My friends, I want to tell you about a dream I had that was really helpful in seeing through death, experiencing death, and leaving it as nothing to be afraid of. I will preface this by saying I did a Buddhist death meditation in the past. I used to have this big fear of death, and if you have a big fear of death, you will want to hear this all the way through. I did a Buddhist death meditation about seven or eight years ago, where you really just face your fear, look at it, and go into it, and it helps you move forward without it. You picture death and dying, however it looks to you, very clearly for yourself and for everybody around you. I did that, and it really knocked out my fear of death afterward.
The Dream
About a year or two ago, I had a dream that I will describe now. I have all kinds of dreams where I'm a different person, in a different place, in a different time. There's no logical way my brain would put my stimuli together into the dreams I have. From my belief system, I am God. This is my universe. I'm creating everything constantly. All of you, we are all one. This is a universe we're all creating, and we're all divine creators. When I'm dreaming, I'm letting go of this creation and playing with my other creations.
Enter this dream. In it, I'm a little boy, maybe eight, ten, or twelve years old. I'm in a place that kind of feels like Brazil, but I don't think it was actually Brazil. I think it was on another planet, somewhere not even close to here. I'm riding my bike at night with my little brother in a park-like area. We're riding around before we go home. I look up in the sky and see these kind of crates falling with parachutes attached to them. You hear these sirens, and you see all these parachutes floating down, each with a crate. I'm yelling at my brother, and it's in another language too. I'm saying we need to go home. So we're pedaling our bikes as fast as we can.
These parachutes start to land next to us, and I think now that they were bombs, but these things are landing next to us on the ground. We're pedaling as fast as we can to try and get away from them and get back home, and all of a sudden, in video game terms, I just get one-shotted. I'm riding, riding, riding my bike, and some kind of alien, big, kind of a reptile, jumps out of a bush. I didn't really get to see it much. Something jumps out and one-shots me. I have a sensation of being grabbed and run through by something. So basically I just instantly get killed by this thing as it jumps on me. And from there, there was no pain, no agony. It was just riding my bike, bam, dead.
The Gray Void
And then, next, I'm in the gray void. It's not dark, but it's not light. It's this gray void. There's nothing. There are no stars, no light sources, utter emptiness. I'm in this gray void, and I'm thinking, well, I'm dead. And I'm just there. And I'm not afraid. I'm not scared. I'm not even upset. It's just matter of fact, like, okay, I'm dead now. I don't know how long that lasted, but then I woke up.
At this time I sleep in the room with my kids. My son was in a different room, and I sleep on the mattress on the floor next to my daughter's bed, because she'd wake up at night and go wandering around if nobody sleeps in there. So she asked one of us to sleep in there. I was sleeping, and Laura was taking care of our son. So I wake up from this dream, and I'm kind of shocked at first. I'm like, wow, I'm alive again. The dream was just as real as this existence. And I woke up and felt this massive sense of relief that, number one, I was dead, but I am not killable. I die, and then I go do something else. And when I'm done with that, I may stop in the gray void to purge for a little while, but then I'm going to go do something else.
It was the coolest thing. I woke up and I had this clear thought: this one again. As in, this life again. And I was so happy to be back here. I'm like, nice, this life again. It was really great to look at this life as a story that I'm going through, a video game that I'm playing. It's not like this is all there is. Having a dream like that really drives it home. This is not all there is. I am able to experience all things, anywhere, anytime. And that dream was so cool, and yet it wasn't that surprising. It actually fits right in.
I Live All Lives
I've had lots of dreams where I've died before. I had another dream where we were on a planet again at nighttime, similar to Earth, but I don't know if it was Earth or not. I was outside with some people, and I look up, and there's this thing coming down at the planet. I don't know if it was a meteor or a weapon or what. We're just looking at it, and then it hits. We turn around and start to run, and there's just this white flash, and it wipes us all out. Again, no pain, instantly killed. And then I wake up like, ah, this one, nice to be back in this life again.
