Dreams and Meditation

Thelma

Yesterday I was the first person at breakfast. I selected the table that Margaret and I used, near the kitchen, next to the table our 104 year old resident usually sat. 

At 6:42 I should make it again today. I am feeling unusually well again and need to make the most of it.

Last night I woke up at about 3:00. That is not unusual. To my awareness, I never went back to sleep!! Instead I had two of the most vivid dreams.

The first was completing the cheat checker software for answer clickers used in the classroom. I was offered the job the same week that we moved into Provision Living two years ago.  My computer had crashed so the PC part of this Mac was destroyed and I did not have the energy to totally reinstall the Windows operating system.

Also I had no idea how I would edit my paper test cheat checker to work with a dynamic answer clicker system. The dream laid out the way to edit the connection between the clicker and my cheat checker.

SO, after James and I sorted out all our stuff in storage last Tuesday and I discarded about everything I had left from my programming days, I will now find the clicker file. For some reason I could never toss it.

The second dream was a replay of an article that found me yesterday. I have been using Google Chrome and Safari web browsers the past few months. I have also bought several books and eBooks from Amazon.

My interests are now known. I have a library that tells me what is new, exciting, and different as well as the next thing on the “shelf” related to what I have looked at and/or bought; as well as what other people of “like mind” have been doing. I have my own book club.

The article is not entitled meditation. It uses terms that seem a bit strange. But it includes a table that conveys in practical terms what, I believe, span the range of meditation topics. 

It is a long ways from Columbia to Grey Summit for Christmas without mile markers and no one to discuss interesting things. It seemed less than 30 minutes with these features. Meditation needs “mile markers” for topics and time.

That same time stretch occurred last night. To me, I was awake from 3:00 until about 3 minutes before the alarm at 6:00. The Sleep Number bed rated my sleep quality at 91; just one point less than my highest. So I must have been asleep. I feel like I had a good nights rest. Meditation time also seems unrelated to clock time.

Scale	Level	Polarity
700	Enlightenment	The Positive                  Radiant Thankful Person who is open to the needs of others and makes you feel good just to be around.
600	Peace
540	Joy
500	Love
400	Reason
350	Acceptance
310	Willingness
250	Neutrality
200	Courage
175	Pride	The Negative Self Centered Person who needs some help forgiving real and imagined problems.
150	Anger
125	Desire
100	Fear
75	Grief
50	Apathy
30	Guilt
20	Shame

The David Hawkings levels of consciousness, on a scale of 0 to 1000, can be split into two parts: Things we should learn to forgive (but not forget) and things we should be thankful for (including about everything). Most people commonly understand these 17 simple terms. They can be used in guided meditation.

Forgiveness frees us from the destructive control the lower ranking terms have on us. Thankfulness opens us up to more things to be thankful for. 

Simply put, this is mind over matter; self awareness over self centeredness. These terms provide an effective way to use guided meditation.

It also follows, to choose friends and associates who radiate the positive upper levels of consciousness and avoid (or retrain) those that are stuck in the negative lower levels. This is the practical task of screening and evaluating new employees at Provision Living.

A radiant person, who is fully aware of the needs of a resident, performs markedly different than a non-radiant person. The same person can, at times, switch roles given circumstances of the moment.

Last week my tablemate was looking for her favorite strawberry jam at breakfast. There was no jam on any table in the dining hall. “The night crew did not finish setting the tables up properly.”

When we were about finished eating, two plates arrive at the next table, with jam on the toast. We enquired again about jam. “Here it is. Oh. Sorry, you like strawberry.” The server even remembered the correct flavor upon being disconnected from negative lower levels of consciousness.

The Hawkins Levels of Consciousness terms provide 17 different views of the same thing, each of which can also be distorted in time when dreaming and during meditation.