I had a vivid dream last night. It seemed so real, that at one point in the dream, I was having a conversation with myself about dreams. I was walking through a school hallway, leaving a class, realizing I was in my underwear, thinking to myself, “this is kind of like a dream where I go to school and forget my clothes.” Yet it was so real, that I didn’t realize that it was in fact a dream. Only upon waking and reflecting on the dream did I realize how utterly ridiculous the dream was. But while sleeping, it seemed like the problems and situations in the dream were real and serious.
I remember being in a classroom with the oddest characters. They were classmates, but their behavior was simply insane. One was a french man who was acting like some animal, like a chicken. In fact, I think he had a chicken costume on. There were others in the classroom that were getting excited by this, and acting like animals too, jumping on their desks. I remember my reaction to this was to sit quietly at my desk, thinking that this behavior was inappropriate and I didn’t want to get in trouble, but not at all thinking that this was insane. I even felt like an outsider, like there was something wrong with me for not getting involved with this show.
After waking up, I realized just how insane and senseless the characters in my dream were and how meaningless it was for me to be concerned or feel pressured to be part of that drama. How true this is for our “real” lives as well. Living in this dream-like world, we feel that the characters and drama and situations and behaviors and pressures around us are so real, so serious, and so grave. If we were able to step back and realize that our lives are really just like a dream, that none of this is really real, then we don’t have to take it all so seriously and realize the silliness, the utter insanity of the behavior of others and ourselves who are trapped in the dream.
So herein lies the lightness and laughter of divine forgiveness. We would not wake up from a dream and think, I must judge and punish that french man for acting like a chicken in class. Because you know that it is a meaningless and impossible goal. Instead, realizing it is not real, but an imaginary character in a dream you created, you would briefly look on it with amusement and then release it from your mind forever.
