You are standing between two booths at a fair. You are trying to decide which one to go to. At the top of one booth is written, “Change The Dream.” At the top of the other, “Wake Up.”
You look down at your hand. You have one ticket.
If you go to the first booth, you get to choose a preference inside the dream. You are using you ticket to choose something you want. You think, “I like this, I don’t like this, I like to have money, I don’t like to be poor, I like dancing, I don’t like being cold.” Whatever that is, that’s fine, that means you’re enjoying the dream, you’re caught up in it.
But, if you want to wake up, if you want to go to the second booth, then your only preference has to be to wake up, and you can’t have any other preferences in the dream. Otherwise you’re at the first booth.
Most of us keep going to the first booth, until we realize that we never get everything just the way we want it. We might get the money, but not the girl. Or the girl and the money, but not the health. We have to decide carefully about which booth we choose, seeing as how we only have one ticket.
But to decide consciously, we have to try something new. We have to learn to detach ourselves from our preferences, otherwise we automatically show up at the first booth. Can we accept poverty as well as luxury, contemplation as well as activity, solitude as well as company, the material as well as the spiritual? Can we allow the world to unfold the way it wants to, without our constant mental meddling?
Anyway, to find out which booth gives us peace and satisfaction, we have all the time in the world. That’s because with every breath we take, we’re given a new ticket!
Joy Biscuits 