The frame of reference

Have you ever had a nightmare? One of those heavy terrifying ones where someone tries to kill you, or where you just fall off a cliff, or where you are in danger of being captured and abducted during an alien invasion, and you're running and running, trying to escape. Still, it doesn't work because they can see you everywhere, and you have to keep running crippled with fear. While the story that frames your dream is not real, the emotion it triggers is. The dream, in this case, becomes a frame of reference within which your dream perception operates. As an actor in the dream, you may think that you are in danger. The illusion holds up in the interplay between the actor and the scene. When you wake up from a nightmare, you are relieved because it was only a dream. It was not real.

The circumstance of the dream made you believe it was real. The dream state allowed for the emergence of a reality that surrounded you and made it seem as if it were reality. I call this a frame of reference. As soon as you woke up and saw the familiar surroundings of your room, the frame of reference changed.

The same dynamic is at play in ordinary waking consciousness, where we believe we live in reality and where we become deluded by our imagination and projections.

Take a job interview; for example, you dress up, you anticipate how it will go, you question and doubt yourself, your stress, you over-analyze, and overthink everything. You're going on a trip that takes you further away from reality with every passing minute. When you stand in front of your employer and ask practical questions about your skills and abilities, you can either gasp for air or get focused and ace the interview.