I live all lives. I'm not just limited to this life. I live all lives, all times, and it's all happening now. I'm just choosing to observe this and create this now, but we can instantly go back and forth and create things. These dreams I've had with these very vivid death experiences have been really cool because, to me, the most valuable thing I have is knowing that this isn't all there is. It's a certainty that there's much more than this body and this mind and the other bodies and the other minds, and that there's much more to me that I experience. I am the immortal. I am God. I live forever. I create whatever I want, forever. And sometimes I intentionally create things that you might think of as hell, as awful, as miserable. When you're an immortal being, you create stuff like that for entertainment sometimes. You create it to have a little bit of something different in your life, for contrast, to make things interesting.
So I appreciate you hearing about these dreams I've had. That sentence, that feeling when I woke up of shock, like I was dead, and then, bam, I'm alive again, like, wow. And then the first thought after that: this one again. That I know many lives. And I was really happy it was this one. That's what's really cool when you get into consciousness. Would I know the difference if I woke up in your body or in my body? Maybe for the tiniest fraction of a second, I'd say, oh, this one again. So I'm glad every day I wake up in this body.
Not Knowing What I'm Getting Into
At the same time, every time I go to sleep at night, it's like I have no idea what I'm getting into. I had a drinking dream one time where, in the dream, I was thinking, is this a dream? Because I've had a lot of relapse dreams. So even in the dream, I was like, oh, this isn't a dream. And I remember thinking in the dream that it can't be a dream because this has been going on for a week. I had been in the dream for a week. So sometimes when I go to bed, I'm glad I meditate and relax, because I don't know how much time passes in terms of my experience between when I go to sleep and when I wake up. Sometimes I have the feeling I've been gone a long time, in terms of I've lived other lives, I've done a lot of other things while I've been asleep. Then when I wake up, sometimes it's kind of a shock, like, whoa, this one. And other times it's like I just straight up went to sleep, went into nothingness, played around in my mind a little bit, and woke up.
I've had many dreams on other planets, and I'd be interested to know about your dreams. In at least half of my dreams, I have no memory at all of this life. I'm not this name or this body. I'm completely someone else, someplace else, and that person has an entire story. I've even been an android. I've had a dream that felt very real where I was an android. I was not human. I was a robot that was self-aware. I've had lots of dreams in China and lots of dreams in Las Vegas for some reason, and a lot of dreams on other planets. I've even had a dream where my body was kind of like an atom. I just had all these energy particles flying around. I did not have a regular physical body as you think of it at all.
Sober Experiences of the Mind
What's really great is that, with being sober, I don't get into any alcohol or drugs, and my mind gives me many experiences sober that expand my world. Last night, I was actually in an AA speaker meeting, and I could see a very clear halo, like a glow, around people. It could be anywhere from a little bit to several inches away. I could see a light around their body, which was really cool. I also had a bit of a color show last night. My eyes went through this rainbow effect of all the colors, which was really cool.
I am now clean from alcohol and any drugs, clean for over eight and a half years. It can take a while for your mind to adjust if you've been doing alcohol and drugs, but in my experience our minds are perfectly capable of giving us any kind of experience you could have on drugs. Our minds can give us something similar and not as severe while we're sober. And what's great is you can instantly step out of that experience too. Whereas you get into drinking a bunch and using drugs, and you can be stuck in some experience that's way too much for you and can damage you for a while.
I rarely have the same dream. I almost always have different dreams. And if this is too deep for you, you can tell yourself a different story. You can say, this is at the edge of what I can handle. What I find is that I like to get into things that are at the edge of what I can handle, that challenge my mind to grow and expand. Sometimes that process can be a bit painful, but it's worth it. If you'd like to go deeper into how I think about consciousness, sobriety, and living these many lives, I share a lot more of it in my Life playlist. I love you each, and I'll see you on the next one.