Being born into a dream makes it challenging to awaken. If you have seen the movie The Matrix, which was mentioned earlier, you saw how hard and dangerous it was for the ones who were awake to defy the existing reality. The people born free from the matrix dream had to live in hiding, deep in the earth. The masters challenging the dream were always faced with death if they failed.

And yet, the masters always persevered, intent on breaking the hold of the consensus reality on the minds and bodies of the humans. The heroes of The Matrix went into the dream, did what they could, fought their battles, and retreated to the safety of their fellows. They were always watching and waiting for someone who could see so clearly that he could break the spell of the dream once and for all. In the movie, even when that hero came, he had to be trained to see his own dream, and, ultimately, the dream of the planet that he had been born into.

The Toltecs say that the various dreams are living beings that use their energy to hold humans under their spell. The dream of the planet uses fear to keep people asleep. It is always dangerous for any human to go against the dream, however big or small. Remember that humans have been living in groups since the beginning of time, and to be found unworthy and rejected from the group is a fear that is buried deep in human minds.

Any group dream must maintain its identity by judging other dreams and making them wrong. Without the perception of “us” and “them,” there is no sense of belonging to anything. It is very frightening to the mind to not know who or what it is when it says “I.” The Toltec warrior knows that true freedom comes when he has released his attachments to his identities, and can be whomever he chooses to be.