I dreamt last night that I was hired to help manage a “special project.”  I spent some time with extended family before leaving on the adventure and enjoyed meeting some distant relatives I had never met or spent much time with before.  Finally, it was time to depart.

I arrived on the ship one balmy day, wondering what my assignment was.  The ship was iconic:  grey, darkly lit in most places, torn down in many places, but still running well and fully staffed.   No one on the ship seemed to take a superior attitude towards me, so I guessed they regarded me as captain.  Still, they seemed to know how to do their jobs without my help.  I couldn’t figure out why I was there.

The next day it happened.  Some men came running up to me in alarm, a problem was unfolding in a section of the ship, usually sealed off, that I hadn’t seen yet.  We crossed through the now unsealed portal, and there was a huge commotion.  All the attention centered around a man, normally looking except for the scruffy hair and face that was common at sea, but he started becoming more and more agitated.  The men around him were doing their best to calm him down and move him farther away from the door to the main part of the sealed wing, which really angered the scruffy fellow.  The host of security detail seemed to know how important their role was, so I let them continue.  Then at a certain point, like the striking of a match, everything shifted intensity.

Like the Hulk, the scruffy man transformed into a giant and busted through 4 aisle-ways that used to be separated by book cases.  It was now “showtime” for me to take over and I followed the aberration and the brave guards tagged behind me.  I had expected them to leave at that point, but they stayed right behind and coordinated their own teams around us as well.  We did our best to keep up with the monster as it zigzagged through the sealed wing.  Then, as abruptly as he climaxed in intensity, he dropped out of it again, seemingly himself.

What was going on?  I got full details about these aberrants who were sealed on this ship.  They followed exactly this pattern of climax and return to normalcy.  In fact, that was the only reason this ship even existed.  It was a floating quarantine.  And there were more of him.

It was all becoming clear, and yet they were looking to me to find a solution.  I wasn’t a psychiatrist.  I wasn’t an exorcist.  I was just myself, and yet they needed and trusted me.

A resonant voice boomed from my chest and throat.  “Let the man be put in a tank of ocean water.”  The water was near freezing, a shiver of dread passed through the officers in my presence.  They thought I was exterminating the man, and he apparently did too and welcomed the prospect.  “Finally!” He seemed to think.

The man entered the icy tank.  It was 10 feet cubed and had observation windows on one end.  The water then filled 7 feet of it so he had to swim, but he had plenty of room to breathe.  We watched and waited for the man to draw to an end in hypothermia or worse, but just the opposite happened.

The man was exuberant.  He explained that in the cold he was free from agitation.  His body, he said, must have been operating at such a high rate and temperature that he was on overload all the time.  The cold was his only relief in years and years.  He wished he could drown in it, but now that he lived and found relief for the first time, he wanted to return to the icy tank again and again.

Experiments were done on the rest of the aberrations with the same result.  This brought order to the ship because it cured the explosive episodes that they had left port to shelter society from, but the “patients” demanded more.  The icy temperatures felt like room temperature to them and they were exceedingly comfortable.  Upon return, they craved it immensely – perhaps like a drug – or perhaps because they found a new home in the experience of life that matched them.

The sealed wing underwent a transformation.  By some mechanism, the temperature was reduced in there to sub-zero.  Ice-crystals formed on every thing including the floors, walls, beds, windows.  The windows no longer functioned, so they were removed from every non-essential place.   The aberrants numbered more than 50 and, much like the deaf-community, started to really get to know each other now that they were “home” in this temperature range.  Their skin had ice crystals on them and shone like a garment weaved from 5 carat diamonds in the light.  They were returned to their humanity, no longer monsters in their own minds, and struggling to create meaning and sense of it all through their relationships with each other.

Then one day it happened.  I could feel an explosive rage building in myself every time I returned from visiting the “Ice lepers” as the crew called them.  I was afraid of myself when I came “to the surface” as the ice-people called it.  And now it was time for me to “take a bath” to see if it helped.

