The Dream

You woke before you woke. There was light, perhaps, or the sound of rain, or just the warm dark — and for one breath, maybe two, there was only that. No name. No age. No problems. The world was there, but nobody was standing apart from it yet.

Then the self arrived, like a coat thrown on against the cold. Your name. Your bed, your room, your body, your aches. The thing you said yesterday that you shouldn’t have said. The list of what today demands. Within seconds the coat was buttoned to the chin, and you got up as the person you believe you are. The believing felt like nothing at all. You have done it every morning since you were small.

Notice that there was a gap. You have passed through it every morning of your life and never once looked at it. The world can be fully here before “you” are. Whatever was present in that gap — awake, simple, without lack — did not need your name to see the light.

Hold on to that gap. We will come back for it.