The Rosetta Stone to the Soul
from The Dreamer's Dictionary
The Rosetta Stone to the Soul
Throughout my childhood I can remember dreams where I would be standing in a field. I would lift my arms and be able to float above houses, trees, power lines, and people. To change directions, all I would need to do is change the position of my arms or turn my hands. During the dream and after
I would awake, what impressed me the most about these types of dreams was the incredible sense of freedom moving at will brought to me.
This same incredible sense of freedom is produced when human man begins to identify with the soul. Until this happens, man is mostly a creature of habit, a prisoner of his own limited thinking. Instead of the five physical senses — sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling — being used as the means to experience physical life, they become the end in themselves. In this way, human man convinces himself that if you can’t see it, hear it, taste it, smell it and feel it with the bodily senses then it cannot, must not, should not, and therefore surely is not “real”. When we accept this limitation in our thinking, we become a slave to our senses denying any awareness of our existence as spiritual beings being the physical existence.
As we begin to consciously understand the purpose of function of the physical body and senses, we discover there is much more to us. This “more” lies in the expansive new worlds of our mind.
The structure of mind for human man is complete and whole. The way it is designed to function is universal, much like the human body is universal in its functional design. Just as there are all shapes, sizes, colors, and appearances of physical bodies, there are the unique qualities that each of us display as thinkers. These differences as thinkers are determined by how we have used mind in the past, how we are using mind today, and how we intend to use mind in our futures.
To drive an automobile, most of us get in a car, turn the key in the ignition, and go. We don’t think much about what makes that automobile work.
Imagine that you are driving late at night down a lonely stretch of highway. All of a sudden, you hear an unfamiliar noise and the engine of your car begins to die. You pull your car to the shoulder of the road, try to start it again, and nothing happens. You are stranded.
Imagine what your reactions might be:
• anger, “I just had a tune‐up”
• blame, “It was working fine until so‐and‐so drove it”
• fear, “What if someone comes along and takes advantage of me!”
• self-pity, “I have no idea what’s wrong, what am I going to do?”
• condemnation, “I knew I should have taken the time to get this checked”
Now, imagine that you are a mechanic.
You have spent many hours learning and using what you’ve learned about the inner workings of an automo- bile. You are driving late at night down a lonely stretch of highway. All of a sudden you hear a noise and the engine in your car dies. You would be able to identify the prob- able source of the noise since you have refined the sense of hearing for this purpose many times in your work. You could use what you know from experience to diagnose the point of difficulty. You would follow‐up on your suspicion, adjust the difficulty and be on your way. Perhaps you would entertain a few quick reactions but your attention would be directed toward using what you know to correct the problem and be on your way.
Most of us invest little time in understanding how an automobile performs its function. We expect the vehicle to take us to our destination, and if it doesn’t we employ an expert to diagnose and correct the problem. We don’t spend much time thinking about what makes the car work. In fact, we take the inner workings for granted until something goes wrong. Then our reactions are usually similar to those mentioned leaving us in the same ignorance that produced our unpleasant experience. Sometimes a fleeting thought of “I really should take that mechanics course at the adult education department” might enter into our thinking. Fewer times do we act on such thoughts.
When human man identifies with being a creature of habit, he is a prisoner of his own limited thinking. Too many times we take the workings of our minds for granted just like we do with an automobile. We wait for a breakdown to occur before we are stimulated to take action. It is common for human man to wait for an ill before finding a cure. Human man often waits for disease before exploring health, for death before discovering life, for failure before pursuing success, or for a weird or strange nightmare before studying the nature of dreams.