The Buddha, which literally means "the awakened one," said "My form appeared like a dream to sentient beings who are like a dream. I taught them dreamlike teaching to attain dreamlike enlightenment." When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of reality, we realize we are all characters in each other's dream. Like reflections in a mirror, we are all interconnected aspects of each other's being. To recognize the dreamlike nature of our situation is to recognize that we don't exist as isolated entities separate from the universe, but rather as relational beings who only exist relative to each other. We are all related, parts of a greater family, the living multifaceted expression of a singular divine being. When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of the universe we realize that the "dream ego," which is who we've been imagining we are, is only an un-reflected-upon and assumed model of who we are and is not who we really are, but is itself being dreamed by a deeper part of ourselves. There is a deeper Self which is dreaming us. Like emanations of a meditating Buddha, we are the dream of something deeper, what I call the "deeper, dreaming Self," which is who we really are. There's only one deeper, dreaming Self and it is dreaming the whole universe. We are its dream. The deeper, dreaming Self expresses itself through and is not separate from the forms of the dream; we are simultaneously the dreamed and the dreamer. In the words of the German philosopher Schopenhauer, "one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too." The deeper, dreaming Self is having a dream, and we are it! read more at reality sandwich