We Act Out

Ich Liebe Meines Wesens Dunkelstunden

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, The days of my life, already lived, And held like a legend and understood

Then the knowing comes: I can open To another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree Rustling over a gravesite And making real the dream Of the one its living roots Embrace :

A dream once lost Among sorrows and songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke, the incredible 20th-century German poet, wrote Ich Liebe Meines Wesens Dunkelstunden. The poem was published in Rilke’s 1905 work, Book of Hours. Rilke was fascinated with dreaming. His work comes from the world of dreams. For the most part, dreams are a reality void of ego interference, and that is one of the ingredients that makes the dream world so special. We don’t call it reality, but it is another reality. We act out different probabilities while dreaming, and we try out these alternatives in that mode of knowing.

The fact that we foresee future possibilities is certainly not in our accepted belief structure, but it is an important aspect of dreaming. Our inner identity is constantly acting out what we don’t accept. The days of our life are on one limb of a multi-limb tree. The other limbs contain probabilities that play out in other realities. The dark hours of our being are daylight to the probable self that knows how to experience the reality within the dream world.