The dream that must be interpreted

"This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real.Then death comes like dawn,and you wake up laughingat what you thought was your grief. But there's a difference with this dream.Everything cruel and unconsciousdone in the illusion of the present world,all that does not fade away at the death-waking.It stays,and it must be interpreted.All the mean laughing,all the quick, sexual wanting,those torn coats of Joseph,they change into powerful wolvesthat you must face.The retaliation that sometimes comes now,the swift, payback hit,is just a boy's gameto what the other will be.You know about circumcision here.It's full castration there!And this groggy time we live,this is what it's like:A man goes to sleep in the townwhere he has always lived, and he dreams he's livingin another town.In the dream, he doesn't rememberthe town he's sleeping in his bed in. He believesthe reality of the dream town.The world is that kind of sleep.The dust of many crumbled citiessettles over us like a forgetful doze,but we are older than those cities.We beganas a mineral. We emerged into plant lifeand into the animal state, and then into being human,and always we have forgotten our former states,except in early spring when we slightly recallbeing green again.That's how a young person turnstoward a teacher. That's how a baby leanstoward the breast, without knowing the secretof its desire, yet turning instinctively.Humankind is being led along an evolving course,through this migration of intelligences,and though we seem to be sleeping,there is an inner wakefulnessthat directs the dream,and that will eventually startle us backto the truth of who we are." - Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century mystic poet