The Dream is Never the Same.

I just woke up from a dream where my grandfather was alive and standing without the aid of a cane, walker or wheelchair. He showed up at the door of a conference room at work, one hand in one pocket, tall (I'd forgotten he was) and distinguished looking. I burst into tears of relief / grief in the dream and I remember marvelling at the sensation within the dream. I was not experiencing grief per se, but the shock at recognizing I could see him physically again.

We had a short conversation and I walked him to some elevators because he was leaving (I was now in a hospital or something). I kept hugging him and having these short fits of relief weeping. Every ounce of him was real and alive and I was just soaking that up. He kept saying the word "operationally" which I found incongruent with everything else. For example, he indicated the "University" -- which he indicated with a nod in one direction -- "where he taught, operationally". I can't help but think he meant some kind of psychic university where he reminded people who were alive that dead people are really alive as well, just focused in a different area.

Since Zayde's death, I've always felt like I could still communicate with him -- or with a deposit of his energy that stays around to make sure I am ok and to just catch up on the little things. He's totally aware of my recent accomplishments at work and is glad I am expressing my energy well in that arena. I think I can still almost see him physically sometimes -- out of the corner of my eye or the way another milumet person will do something. I see him a lot in my friends Patricia and Cynthia because they have very similar mannerisms, ideals, and virtues. I have very close affections and friendships to those two as well, in a very similar energetic manner to my grandfather.

So, my grief was particularly interesting in the dream because it really wasn't grief -- I don't consider him gone exactly. Just focused in different areas. The shock and emotion was from realizing I'd manifested a physical Zayde again who looks the way he should look and acts the way he should (although we both have the good beer bellies going on). The sharp "aliveness" of him was so real in the dream that I was relieved.

When I woke up, the contrast of it all became especially clear and pointed a very specific difference to me of the dream state. Upon waking, I noticed immediately my beliefs trying to change the dream into the logical, factual, and "real" -- that Zayde was dead, he was unable to walk before he died and I'd never see him physically again. And a funny thing happened in that twilight between dream and wakefulness. I realized dreams are a "real" as "reality" waking life is. In them, we can suspend -- or perhaps more accurately, accept -- beliefs about things so they have less power over me. So, I decided to accept the dream as very real as it was, even though in wakefulness it was somewhat of a stretch.

In the dream, it was perfectly legal for Zayde to be "back" and alive and well. In wakefulness it's perfectly legal to believe when we are "dead" we'll never see each other again. But, I think that veil between these duplicitous beliefs is falling -- in the dream world I am able to believe someone has died and I'll never see them again and in wakefulness I am able to believe and actually create a "dead" person again, perceptually. Living, breathing, focused again, if briefly, on the attention we share in both realms anyway.

Hey! I am hungry! What's for breakfast?