Rushing away from life

I often have morning dreams where I am pretty aware of the fact that I am dreaming, I have some power over where the dream goes but largely the impact my awareness has is more over how I perceive the events in the dream. Especially recurring themes. In this dream I was racing through a large building, but through the corridors, the back areas, the stairwells, hallways, service style doors. It is as if all the building is made of is these elements, not actual rooms or spaces, just corridors, hallways, stairs and doors. I am always anxious and there is this fear in me that I am being pursued. It is never definite, more menacing. It's a paranoia. So I'm racing through this space in an anxious state of paranoid fear and I begin to pay attention to my actions and patterns, all my choices tend directionally towards the right. I always turn right. And as I begin recognizing my tendency I intentionally change direction. I start going left and the first time it feels incredibly unnatural. My first "dyslexic" thought is did I just choose the religious direction? And for a second I'm scared but then I realize that the religious direction is "right" which I'd been doing all along. My pace hasn't changed, almost like I've been set in motion and can't stop, I keep going left and every choice is made instantaneously and some part of me is even concerned about the implications there. Why am I moving so fast? Why am I racing? Suddenly I'm outside the building and looking at the external structure. This is the point at which I feel most aware of the dream world. I first look at it and realize that I can get to know the inside completely and navigate it by having all it's spaces mapped out in my mind- but because it's a dream I am aware that there is no concrete internal structure, there is nothing certain to be known. When I'm inside the building it is not corresponding to anything, to other spaces, to the outside structure. It can change every moment, and to begin with it can be anything. There are no physical laws or natural truths that control it, that I can count on or trust. So I don't want to go back in. I stay outside, standing still.

I know I have been struggling for the last year with a sense of how religion, a sort of moral conservatism, has a pretty strong hold on me. I have not been able to adequately confront it within myself. It has such an old seat that it is hard to dethrone. In particular the imperatives expressed in religion with such certainty. I feel very weak in comparison. So that is what my constant, rushing panicked right-moving makes me think about. But even when I confront this in myself I still rush, rush left, force each decision by an unbroken stream of movement. I realize I am looking at my position from the perspective of being "caught" in a path. These aren't real choices, it was compulsive in one direction now it is compulsive in the opposite. But then I find myself suddenly outside and I'm stopped standing still. Staring at the external form of this empty industrial complex.

I had this same style dream maybe a week ago? It's a little foggy now, but there was something cool about this one. I was rushing through dark doorways and halls and stairwells and I was frightened, but I changed it with my mind, I thought about it all differently, I confronted my fear- why am I afraid? what is here to fear? These dreams have the benefit of building on each other, I am aware that I have "been here before". But when I confronted my fear suddenly the space wasn't empty anymore, stopped being colorless and sinister, it filled with people, with things, with life. And it turned from racing in panic to walking through something alive and good.

I think I do have a setting going that is harried, I seem to believe I must race. Must must must. Fear, anxiety, panic. It's hard to slow down. A big chant I catch myself doing a lot is, just need to get this done and I'll feel at peace. So in other words, I just need to rush this one thing that isn't done and I'll feel so much better when it's accomplished and off my hands. I'm trying to discharge my "obligations" as quickly as I can so that the anxiety I carry over them can be over. But I am always aware that there is always something else to be anxious about and pressing on me in some corridor. "What about me, I'm not done yet. I've been around for years and I'm not done yet..."

I can't get away from them. I approach _everything_ this way. What it is is the energy I bring to my projects. Arg! I do a whole lot of anticipating and carrying of who ever else may be attached to said project, I anticipate their expectations (even when unstated) and allow my fears of what they want or may want to drive me and plague me.

This started as an email to my mom when it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't talking to her but to me. So I moved the words to this forum. It's almost a diagram for myself of how I dream and getting down to the bare frame work as much as possible to wrap my mind around it all more fully.

I suspect I have just stumbled on a big key to my state of anxiety, to my issues with panic. Embedded in all those moments that I believe I must race through. I hear so often that awareness is such a major part of change... A part of me has faith in this, but there is still a deposit of fear- unbelief.