“Life seems like such dream until you arrive.” – Unknown
Yesterday a monk had asked, “How do I know when I’m present? How do I know when my experience is real or just dreams and imaginings?
In streaming thoughts there are no sounds. No smells, or tastes. No touching in those mental images and movie-like stories. Yet, imagination is so intense we slide in and out of the stream of thought constantly, weaving what isn’t real into our reality. I accept and weave information from a source where I can’t hear sounds, taste tastes, or smell smells.
It’s difficult to grasp sometimes, now much of our world is simply about our focus of attention. I can be driving through beautiful fall scenery totally oblivious, while intensely re-living a past sky diving adventure playing out in streaming thought. I’m not seeing, hearing, or smelling the wonderful scene in front of me, but absorbed in a soundless, tasteless, odorless story about another time. Complete with imaginary senses, supplied by past experiences.
Life appears or can be experienced as a dream, but only when the focus of attention is on streaming thoughts. When attention leaves the stream of thought and turns to presence, life is solid, actual, and it’s where time continues to flow. Attention in presence offers, smells, sounds, sights, feelings, moods, emotions, and a sense of being exactly where life is unfolding, exactly where you are in passing while falling into the future.
Life is not a dream when you’re present for it, there are no dreamlike qualities to existence, only dreamlike imaginings that exist in streaming thoughts.
What is dreamlike? The incredible journey of presence and awareness that’s available, and even better, I’m capable of experiencing the ground floor of life as it happens. Experience life simply by attending to the breathing cycle, the body, and location in time and space.
Hello, Here I am!
Bryan Wagner
Visions of a People's Dharma 
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