There is the story of a Chinese emperor who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke he wondered if he was a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. The answer to his question, of course, is yes.

How do we separate the dream from the dreamer when they are the same? The whole of our manifestations - on all of their levels - are our individual dreams. The illusion of the separation from the One can be no more than a dream. This is the fact that allows us to create our own worlds. The little universes that we all sit in the center of, which are all different from each other in at least some small ways, are of our own making.

By whatever means our individuated consciousness has been granted the illusion of separation from the One, we have been provided the opportunity to experience. All of what occurs in the band of frequencies that make up our individual existences is shaped by the quality of the dream we are having.

The group of individuated consciousness that for the time being has coalesced into humanity, is sharing a dream - a dream that is made up of the sum total of all of our dreams. Within this vast ocean of thought, feeling and actions that make up the consensual reality we call the world, we can experience the depths and the peaks. It is terrifying. It is savage. It is comforting. And it is beautiful.

The collective dream as we now experience it is fascinating and marvelous to behold. A critical mass of us is becoming conscious of the dream. What will we do?

We may think on these things as we flutter from bloom to blossom through 1999.