{"id":4809,"date":"2012-06-06T10:35:34","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T14:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4809"},"modified":"2012-06-06T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T15:00:21","slug":"life-is-a-slice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/06\/life-is-a-slice.html","title":{"rendered":"Life is a slice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Walking a gritty block just south of the Loop in downtown Chicago, I received a message from the world in the sign of Pauly’s Pizzeria: LIFE IS A SLICE. That’s a great advertising slogan for a pizza restaurant. It also felt like a humorous reminder that whatever we are doing in our present lives is part of a larger story, a slice of a much bigger pie.<\/p>\n

My mind went back to a time when I felt beset by many everyday worries, especially concerning money. I had flown to London, and boarded the Tube at Heathrow airport to travel to the city. When I stepped into the compartment, a roly-poly Brit who looked a lot like Santa Claus inspected me over his half-moon spectacles. He then addressed me with the following words, in very proper Oxbridge English: “The Buddha says, Walk on the bridge, don’t build on it.”<\/p>\n

I was thunderstruck. For starters, the Brits do not <\/em>talk to strangers on trains. Then, the unlikely words spoken by the stranger on the train were exactly<\/em> what I needed to hear. Walk on the bridge, don’t build on it<\/em>. The statement may sound mysterious, but the only mystery, for me, was how I could ever have forgotten this fundamental truth about human existence. This world is a bridge between the worlds we inhabit before birth and after death. It is a transit, among many transits, between different life experiences in different orders of reality. Whatever our troubles or our triumphs in our present lives, we must not forget that they are part of a greater story, a slice of a bigger pie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walking a gritty block just south of the Loop in downtown Chicago, I received a message from the world in the sign of Pauly’s Pizzeria: LIFE IS A SLICE. That’s a great advertising slogan for a pizza restaurant. It also felt like a humorous reminder that whatever we are doing in our present lives is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,25,17,26,8],"tags":[1344,1345,1343],"class_list":["post-4809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-divination","category-life-direction","category-synchronicity","tag-buddha","tag-paulys-pizzeria","tag-walk-on-the-bridge"],"yoast_head":"\nLife is a slice - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/06\/life-is-a-slice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Life is a slice - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Walking a gritty block just south of the Loop in downtown Chicago, I received a message from the world in the sign of Pauly’s Pizzeria: LIFE IS A SLICE. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4809"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4813,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809\/revisions\/4813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}