The Monster and the Warrior and the Secret of Reality
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The "Monster and the Warrior" and "The Secret of Reality"
The "Monster and the Warrior" is an important religious theme and cultural myth which recurs around the world. The core story always contains a frightening creature slain by a spiritual hero. In American Indian religions, spiritual adepts are even called spiritual warriors. The idea of a spiritual "warrior" is somewhat foreign to Christian and other pacifist theologies, but it is an important concept to understand.
Deep in our subconscious, we usually have terrible fears that we learn to suppress as adults. When we are small children, however, we have not learned to hide from these fears, and they emerge as night terrors and visions of "monsters." Likewise, some religions teach that as our spirit is freed at death, we lose our coping mechanisms and the nightmares and monsters re-emerge. These fears are said to cause spiritual confusion as we are driven, terrified, before them. It is important to understand what these nightmare creatures are. These "monsters" are simply a representation of the ego's fear of death.
It is not just an individual fear learned during our lifetime. Instead, these fearful visions are our psychic inheritance from all incarnations of life that died before us. For example, one of the most common nightmares is falling. Although few people die from falling today, it was one of the most frequent deaths during the formation of the collective primate psyche. Likewise, there is a common "monster" in countless disparate cultures. It is always a cross between a giant reptile and a bird - what we call a dragon. This creature is simply an amalgamation of the larger reptiles and birds that were deadly to mammals during the formation of the collective mammalian psyche. Without knowing it, we are linked to these past fears of the collective human consciousness. Understanding the existence and cause of these repressed fears is just the first step, however.
As children, we run and hide from these dream manifestations of death. As adults we block out the visions and become so busy with business that the average person rarely has time to consider and truly come to peace with the eventuality of death. However, as someone advances towards overcoming the ego, they often must face these dream manifestations of the ego's fear of death.
The difference between a spiritual "warrior" and a layman is the same as the difference between a military warrior and a civilian. A warrior attacks while a civilian is driven away by fear. In other words, a spiritual adept is portrayed in many traditions as someone who finally stops running from the collective fear of countless life incarnations. Instead of being driven by fear, the spiritual warrior finally learns to turn and overcome fear of death and its manifestation as "monsters." Tibetan Buddhism is particularly specific on this subject: "When reality dawns on you, let go of the hallucinations of instinctive terror. Recognize all objects as the mind's own visions. Do not fear your own fierce visions. The very moment you recognize them, you will be liberated."
I would like to discuss on last hidden element of past religion that also relates to dreams. I'll even go so far as to call it, "The Secret of Reality." This subject was rarely discussed directly until earlier progress had been mastered and an individual was ready to become more fully conscious. Today, however, as the human race moves towards greater connectivity in the information era, it is becoming inevitable that this knowledge will spread.
One of the first things placed deep in your subconscious may have been the nursery rhyme:
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Few people ever recognize the truth or power of this simple rhyme. We all know that in a dream, we are the dreamer (although the dream takes on its own life until we realize we are dreaming). We create the fantasy and we control it. In a dream we also act according to habits. For example, we generally walk in our dreams although we could just as easily fly if we consciously chose to. Our dreams also tend to be positive or negative depending on our general outlook and state of mind.
Many religions teach that life itself is much like a dream. In life, the original dreamer was said to be a vast segment of consciousness. In this dream, the vast consciousness dreamed that it was no longer one entity but divided into what became a countless number of individual entities/egos. Each individual ego no longer recognizes that it was formed from and is still part of this original spirit of our universe. But the metaphor of a dream still holds true. The original spirit is still dreaming and creating this universe and each individual life is dreaming its tiny part of the collective "dream of the universe."
"That's nice," you say. You've heard the nursery rhyme, and maybe you've heard the same metaphor elsewhere in Eastern religion - so what? Well here's the amazing thing. Just like any other dream, you can control this one.
"No I can't." you say, "I'll wish for a million dollars. Do I have it? No!" Remember, there is no longer one dreamer. The original dreamer has split into countless individual dreamers forming the same collective dream. In a regular dream we can have anything we want when we became conscious of the dream. However, we generally remain unconscious and are constrained by our habits and conditioning. In the "dream of life" we are still constrained by habits and conditioning in addition to the individual, separate beliefs of all the other dreamers inhabiting this same collective dream. As individuals, we can't trample into the dreams of others. In short, our life, our dream, is constrained by karma.
In a regular dream, we all know that we can have anything we want - we only have to imagine it and it manifests. So ask yourself - why aren't all of our dreams perfect bliss? Why would anyone have a nightmare? Because our dreams are generally controlled by the unconscious inertia (karma) of our past actions and experiences. Only rarely do we become a little conscious in the dream and begin to exert a little control. The exact same concept holds true in the dream of life. Although constrained/asleep we still have the ability to take conscious control over our dream of life. It is vital to remember that any control we exert can be positive or negative. If negative, our actions will simply constrain us further.
