This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real.
— Rumi

Yesterday morning, I stepped outside to walk along the road. The whole world — the hills and valleys — was covered in a white veil of mist. All I could see were the treetops and only a few steps ahead of me. The world was quiet and drowsy.

The Earth was asleep, and I was awake inside its dream. It was magical, listening to the Earth’s slow breathing, the stillness. I treaded softly, careful not to wake it.

A crow called. The crow was awake. The two of us — the crow and I — awake within the Earth’s dream. I wondered about the others. Do they know we’re all inside a dream? That the Earth is dreaming us into existence? Maybe that’s all we ever are — the Earth’s dream.

And only rarely, like me on this misty morning, do we experience spells of lucidity. We wake to realize we’re merely creations of the Earth’s sleepy imagination — our lives moving to the rhythm of its breath.

If we are the Earth’s dream, what does it mean when we forget? When we believe we are separate, awake, and real — walking on the Earth instead of within it? We build our lives as if they belong to us alone: our houses, our cities, our stories. But if we are being dreamt, then nothing we make is truly ours. It all belongs to the sleeper — the trees, the oceans, the breath we take — all woven into the same soft imagining.

What a privilege, to be dreamt. To be thought into being by something vast and ancient. To walk the line between illusion and awareness, knowing that, for a brief moment, the dream is conscious of itself.

The mist began to thin, and shapes emerged — the curve of the hill, the faint outline of the road. The Earth’s dream was lightening, dissolving slowly into day. I stood still for a while, listening to the soft hum beneath my feet — the pulse of a conscious, living planet.

Perhaps that’s all awakening really is — not breaking free from the dream, but remembering who dreams us. Remembering that the same breath that moves the wind moves through our lungs, that the same silence holding the hills holds our hearts.

The crow called again, a sharp note cutting through the quiet. I smiled, feeling both real and imagined. The Earth turned in its sleep, and I walked on — careful not to wake it.