Then we rise in silence from our earth bodies,
slip through a door between the two worlds,
and meander on over to the spirit springs.

Amazingly, every time we bend to take a drink
from those magic waters we soon discover
that we’ve become somebody else.

We seem to be ourselves, but now we are a pirate,
and then we are some kind of bird, and now we are
riding swift wild horses, or we are deliriously pursuing
an elusive love, or we are caught in a cruel ancient war,
then we ‘re falling, now we’re climbing, we’re the victor,
the defeated, then we’re the killer, then the killed.

It is exactly the same when we awaken — we drink
from that same spring, the spring of dreaming,
the water of illusion, the nectar of fantasy,
and take the apparent for the real.

We trick ourselves by creating a story we call “time”,
so that the mind can enjoy the sense that everything
has a definite beginning, a middle, and an end —
a past, a present, and a future — even though
these are all in reality one and the same.

It may seem to the dreamer that one event
follows another, but time actually moves in every
direction simultaneously, beyond mind’s comprehension.

All of our experiences are made possible by the awareness
of time, though our true nature is prior to time itself.

We are living every life simultaneously, acting every role,
and it is only our fixation upon the animated character
with whom we are currently identified that keeps us
from recognizing who and what we truly are.

Rather than being a limitation, however, such amnesia
is actually our pleasure, since it enables us to play
in these virtual worlds as if they are real,
and who doesn’t like to play?

When we’ve had our fill at the magic springs,
we’ll lean back and wonder at the soft parade
as it makes its way through the firmament.

Soon we’ll fall back into our dreaming,
we’ll inhabit earth bodies once more.

It will seem as if nothing has happened,
when we pass again through that door.