Diner of Dreams

In the Diner, Sleep and Wake are but several menu items.

Partying, we stop at the eatery for vittles. Concluding midnight munchery, we stroll the lot. Yet before we speed away, you smirk and holler, “See ya in dreams!”

At home, pillows cushion your head, as your body melts into the mattress. Drifting… the smell of bacon and the clinking of dishes fills your dream-screen. You’re sitting in the diner, where dreaming and awake are presented in the same way ketchup and mustard appear sole condiments. Adjacent, confused customers stare at the table. They know something’s amiss. “What’s reality and what’s dream?” they ask, unaware the question is soaked in greasy premise.

Traveling from dream to dream, diner to diner, somebody's siting next to you…

Wondering who’s there, you question if you're sleeping.

A voice interjects, “There are many roadside diners, each with neon trances that flicker suggestions upon your bed.”

Now you know you're dreaming!

The voice carries on, “Listen, decades of road stops left us with very little awareness of anything outside the eatery. In our delirium, the world was a place of tasty ego, a smorgasbord for deep-fried souls, arrogant hungry intelligences embracing rebellion. Do you recall the many swirling wills attempting to convince us that sleep could only be a place of freedom, as if different than its mirror called wake? In the booth, sleep’s menu emphasized roadway infinity as real, and eternity as if ordered sunny side up. Remember? Even the early bird specials advertised their trance as if residing outside duality.”

Upon the bed you lay, trying to awaken as you ponder… ‘Is this sleep paralysis?’

Yet the voice continues, “In sleep there are angry biker familiars and impatient trucker seraphim, like the ones of restaurant folklore where Chef Jacob wrestled the angel in the serving area. To win, we simply persist throughout the night… other times, we spend an eon within the establishment. Yes! You’re beginning to recollect… after such resistance, nasty mannered eatery spirits lose the urge to tangle – for they are bound to time’s menu as well. As symptoms of choice swirling in a roundabout, they think themselves driving upstream.

Kicking back at the counter, we always continue. Suffering’s no longer on the menu, although indigestion visits. We now reside in and out of duality, a boot in and out of the diner. This is how we balance imbalance. Chow’n down Tao, we bear the kitchen’s heat as present souls knowing who and what we are.

Walking back and forth from the diner we sleep in our RV’s. Dreaming… we know we’re the specter of each others eyes. Wake and sleep being trances of consent, the windows reflection reveals the real ghost. In our awareness, Airstream spirits consciously choose the road, glamping sites, and eateries. Inside, we no longer think we’ve gone someplace else, remembering it’s but another yummy ego-experience. Even still, we’re aware that occasional headlights flash through Waffle House demanding our other selves to continue sitting.

Outside the Waffle House the dream isn't common dream, but ’dream-like'. No longer road-hypnotized with white line fever, the word describes one level of the unreal. From our truck, life is not an illusion, but 'illusory-like'. In our travels, breakdowns are not a dream, but 'dream-like'. Radio lyrics from the deeply entranced rarely sing the recognition, as it would tune-in to the sublime attachment of movie-like travels. Ignoring exclamations of syrupy egos screaming, “futility”, our comings and goings are eddies in rivers of melted butter. Sadness, burnt toast, grief, runny eggs, and fear cannot exist here… not for long. Reliant on no-thing, no-experience, no-memory, no desire - our overflowing menu of presence is sovereign.”

In what seemed a moment, sleepy eyes follow the course of the moving sun. The rising orb splashes light upon your face as you enter a new dream-like trance called 'wake’, where ‘light rays’ are distinctive moments and a result of Will.

Awake, you check the doors. They’re locked. Turning the handle you step outside where streams of choice flow like heat, light, sound, and the smell of fresh coffee. Outside the body-vehicle journey, peering from the eateries window into the Absolute, you no longer pour more syrup upon the ego-dream than can be digested. All experiences, including relationships, loves, affinities, things, memories, lives… and even the Waffle House itself are soul distinctions reflected into infinite complexities with no end.

We know our Absolute-self creates a savory game, one with exceptional breakfast offerings. Sleep and wake reside in duality, consented to and created by our essential nature which laughs near itself  - fork and knife in hand.

Fable Metaphors:

Waffle House - A metaphor for unexamined life, a place where even those who consider themselves ‘spiritual’ end up when they don’t question every-thing. Refers to the commonly perceived ‘world’ the mind may perceive as solid, real, and permanent, but is really illusory-like, movie-like, and a ‘playground’ or ‘battleground’ for Wills with varied intentions. They are structures built of duality, and duality disguised as singularity.

Diner/Roadstop/Eatery - metaphors referring to the commonly perceived ‘world’ that the mind may perceive as solid, real, and permanent, but is really illusory-like, movie-like, and a ‘playground’ or ‘battleground’ for Wills that have varied intentions. They consist of duality, and duality disguised as singularity.

Bed - Inside the metaphorical ‘Airstream of our being’, the bed represents dream and sleep. Outside, there appears to be a flood; terrifying to the eyes, but floating in peace once we’ve opened the windows.

Patrons and Customers - Those who are inside of an illusory-like spell, yet do not see, or want to see themselves as so.

Biker Familiars - refers to supernatural entities that appear as ‘Bikers’, not ghosts or any being without conventional 3 dimensional forms distinctions. 

Trucker Seraphim - refers to celestial beings appearing as regular truck drivers.

Jacob - also later known as Israel, is a patriarch of the Israelites and a figure in Abrahamic religions.

Duality - A concept of mutually arising and complementary ‘observations of processes’.