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There is a word that appears in the ancient Vedic texts, in the Christian mystical tradition, in the teachings of the Sufi masters, and in the writings of nearly every great contemplative who has ever lived.

In Sanskrit, it is called Maya. In English, we translate it as illusion, but that translation loses something essential. Maya does not mean that the world is not real. It means that the world is not what it appears to be. The tree is real. The feeling of sunlight on your face is real.

The grief you carry and the love you feel are real. But the interpretation of it, and the story that you are separate from what you see, that you are a small self navigating a hostile and indifferent universe, that the distance between you and what you long for is fixed, that is Maya.

That is the dream within the dream.