Dreams, Time, and the ‘Self’

It was a dream that couldn’t be shared with anyone, it was a dream that couldn’t be written down in my dream diary; one of the few, unrecorded but never forgotten. Ever since I had that dream in the early teens, perhaps I was 13 back then, I always fancied how my life/self/I would be when I reach the age of 22 or 23. Ever since I had that dream I always wanted to grow up fast and reach that age, then be frozen in time, stay right there, never age again. Something will happen, I knew, that would entirely change the way how I’ve been seeing things, understanding the world, life, people and of course, myself. It’s amazing that I was able to sense it ten years ago, in a dream.

What is time anyways? We strictly define the time as past, present and future; we perceive time within these clear boundaries without questioning our ability, our senses’ capacity to wander back and forth, to trespass the borders, to get swayed and strangled in between. Time, as we perceive, seems to be very linear, clear-cut and passive. But is it truly so? Couldn’t it be that time itself is an active element and it is our mind, our perception that is passive?

When we were children, sitting on a bus or a train, amused by the trees running behind, we never realize that things run backwards because we are moving forward, since our positions do not seem to change, we never realize that we are actually in motion, not staying still. But then we grow up, we learn everything, or believe that we are learning and understanding everything, when suddenly we arrive at a stage where we consider ourselves the superiors, ones who possess the ability to analyze, test and grasp the knowledge, the wisdom. At that stage, never do we go back and reassess the path we followed, through which we matured, grew up, and became ‘adults’. Never do we look back at those childhood perceptions and think for a moment, whether it could be the actual/fair/possible way of interpreting the events, the happenings. Perhaps the trees were actually running behind? Perhaps we were not moving at all? Perhaps it’s the time which is moving forwards, backwards, beyond, and behind, and we are just staying still? Or perhaps time is an unimaginably extensive element, like a rubber with unlimited elasticity, that could be extended forever and ever, on which our mind, our ‘self’, and our psyche sways like dew drops on a lotus leaf.

I think I would stop here, right here, and go back, take the same path that I used to follow to arrive here, at this point – the events that I had experienced, the people that I had met, the things that I had learned, and the dreams that I had dreamt. The journey stops here, in 2012, and the ‘self’ will be going back. Isn’t this an amazing year after all – when the Mayan long count will also end?