I dove in the icy tank, which now expanded to be the size of an Olympic pool.  The icy waters calmed my own agitation now and an inner warmth now sustained me in its icy presence instead of consuming me up above.  Shock mixed with the sudden relief.  I felt both like an abomination and a super-hero.  How was it possible I could like this?  That I could live in this range of temperatures and in the world of normal people?  Yet I wouldn’t be returning to the surface any time soon.  I was way too comfortable here, and went to join my new diamond-clad friends.

I dreamt last night that I was simultaneously with people from a synagogue and people from other spiritual organizations, but somehow they were all together and unified in purpose.  A rabbi and a 4 people sat around a table doing a Torah study.  I watched them for a long time before approaching, which I was resisting, but couldn’t help doing.  “May I join you briefly?” I asked, finally drawn to an empty chair and noticing that they were starting to pack up.  The rabbi responded enigmatically:  “Who sits down, you?  Or your creditors?”  “Obviously, I am the one who is here,”  I replied.

A bearded man to my left graciously explained:  “What the rabbi means by creditors are the airs that one takes on to make oneself feel or appear more worthy than they really are in presence of others.”  What an amazing teacher, I thought.  I hadn’t even sat down, and this rabbi had somehow downloaded an entire hour of study into a single interaction.  “Thank you for sharing this valuable lesson, Rabbi!”  I said to him directly, “I get it!”  Then I woke up.

What are the first dreams you’ve ever remembered?

My dreaming life started at the age of about three, during the developmental phase psychologists call “Night terrors.”

The first nightmare was remembered as physically climbing over the side of my crib and seeing that my house was on fire. I opened my parents’ bedroom door and tried to wake them up, but they wouldn’t budge. So I had no choice but to go out and face the fire on my own. I went into the living room and saw that, instead of flames, the whole house was lit in a red glow, while the outside was a vivid blue from the moonlight. My eye, however, was drawn to sets of complete skeletons that were hanging from every wall of the house, spaced a few feet apart. Then my eye was drawn to the sofa, where a single human skull was on the cushion. My mind identified this skull as the cause of the family problems, so I charged at it in a brave attempt to vanquish the enemy. However, each time I came within reach of the skull, its power physically picked me up head over heels backwards and placed me back where I started again. After 5 or so attempts, the dream ends.

I find myself wondering: when a toddler experiences night terrors of this type, what is really happening physically? Could a bystander have seen a toddler flipping in the air? Or under full and complete surveillance, would they more likely see a toddler collapsed back to sleep on the floor of the living room? Or something in between? How amazing it would be to somehow correlate the experience of the toddler with some kind of documentation of what actually happened, and show it to them later in case there is ever any recollection.

The second toddler dream is also centered on the house. I wake up from bed to a visitor approaching. He is a masculine presence and I am not afraid of him. He wants to show me something, to teach me about my home. He leads me first to the back yard, and instead of my lawn, the garage, the treehouse, I see a battle field. There are cannons and smoke clearing from recent discharges from them. Then in the front yard, one of these wheeled cannons is sitting right outside my window – not pointing at me, but close enough that I could see the gleam of light on the rim of the barrel. “This house is in a war zone” I thought. It was in the san fernando valley of southern california. I wonder today if any historian could trace activity of say, the mexican-american war to this location?

After weeks of nightmares, my parents apparently consulted amongst themselves or with some experts and decided to intervene, which actually worked but perhaps not in the way they were expecting. They approached me one night before bed and presented me with the first gift I ever remember receiving: A stuffed animal, a golden brown gorilla in a seated position with long arms down to the floor. We (?) named it “Nicolas” and I was told that Nicolas would protect me in my dreams. I enthusiastically went to sleep that night just to see what would happen, and sure enough, a gorilla named Nicolas did visit me. Only it was not to rescue me at a time of nightmarish need. Nicolas was to be my first of many dream teachers. His message to me was “You can do whatever you want in your dreams.” And he showed me how.

In the subsequent years, two periods of time stand out most. At about age 8 I started having flying dreams. These were not very impressive, and more like “swimming through air” around my neighborhood. I had to keep kicking and paddling to stay mobile, or else I would “sink” back to earth! It was fun, though.

