I am spending a good deal of time buying book treasures from used book stores, mostly on Buddhist and art subjects. I also belong to a Buddhist group and discover, to my horror, that they are selling these books to the public at give-away prices. I had intended only some books to be sold on, and the rest to be kept. Some of the books are rare finds, and may not even be appreciated by those buying them. Even as I try to explain the situation to the people selling them, more are sold.
This dream had a nightmarish quality… spending all that time identifying and buying book treasures, and then having them all sold off to the general public for next to nothing…!
The dream parallels two things in my life:
First, the giving away of my insights and skills freely, without asking for anything in return (including having volunteered a large number of hours for NWEI, and giving away a large number of Breema sessions for free).
The other, more specific to this retreat, a surrendering of conceptualized insights… seeing them for what they are, only thoughts. Only images and sounds created by the mind, arising and dissolving from and into nothingness.
Surrendering is inherent in the process of just seeing thoughts as thoughts, arising from and dissolving into nothingness.