Dreams of enLIGHTenment

In a dream this morning, after vague moments of zipping through galaxies and stars on beams of light as part of the eternal adventure we are all a part of, Michael had some words for me about enlightenment. He said many people are 'afraid' of words like "enlightenment" and "lightworker" (are they?), thinking of them as cheesy cliches, using them loosely or not realizing the truth in them. They are very literal. When we awaken our souls, we are enLIGHTening our being and thus everything around us. We see the eternal LIGHT that we are, we open doorways for that light, we let the light shine through and brighten our world.

In what felt like a sudden dream epiphany, I understood or was told that the world most of us see and think we live in is like a photograph taken in a darkened room. We believe that all we see in this photo is all that exists in the room. If something's there, we'd see it. After all, it's a photo of the 'real world'. However, when you increase the gamma level on this same photograph, you will begin to see that there is so much more there than you were ever aware of. Things become clearer. Details you didn't see before are made visible, as if a light has been switched on. The new details aren't additions to the photo, but things that were there the whole time. In the dream I saw a photo of beautiful Michael, nothing around him but empty space, but as I enhanced this photo with some kind of super version of Cosmic Photoshop, sparkles and glitter and a whole other scene became visible all around him, as clear as day. And these were all manifestations of love and light, all around us, right now. Love is all around you. You may not see it or the bearers of it, but it is there. Let the light in. EnLIGHTen the world...

My weak example: same pic, before & after basic gamma correction. He was there all along:

Here's another example of this type of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction

You Are Light

Physical life has a way of putting each of us put into roles and positions so that we are judged and treated as that instead of who we really are, oftentimes judging and treating ourselves in the same manner. You know, the typical list like "girl", "woman over 40", "mother", "wife", "customer", "patient", "project manager"... you get the idea. But if you strip off those titles and the thousands of associated expectations, what would you actually find, and how deeply would you go? Do you have the faintest inkling who or what you truly are?

Are you a physical being born in the recent past who likes this food and that song and has watched that movie 20 times? Are you the beer commercial jingles in your head, the sitcom jokes and cultural references that you know by heart and use a hundred times a day to relate with others? Are you your place in society, the rules of your society and the morals? Are you not the product of this time, this place, the country in which you were born, the religion and politics you've lived through, the war or peace and the supposed reasons given for each, the celebrations and the condemnations? Are you the basic knowledge you take for granted, like 'green' means go, how to shop at your neighborhood store, what business does what, which holidays are celebrated when and how? Are you the perfect picture of or the depressed shame of your society's expectations that your body should look like this, be this thin, be this tall, wear clothes like this, makeup like this, hair like this? Says who?

Even when we believe ourselves to be a free-thinkers we're still laboring under a constant barrage of physical life, mental life and emotional life as it is in this culture, this time, this place. What would happen if you scraped all of that off the top, from your likes and dislikes, your self-doubt, your judgments, your beliefs about the world, the version of history you were taught, the movies you've seen, the books you've read, the foods you've tasted, the opinions you've formed and the ones you've absorbed from others? It might seem mighty scary to imagine losing these memories (and I pray I never do), for you're losing your whole known identity. However, with this question we're actually going back in time ... for this is YOU before "you" were born. If you existed before ALL of this that currently gives you your identity, who are you? What are you?

I had a dream recently in which someone whispered in my ear, "You are not your body. You are light." I repeated this phrase to myself several times and could feel that I was lifting above this dimensional existence. I was floating upward, out of my body, unashamedly and boldly as my true self. "I am not my body. I am light." Each time I repeated the words I knew it more. I didn't believe it - I knew it. Not in an intellectual way or that way where you just know something down inside but can't make heads or tails of it in the 'real world'. No. I KNEW it. This was the real world! I was experiencing it, in a way that put all the pondering of the past to rest. "I AM NOT MY BODY. I AM LIGHT!" My awareness expanded as I floated upwards to a perspective just outside of the physical, where I could "look down" at our material world and see it glowing with life, each atom emitting its own photons of light, everything alive and shining in every color imaginable. And I could see more. So much more. Eternity beyond. And from this perspective I realized how much the attachment to this plane is... sorry, but downright silly. I am not my body! What the hell was I thinking?! I felt such utter liberation, such freedom, such a feeling that I could come and go at will. I didn't want to 'die', for I knew there were reasons for this existence and tasks to complete, but at the same time it didn't matter so much to me if I just left and never came back, because the true me was alive and expanding and knew so much more, was so much more. I knew that this body is just a temporary thing ... a mere fraction of the totality of me, and a momentary one at that. The physical comes and goes in a cosmic twinkling of an eye. But we are forever.

I am the thinker, the thinking, the thought
I am the seeker, the seeking, the sought
I am the dewdrop, the sunshine, the storm
I am the phenomenon, the field, the form
I am the desert, the ocean, the sky
I am the Primeval Self
In you and I...

(~Michael Jackson / excerpt from 'Are You Listening?')
The amazing photo above belongs to artist Paige Bradley, and is of her sculpture "Expansion". Check out her website to see more of her beautiful work. I hope she wouldn't mind me using it here, but I found it all around the internet and it's so amazing and such a perfect example. Wish I could have this in my garden :)

"This has cosmic significance!"

I've decided today to post this dream I had over a year ago, back on April 28, 2010 in case some of you friendy types hadn't read it before :) I made the pic below back at the time, in an attempt to give an impression of what it was like. I've had other experiences with 'the Light', but none that visually involved Michael in this fashion. (Click pic for larger version.)

April 28, 2010, as originally written that day - "I woke up after sleeping for a couple of hours and was having an AMAZING dream of Michael. It involved the whole sky somehow, but like everything was inside a giant picture frame. What I can remember was there was a massively bright, brilliant white light shining out, like pure white light being refracted through diamonds, yet not being split into colors (just stayed white). Standing in front of this light source was Michael. He was glowing with light, in the light. On both sides and all around him were huge crowds; fans, friends, whomever. All these people were standing beside him in this overwhelming light that streamed out love. And I was part of it all. I was part of this amazing scene that was like some glorious living painting. And I could FEEL it. I woke up during this part and I could still 'see' this scene in my mind and I could still FEEL it. OMG! I mean I was already awake and I could still see and feel it! It was this amazing powerful feeling of connection and oneness with Michael, with all of the others, with everything. We were all ONE. It was such an intense feeling, totally real and just transcendent. I thought as I woke up, 'This has COSMIC significance! I cannot forget!' The 'cosmic' comment had to do with the light and with the fact that Michael was in front of it, glowing. It was like seeing some religious painting or something, honestly, but being IN it at the same time! It was just... WOW. And I lay there awake then, no longer seeing this image, but FEELING it still for probably two more minutes or so. FEELING the light while awake! Whoa. I thought about all of you [friends on a forum], because I knew you were also part of the connection." -- This picture is made to represent it, although, as you can figure, it cannot possibly come minutely close to the brilliance of the 'dream'."
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It may sound silly, but at the time I was so focused on the implications of it being Michael standing there in the center of this white light that I didn't realize the obvious similarity to Near Death Experiences, of going Home, of being with God in the Light. It wasn't until a few months later when I heard an excerpt of an NDE from Pim van Lommel's book "Consciousness Beyond Life" read on the radio program Coast to Coast AM that it finally clicked. It took the words "sitting in the middle of a light bulb" and "I knew that I was somehow, in some way connected to them" before it became clear (see vid):