too-distant future, say the next Saturday or Wednesday. Tell yourself that on that day you are going to go through the day on the assumption that what I said above is true. That is, that everything that takes place from the moment you wake up is a part of a greater dream, and that everything that happens in this dream has significance for you. Granted, you may not immediately see the significance of all events but simply bear in mind that there is one. Observe what happens. With practice you may be able to bring things towards yourself by concentration.
If you are a skeptic I don’t expect you drop your skepticism. What you may find, though, is that after doing the exercise you are intrigued enough to try it again. Eventually, you may find that it is simply a better way of approaching life and when one of your skeptic friends says to you something like ‘Surely you don’t believe in that nonsense?’ you may reply: ‘No, but it seems to work whether you believe in it or not!’
