Crossing in Dreams

This is the oldest road to the other side, and the one you have already traveled more times than you know. You called it dreaming and thought little of it. But some of your dreams were not dreams. You were there.

Dreaming has an advantage the sitting meditation cannot match. No one can meditate for six or eight hours at a stretch. But you sleep that long every night. Set your intent at the edge of sleep, and you can live on the other side until morning. I do this most nights. I lie down and I tell myself, plainly, that I am going to cross while I sleep. Some afternoons I lie down for the same reason.

The preparation is the opposite of effort. You are trying to slow this world down until it lets go of you, because this world is the thing that trips you. So do something dull and quiet. Breathe slow and deep. Put something boring on the television. Work a puzzle. Draw without meaning to draw anything. Anything at all that lets the thoughts of this world run down and go still.

Then, as you drift, set the same desire you would set anywhere. I will cross tonight. It is the same wanting, the same near obsession, carried to the threshold of sleep and let go of there.

You will remember what you are allowed to remember. Some of what is given on the other side can only be held while you are standing in it, and it does not come back across with you. But even this answers to desire. Desire to remember. Desire to know. Desire the truth, desire the connection, and more of it will be waiting for you in the morning.

And the more hours you spend there, the easier the next crossing becomes. Before sleep, dwell on the wonders of the last time. They are an anchor, and they will carry you back to the same shore.

Mind what you carry to that threshold, because the anchor holds in both directions. Sleep is a crossing with your hands off the wheel. Go down chewing on a fear, a grievance, the problem you swore you would solve by morning, and you can spend the night in a world made of it, the kind you wake from grateful and shaking. Not every shore is kind. Some of what waits on the low ones will even answer you, and everything they answer with carries a price. So set the wonders at the threshold, not the wounds. This is why the intent comes before everything, and why I keep saying it.

I will tell you the thing that sounds maddest, and the only honest way to take it. Once you have crossed, you see that nothing in this world finally matters. Not your money, not your name, not even your health. I cannot make that true for you by writing it down, and you would be right to doubt me for saying it. You have to cross to understand it. And then it is no longer a claim I am making. It is only what you saw.

So go to sleep on purpose tonight. Not to rest. To go home.