You don't have to believe in the supernatural aspect of manifesting to see negative examples of conscious control we take over our lives. For instance, one person may have no sense of the fact that he is part of a larger dream and may only see himself as an individual ego. In the extreme, this may lead that person to rob, kill, etc. without regard to the other egos that he sees as totally separate from himself. This individual may end up in jail. He will then be constrained, physically, to an even greater degree. This occurs because all the other human egos inhabit the same dream and do have a connection and ability to control the first individual. If the first individual still does not learn, he may murder again in prison and will then go to solitary confinement - a jail within a jail. This person is now living with terrible and worsening constraint (karma) because of the conscious decisions he made and conscious control he took over his dream of life.
Remember that life is truly a dream with all the potential for extreme change once an individual becomes conscious of the dream to a degree. As Christianity teaches (Matthew 17: 20), "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed... nothing will be impossible for you." Whatever we hold in our minds will come to us - often in miraculous and unexplainable ways. In a "regular" dream we recognize that whatever we fear or desire or imagine will tend to manifest. When we are asleep, this process of manifesting is often quite a surprise to us. But when we awaken (become conscious) we realize, "Oh, it was just a dream, of course the red Ferrari popped up when I wanted it or of course I was robbed the moment I feared it." In the dream of life, however, we rarely "awaken" enough to realize that this same principle is at work and we are manifesting our individual part within the constrained framework of a collective dream.
You don't have to believe in the "miraculous" or unexplained instances of people manifesting thoughts and intentions into physical reality. All you have to do is observe the fact that people tend to attract and manifest things they think of most strongly and often. A person who concentrates his passion on money will tend to acquire money. A person who concentrates on fear of poverty will tend to attract poverty. A person who constantly fears sickness will tend to attract ill health. A person with an overwhelming desire to help others will tend to achieve that goal. None of us have an unchanging destiny. We simply have an inertia or karma that is our current tendency and path based on our past actions. But we also have free will. By exerting this force of will we can begin to change our direction at any time - for better or worse.
Now for the warning. Many people are discovering this amazing principle of manifesting reality through excellent media such as thesecret.tv or the Landmark Forum. You may think this is a wonderful discovery to realize you can manifest things into your life simply by changing your thoughts. But manifesting reality is what you have already been doing all along. As Buddha said, "All that you are is what you have thought." In the initial excitement of this discovery, people forget what folk wisdom has warned for centuries, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." There are countless folk tales where a person is granted three or more wishes. In most of these stories, the moral is that desire for worldly gain eventually leads to greater suffering - often in terrible unforeseen ways. Why should it be any different? Choosing personal gain is what the human race has generally been doing all along, and is the exact karma that has put us right where we are. If you learn the "dream power" to manifest worldly desires even faster - guess what? You simply increase your negative karma and future constraints even faster.
So what is the solution? Remember the stories of people who chose their wishes correctly. King Solomon was offered anything he wanted but rejected wealth and power to choose wisdom instead. Likewise, in the New Testament, Jesus was offered control over all the world but rejected it and was taught by angels instead. Religion and folk wisdom teach that the only correct choice, the only correct thing to wish for and manifest, is knowledge, empathy, and assistance to others.
If we don't first understand the nature of existence, everything we do and manifest will just represent blind stumbling in the dark. We all believe, or at least habitually act, as if we are separate entities. Therefore most of our actions and desires are premised on this individuality. Most actions we take and most things we manifest in our individual part of the collective dream only reinforce our individuality and separation.
The more we lose our original connection to "other" life the more desperately we try to regain it through more actions premised on our individuality. We desperately try to impress and look attractive or superior to "others" until practically every action in our lives is ultimately an attempt to gain worth in the eyes of others. Regardless of the intent, however, any action taken on behalf of an individual ego will not restore connection but will have exactly the opposite effect - and thus increase our suffering. Rather than continue to dream and manifest our individual parts in a collective nightmare of separation, religion teaches us how to awaken. "Be still, and know that I am God."
Our entire spiritual evolution, to a certain point, is nothing but a descent into separation and constraint. We build an inertia or tendency or karma in this direction. No matter how powerful we become, no matter what we can manifest/dream into our individual lives, it only increases our inertia towards separation, constraint, and suffering. When we finally learn to stop, to be still, to seek wisdom, we can overcome this inertia - our karma. Then we can finally begin to actually feel (not just hear about) and know the interconnection of all life. We can then begin to move in the other direction - away from separation and towards connection. Ultimately this inspiration will grow to a complete and perfect connection, at which time we have re-awakened from the dream of separation and rejoined God-consciousness.
This article is condensed from a chapter of, The Real Story of Money, Health, and Religion, by Loren Howe available in paperback or $1.
Related: The Monster and the Warrior and the Secret of Reality
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