When the filters to perception are removed

The state between wakefulness and sleep is fecund; dark and loamy. Behind closed eyelids visions blossom, growing the way chrysanthemum fireworks pulse out from a central point into fullness. During a recent sleepless night two such visions appeared. One slipped away from my recollecting almost immediately, but a faded version of the second remains.

It was an image of green, growing things, like succulents pushing out of dark earth. They didn't sprout and bloom before my eyes, instead the fully formed image materialized out of grayness into clarity and then on to something more. It was like looking through the lens of a microscope where the first view is completely out of focus, but then you start zeroing in. The plants grew increasingly defined, the colors grew sharper, the lines between each leaf more intense. The picture quickly moved from non-existence to what I perceive as normal vision, but then kept going. It shifted into an intense clarity, and I knew that I was seeing more than I ever had before. More of what was real. More of what was there. At the same time, I was aware that there was still more to see, and that the dial had been turned up only minutely, offering just a tiny hint at what can be seen through the veil.

The image vanished before I could zoom in further.

In this liminal state a thought also appeared, fully formed. It was the idea that death is the process by which all our filters for perception are removed, when instead of losing contact with creation we are finally able to perceive it as it truly is, on all levels. From electric hazes of energy to swirling microorganisms to the magnetic pull of atomic structures. We will experience a cosmic give and take, exchanges of oxygen and consumption, of rotting and growth and feeding, of colors undreamt of by our limited cones and rods. We will see smells and lie down on a moving bed of cilia.

Perhaps we will watch our bodies decompose and dance with joy at the transformation of matter and energy. Dancing to the song of birds and the roaring of rivers and blood, the percussion of hearts and particles reforming, the silent sound of planets spinning and the burning of the stars.

In death with physicality stripped away and our essence released to join the eternal song of creation, there is no sin or offense, no judgement or worry. It won't matter how many times we lied or how many commandments we broke, if we slept with 400 men or the single, perfect girl. All of that is meaningless in the majesty of the vast, molecular moment. In this state of being there can be no separation from God or each other or the universe.

I'm not a fan of sleepless nights and the struggle to drift off into dreams. But then again, the thoughts of night are not the thoughts of the waking hours.

What should they regard as too obscene?

From That Hideous Strength:

Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists: indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. ... Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. ... What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment.

Ode to a walled garden

From That Hideous Strength:

Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man's point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women's dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to her memory. "The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god."

From Lying Awake:

Sister John opened a fresh notebook and began to write. Adoration welled up through the pain, closing of the gap between lover and Beloved. The force of his pesence curved eternity in on itself; it was not her love rising after all, but his love pulling her toward him. She fell upward into brilliance, where all suffering was released.

In the fire of his embrace, all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God reamined.

I am

The cloister bell, the voice of Christ.

He spoke again:

I am

She tried to obey but was frozen in beauty, like a fly trapped in amber. She could not move.

Nothing exists apart from me.

Self had been an illusion, a dream.

God dreaming.

Yet

by Switchfoot

(Listen here.)

All attempts have failed
All my heads are tails
She's got teary eyes
I've got reasons why

I'm losing ground and gaining speed
I've lost myself or most of me
I'm headed for the final precipice

But you haven't lost me yet
No, you haven't lost me yet
I'll sing until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet

These days pass me by
I dream with open eyes
Nightmares haunt my days
Visions blur my nights

I'm so confused
What's true of false
What's fact or fiction after all
I feel like I'm an apparition's pet

But you haven't lost me yet
No you haven't lost me yet
I'll run until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet

If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break
If it doesn't break your heart
It isn't love
If it doesn't break your heart
It's not enough
It's when you're breaking down
With your insides coming out
That's when you find out what your heart is made of

And you haven't lost me yet
No you haven't lost me yet
I'll sing until my heart caves in
No, you haven't lost me yet
Cause you haven't lost me yet

The soul feels what the mind cannot

My staunchly secular and rigidly rational husband had another nightmare last night. I pulled him from it's clutches when his moans of fear woke me.

In the dream he encountered an evil woman, deeply evil, who had the ability to know the thoughts of others. He looked through a white book she had authored, filled with grotesque drawings in raised purple. He realized that he was the only one who could see what she was, and as he thought this, she began to repeat it and move toward him. He tried to escape, crying out "No, no, no!"

It was at this point that I woke him.

I often rescue him from darkness in the night.

I find it interesting that this secular man, so certain of the boundaries of the rational world, can realize the existence of evil only in sleep. There can be no denying of it then. He feels it.

Blood red roses

A few nights ago I dreamt that I got out of bed to find my legs and the sheets splattered with blood and small chunks of flesh. When I began to clean up, and looked more closely at one of the fleshy bits, I discovered that they were, instead, small dark red rosebuds from a bouquet that someone had pushed down between the sheets.

Isn't that strange?

Blessed assurance

A friend told me on Wednesday that she'd dreamt a strange dream of me the night before. She said that I was covered in tattoos (in RL I have none) of planets and stars which twirled and spun. She said it was very beautiful and she kept calling people to come over and see.

She woke wondering what it was about, and then thought about it and decided it was because she wanted everyone to know how awesome I was.

What a lovely gift for her to give me, from God's lips. He was speaking to me at a time when I needed to hear such a thing from Him.

Rehearsing goodby

I rehearse your goodbye
in my dreams
the one that moves you away
to lands unknown
and sporadic hollowness
becomes forever.

Poetry for Valentines Day (I)

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me.

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth.
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

--by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Dreams of Exodus 1:22

On Saturday night I had a disturbing dream; I seem to be back in a phase of troubled dreaming.

I was at a Disney-esque theme park, standing on the bank of a river which represented Pharaoh's command at the time of Moses' infancy. The water flowed from my right to my left, and scattered across the waters were naked babies floating on small rectangles of wood. Some of them were animatronically kicking a leg in the air and turning over. Others lay fetally curled as if trying to stay warm in the chill water. One model could open it's eyes, but the water lapped over it's mouth and so it could not cry, despite the terror and cold and abandonment.

And the silent parade of sacrificed babies floated on and on.

So strange...

Retired from dreaming

"Too many of us have retired from dreaming."

--Fr. Robert Dalgleish

Last night I dreamt of dreams

I had a remarkable dream last night.

In it, I visited a place I thought I had known as a child; a house with some outbuildings in back. I was there with other family members for some reason, perhaps preparing it for sale. I was sad because I didn't see one of the buildings I expected; the one that had been my favorite because it was my grandfather's playground. I had such very fond memories of looking at his collections of treasures.

We went into one of the buildings, and into an inner room, and it turned out to be the very place I had hungered to see. All around on shelf after shelf were his collections of interesting things; mostly groups of related antiques and collectibles, but newer things as well. And in some places there were his inventions in various stages and models.

As I walked through the place I was in tears, crying harder as I discovered more and more things that I remembered from so many years before. My heart felt as if it would break with the joy and gratitude of it.

It seems like the crying and the exploration went on and on and on.

The fascinating part is that I -really did- recognize these things, and it really -was- a reunion for me. However, they did not exist in reality.

There was no inventor grandfather, there was no home with treasure-laden outbuildings. But I -had- experienced them before; in other dreams.

Yet my joy at the reunion with these memories was very real, and very deep.

What a strange gift...