Welcome to the dream log. If it hadn't been for a number of different circumstances, you wouldn't be reading this right now, and you'd be just fine with that.
So I was dreaming along, and I got to a point of country roads, traversing them, feeling alive, crush. That last part, if you didn't experience it with me, had to do with emotion, and probably most aptly put, a breakup. But what I noticed was that I could control my dream a bit. The girl I liked . . . I could control her circumstances just enough to make sure she didn't get together with that loser, but I couldn't quite seal the deal for me. Then I started realizing that this silliness had to do with being able to toggle reality. Once I realized that said loser stopped being a problem in my life, I realized I had power. Pretty quickly, things started blinking out of existence.
Believe it or not, my first inclination was to realize that this had some form of utopian potential. I couldn't wait to tell my wife. So I had to make sure to get to the point where I could let her in on the secret (without waking her up, of course, because that would shatter the awesomeness).
So I noticed that I could toggle reality. Somehow a certain item had a +/- value, and it was my utter whim to decide whether it ever existed or not. I quickly grasped that if I dispensed with one thing, that terminated its possibility forever. So I thought, sure, get rid of evil. We might want to hang on to history, because that seems valuable. More to the point, let's keep awareness around. Self-awareness was always good. Then people about whom I got an up or down vote started showing up. The would-be-suitor of the girl I liked? Gone. (Not that it mattered, since I'm evidently married and want to share this new utopia with my wife.)
I began to feel like God in some way, except I think it had that perverse calvinistic quality about it. I was the decider. I wanted to make sure I didn't decide something that I wanted out of existence. My actual awareness-lacking conclusion was that I needed to delete "sick @$$ $#!t" from our world. (I think that was the quote in my dream.) But on my theological journey of late, I think I've had to become more "open"; open to the fact that God is making the creation as we go along, as well as having created it at one point.
When one tries to exercise determinism, there are so many gives and takes. I had this fast scene in my dream where I had to protect certain ideas so they didn't cease to exist. If I got rid of people (the source of all of my problems, it seems), I would cease to exist. If I got rid of a certain type of person, things would be pretty peaceful . . . maybe. If I got rid of history or memory, then generations of awareness of how we can do better would be gone. When I get to this point in dreams, it's when I realize I need to get up and check my blood sugar. You are the unfortunate recipient of a hypoglycemic midnight rant.
But the one other thing that came to mind was that God does exist in an infinitely dimensional place, where he seems to be able to influence choice in a way that transcends our ability. And having gone through this nightmare of deciding what gets to exist or not, I think I'm happy to take the choices given to me and make them. I'll leave the big ones up to God, perhaps for the first time. But the fact that so much that I would dispense with continues to exist points me toward the idea that maybe God isn't a control freak like I am. Maybe he really does want us to work for good in his creation.
[Sorry if this doesn't make sense. As my blood sugar stabilizes, much of this train of thought has lost the brilliance it had when I experienced it.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Don't apologize. Dimensionality is key to my understanding of our state of existence and also how I conceptualize the majority of my religious beliefs. It's the only thing that makes sense to me anymore.
I mostly made up the word dimensionality in connection with what I was trying to communicate. I'm sure there's a more developed sense of it than what I have in my head. Can you explain more of your understanding of dimensionality?
Well, I could explain it... over coffee in the course of an hour or so. I've never tried explaining concisely before. Hmmm.
Basically, I view the universe as having many, many dimensions. We exist in three dimensions, with time serving as a higher order, perhaps fourth dimension. God exists above and beyond the limits of our state of existence, and our future bodies will be in a higher plane of existence than at the present. This conceptualization helps explain how God was, is, and will be; as he is outside of the dimension of time. Similarly with Christ's resurrected body being able to move through walls, and appear at will in different locations. There are plenty of other examples, but that should be enough to get the general idea (I hope).
I am using dimensionality in the sense of the fifth meaning according to Merriam-Webster:
dimensionality
Ah, that makes perfect sense. Inasmuch as this sort of thing can make sense in a four-or-so dimensional mind. But I wouldn't mind the hour-over-coffee explanation either. You in Colorado anytime soon?
Unfortunately I will not be there anytime soon.
I've been wondering if there is an update on that NT project you had been working on? I saw a couple photos on the TBoTB blog, and wasn't sure if there is a published NT that you were giving away? I tried leaving a comment there, but it never showed up.
Post a Comment