Then the dreaming life really got in full gear at about age 10 when I realized that I could plant the seed of what I wanted to dream about. The key image that got my dream life all fired up was of a unicorn. My unicorn friend came to me every night and walked me to a place of rainbows and butterflies, which would start the most amazing adventures. What a change from the night terrors of the the toddler phase!!! The flying, the journeying was so amazing and so intense that all I wanted to do was dream, literally. I got to the point where I would go to sleep at night, dream all night, wake up in the morning remembering where I left off, and eat breakfast. I would go back to sleep during the day (it must have been summer break) – sleep ALL day till dinner when I got hungry, wake up remembering where I left off, eat dinner, then go right back to sleep to continue the dream again!!! I did this for at least 3 days straight!!! Finally one of my friends, Johnny, came over and said “What are you doing, sleeping all the time!?” He got me enrolled in the local popwarner football team with him, the West Valley Eagles, during a recruiting booth at the fallbrook mall. Practice was set to begin on August 1st. That was a day that changed my life. Football became my life for the next 5 years and I completely metamorphosized in its developmental challenges. Dreaming still continued, but now the amazing things were balancing out with the real world as well!

The last childhood period I think is also truly amazing. I was in high school and engaging in daily meditation practice using a guided visualization called “The Healing Waterfall.” I had done this visualization for months and had become quite vivid with it. One day after doing the visualization, I fell asleep and entered into dreamtime focused still on the images of the healing waterfall. One of the steps is to emerge from the healing water and find a new set of clothing just for you – whatever you wanted. I dreamt I was coming out of the falls and was shocked to see that everything became very visceral and lucid as I approached my “new clothes.” These clothes were unlike any I had ever owned or any I could even think of doing this visualization. They were a heavy cotton and they were off-white in color: large-legged pants, long shirt and a shawl-like jacket over it, all uniform in color. The most amazing part was that in between the shawl and the shirt, there was a quartz crystal pendant on a silver necklace waiting there for me. The crystal had a prism-like function: rainbows followed it where ever it went. “Who had given this to me?” I wondered… then looked around. Up in the hills was a man sitting way off, but he was clearly distinct because he wore bright orange robes. A monk. A monk, or some kind of master had arrived to help me? “What is this crystal?” I asked him. “It is your dreaming crystal,” came the reply, “It will help you to do whatever you want in your dreams.” I put the crystal on and immediately noticed a change in the energy and power of my dreaming body. “Thank you so much!!!” I offered as the dream ended.

The most amazing part of this experience was I, about 3 years later, studied on Kauai with a Tibetan Buddhist monk for about a year. He held services and meditation classes, and throughout the year one of the events I came to really look forward to was a retreat. The retreat he scheduled for the end of my year was on the topic of “Dream Yoga.” On the occasion of this weekend, my Tibetan Buddhist teacher dressed up in his bright orange robes. Naturally, on the conclusion of a lesson on “How to visit your friends in dreamtime,” everything clicked. I was almost trembling as I approached him after class. “I had this dream in high school where I received my dreaming crystal from a man wearing orange robes. Was that you?” He nodded.

For the second Monday morning in a row, vivid dreams linger upon awakening.

The quality of prayer behind these Monday dreams is of such depth that their meaning is not easily deciphered by succinct aphorisms to capture the evolution of consciousness that is called for.

This morning’s dream started with a friend and neighbor, an uncle-like figure who has been a mentor in my life arriving to invite me on a road trip in his truck. I jump in the truck, so excited by the prospect.

We arrive almost instantly on the west coast, northern California. I’ve included the closest approximation of video I could find of what I experienced in the dream:

The differences between this video and what I experienced included time of day and the height of surf:

In my dream the morning sun was glowing so amazingly golden on the horizon that the rocks all looked golden with rich shadows of brown. The surf was pumping in with 10 foot swells eclipsing and churning around all the exposed boulders like a giant bowl of white foamy soup. When the surf finally reached shore, it barely had time to bounce off what was left of the sand then ricochet off the cliff walls of the little bay. The ocean seemed to be diligently and hungrily pounding out more space, punishing the boulders, sand, cliffs and whatever else was unfortunate enough to get in the way.

