The Domestication of All Humans
You have learned about the domestication of individual humans by parents, peers, politicians, bosses, mates, and others. Perhaps you are beginning to see how many of your reactions to people and events are the result of beliefs and agreements programmed into your mind by others.
The Toltecs understand that the collective dreaming by humans also has a powerful effect on individuals, as well as on the evolution of the entire planet. They call this consensus reality the dream of the planet, which describes the common elements of the dream held by most or all humans.
The Dream of Time
A good example of a dream that's commonly held by many humans is the dream of time. The dream of time, clocks, watches, time zones, and changing to daylight-savings time is fairly recent in the history of humanity. People used to say “I'll meet you after the cows come home,” or “We always plant those on the spring equinox.” Today, time is a very powerful dream. Of course, there's literally no basis to it. The fact that time changes by an hour when you cross a boundary marking a time zone is totally arbitrary.
Everyone agrees to believe the dream of time, and then takes it completely for granted. It is an important tool in the dream of the planet. Many of the functions and details of modern human life depend on more precise timing than cows can offer. Have you ever wondered what time it is on the moon? Does the moon have time? What about the Andromeda galaxy? What time is it there? Where does time come from? How much do you have? Will you run out?
The Dream of Money
Another example of a consensus dream in humans is the dream of money. In most of the Western world, money is made of colored paper, with different pictures and numbers for the various denominations in the various countries. These pieces of paper have no value in themselves, yet the different numbers are very important. The more colored pieces of paper you have, and the bigger the numbers they have, the more power, prestige, and things you can have.
The dream of money is a powerful dream. It is very important to the successful workings of the dream of the planet that everyone agrees about the value of their particular money. The value of the money is vigorously defended by the authorities in charge. If you decide to manufacture your own money, you will be punished, no matter how good of a job you do making it. Your money will be worthless as soon as anyone discovers it is not the official money.
In Mexico in the early 1990s, the value of the peso had dropped until it took more than 3,000 pesos to equal one U.S. dollar. People were buying milk at their local tienda (store) with 10,000-peso notes. When the government took three zeros off of the money, and issued ten-peso notes, people used the old and new bills interchangeably.
The dream of money includes all of the beliefs that everyone holds about whether it is easy or hard to get, what it means to get it without working for it, and what it says about you if you don't have any or if you have too much. Should you save your money for later, or spend it all and enjoy it now? Should you give money to homeless people when they ask? Should you give it to your child, or insist that she earn it? The real answers to these questions are that there are no answers. On the Toltec path, you ultimately realize that there is no such thing as money; there is only a dream we have all agreed to accept.
