Dreams In A World Of Compassion

Have you been having any intense dreams lately - ones with feelings that are so intense that you wake up with your heart pounding?

I have these dreams sometimes also. They are not meant to frighten us, though that's the way we remember them.

In my experience these are teaching dreams - someone is teaching us and we are learning.

In our life here we experience ourselves as individuals. We don't, as a rule, feel other people's feelings. Oh we have these experiences to a degree if there is an intense feeling in one place stimulated by something - perhaps we are in a theatre and we are swayed by the drama going on on stage or in the movies or other people around us are reacting to something and we might get caught up in it as well.

But what's going on in these intense dreams is what I believe to be training. So much of what we need to develop these days is compassion. We don't have to experience and live other people's lives directly, of course not but we do need to have a sense of feeling - not necessarily empathy where we take on the feelings of others but a sense of true compassion where we can sympathize to the best of our ability with others and offer perhaps a sense of pathos or at the very least a sense of consideration and kindness towards those who are having a hard time.

Nothing may really be required of us other then that feeling and perhaps that consideration or kindness. We don't have to give away everything we have but that kind of consideration, that kind of kindness is often appreciated.

Sometimes the people who we are kind to don't demonstrate their appreciation, other times that appreciation is demonstrated only in subtle ways but if enough people do offer kindness - in time those who are suffering grasp that the world and those around them do have a sense of compassion towards them and this - for those who are suffering in those moments can be very comforting indeed.

I believe, in these dreams, we are learning what other people are feeling by temporarily feeling it ourselves. I do not believe however that the place where dreams exists is an actual place where human beings live. I feel it is a teaching theatre where our guides and teachers allow us to experience these feelings because we may be exposed to others who have them and we may therefore be called on to be compassionate.

I grant that there are other points of view about dreams and I do not claim to have all the answers but this is what I believe based on my experience.

Goodlife to you all and goodnight.