I used to have this dream as a child in which it felt like Reality itself had such a weight that I would be crushed from all directions at once. Years later I entered the dream during meditation, and realized that the weight I feared was my own Awareness that I had been straining to hold back. This same pattern manifested in another way. As a teenager I used to be terrified of some massive spirit or something that I would feel whenever my mind would get quiet. It was so terrifying that I would do math equations just to keep it at bay, and only abated when I asked a psychic for help. Years later, while staying in a farmhouse in upstate New York, 3 years into Ishaya monk-hood, the sense of that terrifying presence fully returned. This time I mustered the courage to let it come to me, and after passing through massive fear, I was filled with Bliss. I was suddenly everywhere and in everything and nowhere in particular to a larger degree than I had ever experienced before. In that moment I realized that it had been my own Higher Consciousness the whole time, just knocking at my door. In talking to people over the years, I've found that this is actually a fairly common experience. In the Jungian tradition, it is sometimes noted that our own Superconsciousness is the first thing to be locked away in the shadow self. If we seriously take up the path of meditation, we will all come to various points of letting go of that existential resistance, and experiencing ancient tensions washed away into the Oceanic Self. At some level, we are already Awake. We just need to put down the distractions.
And, as we relax in this way, we also begin to find our flow, which can also be understood as Dharma. Instead of framing that term as duty, I suggest it is well understood as a kind of soul song, that plays ever more clearly as fears, habits, and tensions melt in the warmth of Samadhi. Letting that song play fully is a huge gift to all the souls we touch and many that we shall never know. It drives us further toward liberation and finds its fullest flowering there. It is the Shakti process that flows out of and deepens the Silence.
Carpe Diem!