Read a short article this morning about 'lucid dreams.' These are dreams in which you are active, able to make choices during the dream.
Waking life feels very much like a lucid dream. Isn't our day to day existence basically a tremendous act of imagination? We imagine both the mundane, boring details, as well as the extraordinary occurances of a life.
'Something happens,' but then in the experience of it, we create an image, bring it in, interpret or discard it. Everything passes through us. Sometimes we feel like the passive observer: the dreamer, sometimes we feel like an active participant: the lucid dreamer.
Whether the dream is filled with meaning, or is just random nonsense is a choice. We imagine a life of no meaning, or a life filled with meaning. It is up to us. We may imagine a god or devil to spread around the responsibility, but it's our dream, these are our imaginings.
We can dream to be the butterfly and the buddha and everything else under the sun and stars.