For a brief moment I imagined what it would be like to be stuck in that water. The futility of trying to escape was overwhelming, so I just relaxed and lay still as I was pulverized on boulder after boulder, swirled underwater and slammed onto shore, ricocheting off of cliffs, then sucked back by foaming tentacles into her soupy bowels to do it all over again and again.

My identity was sufficiently smashed on the tenth or so round that when the 15 foot face of the wave slammed onto sand, my being dispersed under the sand between all the granules, and I experienced myself being drawn back into the ocean even from underneath the sand, eroding the foundations of whatever was left.

I was suddenly celebrating with great shouts of joy! I was the pacific ocean, my life streaming down from Alaskan glaciers. At this bay on the sonoma coastline I was greedy. I was powerful. I was hungry. I was destructive, relishing the smashing sensation that I reeked havoc with on all that stood in my way.

A glorious moment, the milestone of victory that I looked forward to was when the last granule of protective sand was removed from the coastline. When the craggy underbedding was exposed, I was like a dog burying my bone, which was simply the desire for more territory. My huge smoldering waves felt cramped like a tall man laying on a short bed with the blankets tucked under the edges, forcing all my appendages into their most contracted position. The only obstacle between stretching my legs in true comfort was this set of cliffs and my destiny was to break every single one down. I would never stop, never quit in my war against the boulders before me because it was their prayer as well.

An instinctive part of me, as the ocean, knew that the greatest thirsting desire of every boulder was to fly. Flying boulders? Yes.

Now my identity shifted once again. No longer a man, no longer the ocean, I was the rocks.

As the cliffs themselves, I knew that erosion is the mechanism fulfilling their prayer, and when the stones get small enough to be pushed by water, they feel free for the first time – and the heaviest stones bid an envious good bye to the moderate and small stones who float farther and longer. The granules of sand are the highest evolved in their world – those boulders sufficiently smashed that they have reached mineral nirvana – complete immersion, motions and freedom with the ocean of life.

As the last granule of sand left shore, glistening against the morning sun, I managed to pull my identity away and come back full circle. Finally I was watching from the perspective at the top of the cliff once again just an outside observer. My friend and mentor was still next to me. I wondered if he had experienced what I did, and had no idea how to communicate any of it to him nor how to ask what his experience of the bay was. I was satisfied to see that he was full of joy – at least as much as, if not more so than I was.

The morning sun was warming golden on my face – on both of our faces – filling our smiling windswept depths with loving energy within, just like the rocks and the surface of the water.

Then I shifted identities for the last time of this dream: I was the warmth of the sunshine! Gradually my warmth would re-emerge from the rocks enough to warm the lizards. Gradually the warmth of the sun would warm the ocean surface enough to quell its passion for destruction and welcome her pods of cetacean children back from their shelter in her depths, rising up for the air and the light once again. Then I rose from sleep to greet the day.

My dream last night started out in an apartment.  I was looking for work, and apparently had been doing so for a long time because my apartment was really barren and I had no utilities.  It was as though I had been slowly becoming homeless from the inside out.  The difference between being in this apartment and being out on the street was ever slowly diminishing.  The walls were all a pale blue every night from the streetlamps outside, and seemed to keep that same color during the day as well.

There was a place I knew about, not far from where I lived, that I knew wasn’t going out of business.  All I knew was that it was some kind of mining operation, and they had new people hiring there all the time.  Like everyone else, they never called me back, but I was now completely determined, and ready to do anything.  I thought, “Even if I have to volunteer there until they hire me, I won’t give up until they do.”

I walk in the door of this place and somehow the entrance to the mines was simply in the rear of their front office building.  The woman at the front desk didn’t even ask me my name, but simply waived her hand to the back of the room, as there was a group of new workers entering the mine at that very moment.

I count my luck and hop into the back of the line.  As we are escorted through the door, everything is dark, but not as dark as it should have been.  The walls were clearly earthen, but illuminated with a pale blue light.  It seemed so unnatural or perhaps supernatural, until we were led forward to a watery surface that was none other than some kind of port or boat dock.  The water was lit from deep within, and the whole tunnel we were in could not have been more than 20 feet wide and only 20 feet of water until the tunnel tapered down underneath.  “How can a boat fit in this place?”  I wondered.

