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In my dream I was an aging soap opera actor. I had played the same supporting role for many years, surviving innumerable story lines and becoming a background fixture in the TV community. For decades I had looked forward to the day when my efforts would be recognized and my character would be promoted to the level of a leading role; but it never happened. As my hair gradually turned gray, it seemed to me that every year the writing got more childish and the story lines became more trite. Still my character continued to be taken for granted, while new characters and younger actors were promoted instead.

Finally, the day came when I had had enough. We were blocking a crowd scene in which more and more characters kept entering the room - a confusing affair requiring a lot of choreography, which I felt the director was handling very badly; every lead character who entered was simply sent to Stage Left, and we secondary parts were left sitting in chairs Stage Right. There were only three of us in those chairs, and the more jammed Stage Left became with actors of note, the more demeaned and disrespected I felt.

In 1976 I became a Home Sanctum member of The Rosicrucian Order A.M.O.R.C., and for years thereafter I received regular mailings of their instructional materials.  I found those teachings to be of great value as an "Intro to Metaphysics 101."  They stood me in good stead for decades.

I especially appreciated the RC admonition to never blindly accept anyone's teaching as true, until I had first submitted it to proof by personal testing and my own sense of reason - a warning which I subsequently discovered had been issued by no less a person than the Buddha himself. 

I've been considering the question of why so many people who matured physically and mentally decades ago, never managed to grow up emotionally. This seems to be especially true of the demographic in which I was raised – the exciting and neurotic world of actors, dancers, musicians and writers.

Performing artists, familiar with the backstage areas of theatres - where illusions of sumptuous grandeur are exposed as shams of cardboard, canvas and crayola - are apt to imagine with Shakespeare that “All the world's a stage.” Or in movie terms, that life is like “The Truman Show” - a soap opera with hidden cameras. There is more going on behind the scenes than anyone suspects.

When you get older and your doctor says you should start using a CPAP machine, don't take it as a failure. Embrace the opportunity; your CPAP may actually provide some of the same benefits as meditation, albeit through a somewhat different mechanism.

As your brain absorbs a higher percentage of oxygen while it's asleep and dreaming, it may realize clearer insights into the nature of reality.

You find your inner light through silence.

Get still.

Ides of March, 2016

That's what a fellow said to me in a dream last night. I had found myself in an alternate reality where I was still in my twenties, and employed in an automotive shop. I'd been given the job of coming in early the next morning and cleaning all the grease and oil off the concrete floor of a huge garage, which had been completely emptied to make my task easier. But when I got there, I found that huge slabs of the floor had been cracked and shifted and were lying on top of each other. Obviously, there had been a massive earthquake during the night. The devastation threatened to bring the whole building down on itself, with cinder blocks crushing anyone caught inside.