A caller on the radio this morning was talking about a favorite professor who was special because he always presented alternate viewpoints.  As I drove, I imagined myself as that professor – teaching about a subject I am passionate and sure about, yet making a conscious decision to expose my pupils to perspectives and points of view I likely know are wrong.  What an amazing thing to choose to do.  What an amazing thing to be able to sit quietly through. . . and maybe even learn from.

Why is it so difficult to know when we are dreaming?  We endure the most ridiculous situations in our dreams without ever questioning whether we are awake or asleep, because we know without a shadow of a doubt that we’re awake!  Once we know we are right about our state of consciousness, we become blind to all other possibilities.  It is human nature.

Imagine what it might be like to not be quite so sure of ourselves all the time.  If we could learn to check for other possibilities every time we were certain about our circumstances, the chance of discovering we are dreaming would be much greater. Perhaps this is one reason children seem more likely to have spontaneous lucid dreams than adults! They haven’t been around long enough to know everything with such certainly – at least not until they become teenagers.

Our chance of becoming aware we are dreaming is not the only thing we stand to gain by learning to recognize our own blindness.