Sedona, AZ — Most mornings, Sophia and I go down the rabbit hole, no really. That’s what one of the trails at Whipple Creek is called. Whipple is our favorite of many great walks here in Southern Washington. The great news is that it’s less than two miles from my front door. What a treat!
Every time I set foot on the trail I find it hilarious that it’s named Rabbit Hole Loop. How perfect! What a great analogy for life. Most of us think of a rabbit hole as somewhere off the track, Alice’s unexpected fall into Wonderland, not realizing that experiencing life in a body, here on a planet we call Earth, is just as much a rabbit hole as Alice’s journey into the bizarre.
Alice met Absolem, a blue caterpillar (one of my favorites), the Mad Hatter, the fabulous Cheshire Cat, a scurrying white rabbit, not to mention the crazy-mean Queen of Hearts (off with their heads), and other eccentric characters during her trip down the hole. Sounds pretty crazy, a surreal dream, or perhaps a treatise on drug use as some have suggested, but the more I see of this supposedly real and sane world, the less bizarre Wonderland looks.
According to most, this world is real and when we fall asleep at night and drop into a new story, that’s just a dream. It doesn’t feel like a dream when you wake up shaking, afraid that someone you care about is going to die. Sometimes you even call them to make certain they are all right, or to tell them to be extra careful today. You both laugh but deep inside that premonition won’t quite let go. Is that real? I have awoken from a dream totally unable to determine where I am, taking minutes, literally, to reorient myself to this world that is supposedly the real deal. How could that be if one is real and the other not? When we’re dreaming the dream feels pretty damn real and sometimes, it feels real afterwards too.
Geez. It’s almost like …
My dreams are incredibly detailed, more so than my daytime version of life, the waking dream. I sometimes dream in fractals, but during the dream it doesn’t occur to me that they aren’t real. It is simply basic experiencing, no different from experiencing when I am eyes open, not still asleep (literal sleep) and buffeted by the sensations of this Earth-walk.
Every moment is the rabbit hole. We think we know what it is, but we don’t. We are certain we know the difference between reality and the dream world, but what if the only difference is our belief that there is a difference? Dreams have power, just like beliefs, and thoughts. They are words of different kinds, crafting worlds of different kinds. In the beginning was the word. There’s so much more meaning in that little phrase than assumed. Every breath we take, asleep or awake, or wide awake while sleeping or dreaming, adds to the emerging picture manifesting as life.
Thinking we know what this is, what we are, is one version of life in the rabbit hole, but not the only one. It feels safer, but is it? Really? It paints pretty pictures of control and certainty, pictures that are only as real as you believe them to be, and confining whether you want them to be or not.
Or you can look around and see that you don’t know, can’t know. Admitting you don’t actually have a clue sets you free to explore with a wide-open mind and heart. Until then, you’re playing a limited game, and you’re the only one who set the limits.
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