If You Feel Like You’re Dreaming Your Reality
Here’s the remedy I found.
One of the reasons I left my hometown to become a full-time traveler was to find the answer to this struggle. I’m on a quest to meet my own presence in the world.
It’s so frustrating. I know I am in the moment. My full attention is here and now. But still.
I feel like I’m dreaming my reality instead of soaking in it. I feel like it’s all happening in my head. I feel like I’m only perceiving the present moment through a thin veil.
Does this sound familiar? Here is the remedy I found.
“Wherever you go, there you are” — Ph.D. Jon Kabat-Zinn
The more I tried, the further away reality went
I tried everything. Meditation was one of my first attempts. Paying attention to my sensations. Focusing on a sight or a sound. Repeating words in my head.
None of this worked.
It was extremely frustrating. I was in the middle of a sublime deserted black sand beach in Costa Rica, and I couldn’t feel wholly here. I was missing the experience of the present. I knew that the memory of the moment would later seem more real than the moment itself.
Later, as I was journaling, my hand traced the answer in black ink on white paper right before my eyes.
I was trying too hard.
The more we focus on getting something, the more we drift away from it. In this case, my focus was no longer on the present moment, but on chasing that moment, which is not the same thing at all.
The key is to be short-sighted on purpose
I like this expression. I made it myself. In French, it would be “Ne pas voir plus loin que le bout de son nez”, which translates to “Don’t see further than the tip of your nose”.
Try this.
Wherever you are right now, stay still. Do not focus on anything. Notice your sensations lightly, the wind on your face, smells, sounds, but don’t insist on acknowledging them. Relax your mind. Don’t try to be in the moment or feel the moment.
This is not a goal to be pursued, but simply the consequence of an attitude. The only thing you can focus on is adopting this attitude.
Now forget about anything that is more than 5 seconds away from where you are now. It doesn’t exist. It is still evolving, still deciding what form it will naturally take. You don’t care about it. You really don’t. Free yourself from the desire to control what happens next. Forget what you will do next, or worse, what you have to do next.
There is only this moment. Everything else doesn’t exist.
“Wherever you go, there you are”
This is the title of a book on mindfulness, written by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. The first time I read those six words, they instantly resonated.
Don’t expect anything. Don’t try to change anything. Don’t try to reach for anything. Don’t want anything more than what is here and now. Let go of all expectations, all desires. Just embrace the moment as it is.
Embrace it in its entirety.
Here’s an excerpt from a text that helped me reach this point
I want to give you all the keys that I have gathered. It took me a lot of hard work, time, and patience. But the results are there. It was all worth it.
As always, the Universe or whatever it is has a way of putting the right reading on your path, at the right time. The evening of the same day I discovered this remedy, I opened Medium to do some reading. And I found an article that discussed this issue. Here’s an excerpt.
It’s about “chilling”, and it’s from an article entitled My Last Vacation Taught Me About How to Live in the Moment written by Shruthi Sundaram:
“It is appreciating the present and not being always held up in your past or future. It is letting life pass as it is without putting any pressure on it to fasten up. It is enjoying and being grateful for what you have instead of continually searching for what you do not have.”
Final thoughts
If I had to summarize it, here are the ingredients that led me to finally succeed in lifting some of that veil.
Relaxing. Feeling grateful. Not expecting anything more. Forgetting everything that isn’t now.
After all this searching, within myself and in readings, I finally found a part of the answer. Maybe everyone has their own because everyone’s veil is there for different reasons. In any case, I sincerely hope that my answer can help you reach yours.