Bedtime Story

 

By sister initiate Wen Xin, Taipei, Formosa

Recently, I had a dream in which my father took me to a movie. He had a special smile on his face when we entered the theater, but he didn't tell me what we were about to experience. Later, I learned that we were watching a three-dimensional film. As we watched, goblins flew out from the screen and all the audience members in every corner of the theatre felt as though the goblins were directly rushing toward them. Everyone screamed in excitement!


After a while, I noticed that my father was not in his seat! I was not worried, for I thought that I would see him outside after the movie. However, the man beside me made me feel uncomfortable, so I moved up a few rows and sat on the extreme left. There, I found the screen extending to the left and right, and I was sitting right at the left edge of the screen.


Suddenly, I heard footsteps moving toward me from behind the screen. All the audience members held their breath while listening to this sound, anticipating that something would happen soon. Then, the footsteps stopped abruptly, and from behind the screen, a hand reached out... to grab me! At that instant, I looked at myself and thought with reassurance: "Well! I am quite well dressed today, and my hair looks pretty, too, so it is alright for me to be on the stage." (It was very strange, because I could see my whole body rise from the seat. Normally, when we look at ourselves with our physical eyes, we can only see our body but not our head, except when we look into a mirror.)


I struggled hard, and suddenly saw myself in the center of the screen, which meant that the entire audience was watching me. I thought to myself, "Oh! I cannot struggle in such an awful manner!" I recomposed my facial expression while kicking at the person grabbing me. But I found that it was difficult to kick freely. Finally, I managed to kick with all my might, and this woke me up from the dream.


As I awoke, I found that I had kicked a box on my bed. Evidently, I had not only been kicking in the dream, but also in real life. This dream was very funny and inspiring. It reminded me that the whole world is actually a huge three-dimensional theater. The only difference is that, in a theater, we know that we are watching a movie or acting our part, but in this world of reality, we seem to be unaware of what we are doing. Therefore, all our agonies and joys become so real that it is difficult to detach ourselves from them. The truth is, everything in this world is only a drama except that, unlike a stage play, there is a longer span between the rise and fall of the curtain. It seems to involve a director and scriptwriter, and the episodes are pre-arranged to some extent, but when we are playing the roles, we don't remember what has been pre-determined. Every actor acts spontaneously with his or her own feelings, and coordinates with other actors in a very sincere manner so that each person can learn something from it.


Our physical body is a costume that we wear for our whole lifetime. In Greek, the word persona (from which we get the English word 'person') means mask, and the ancient wisdom behind this term implies that our true Self is not this corporeal body. However, each individual has a different level of understanding about this point, and his or her power of self-dominion is also different. Some of us are more dominated by the corporeal body, while others are more dominated by their real Self, which accounts for our different levels of freedom. This world - this huge, three-dimensional movie - is so incredible that we unknowingly lose ourselves in it. Fortunately, before God allowed us to come down here to play our roles in the drama, Hes installed a window through which we can see the Truth. When the time is right, it opens naturally. This does not mean that we can discover the Truth only after we die and take off our physical costume, but that we can simultaneously live in two worlds - the world of Truth and the world of delusion. We can go in and out of these two worlds at any time, just like falling into a dream and then awakening from it. Of course, it would be most wonderful if we could be like the great enlightened sages, existing constantly and simultaneously in both worlds, and being always awake, even in the delusive physical world.

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