At that moment, a submarine-like vessel suddenly roared to the surface, startling all but our escorts.  I just had enough time to notice that it was black, with a nose and two wings – almost like a man-made sting ray.  Someone handed me a mask, like a scuba mask but it covered my whole face, and said “Use this.”  “Put this on,” they said to the next person, then some other curt variation to the next.  We were then ushered to the passenger part of the vehicle.  The doors were completely open, like the belly of a helicopter.  As we strapped into our seats, I was fearful that the water would entrench us if they didn’t close the doors, but there didn’t seem to be anything to close at all.  At least our masks were connected to something that kept us breathing.  Then I blacked out.

I woke up again in the dream.  I was still strapped in my seat and the passenger bay was still dry.  I seemed to be the only one awake.  All the other passengers were asleep.  The cockpit was illuminated blue and captain and co-captain stirring with this and that.  We flew fast and low to the bottom of the floor, as I could see the kelp and coral and whatever else was growing just beneath us.  From the speed at which they whizzed by, I guess we were skimming along at about 30 miles per hour.

Then I started getting paranoid again about the bay.  “How did this thing stay airtight?”  I could only imagine that the speed that the sting ray submerged had something to do with trapping the air inside.  My fear became so pervasive, that the sub then seemingly responded by actually making a hard enough turn banking on its left so that the trapped no longer was held by the ceiling and upper walls of the passenger bay, and cold rushing water woke all the passengers up.  Then we were all thankful we had the scuba masks on.     Shortly afterward, the sting ray arrived at its destination.  The captains sure had a polite way of waking up their crew.  Then I blacked out again.

I woke up and was in a place that could only be described as a different world.    There were hardly any inhabitants, and the passengers I was with quickly diffused into the place and were gone from sight.  I was basically alone.  There were buildings and signs of civilization but the whole place was just so different than anything I’ve ever seen before.  It was like an alternate reality in some other part, some other level, like the center of the earth – that no one knew about.

I met up with some people my age and we found these balls filled with a strange gas that made a popping sound whenever you bounced them.  We were really amazed by them and kept bouncing them on walls, buildings, each other and whatever else we could find.  We finally met someone who seemed to live here, and when he saw us playing he said, “Oh, did you invent something?”  We placed the ball in his outstretched hand.  “It doesn’t pop as much as it used to,” I said, “The gas must be gradually escaping every time we pop it.”  “I see,” the butler-like man said, “It has an equilibrium line, just like this place.”

Sure enough I noticed that it had a seam bisecting the ball, like an equatorial line, just like any ball made in a factory.  The man continued, “Does the ball have any inhabitants?”

I was horrified.  Inhabitants?  We had been smashing this ball on everything we could find.  Any tiny living things in there would surely not have survived.  I grabbed each end of the ball and separated it at the equatorial line.  It gradually gave way and the two halves began to separate again.  Inside was just a sticky green, gel-like goo.  The butler looked smug.  “I knew your invention couldn’t have been that good to match this place,” he seemed to think.

Then the young men and myself knew we had to find a way out of this place.  We were no longer content to simply idle our time away in this other world.  There had to be a way back.  We searched everywhere and must have found a way that seemed different than the rest.  We found ourselves ascending until we reached a shale-like stair case.  The stone was deep red, and stairs eventually came out in a desert like place that could look out at the stars again.  However, the lookout was either an illusion or was some kind of window that we couldn’t pass through.  We had to keep going around another hidden path to the right and up again.  Finally we passed through an entrance, that not-surprisingly became the back door of this giant house.  “This is some kind of crazy network of underground passages in all these buildings and homes,” I thought, “I wonder where else this thing goes.”

After eagerly exploring, only somewhat apprehensive that one of the residents might return, we counted 8 total bedrooms.  I slept in the lower level room just to the left of the cave entrance.  White curtains billowed around a gust of wind, revealing the same view in the window that the ascending stair case did a quarter mile behind us, but from a different angle.  “This window is actually real,” I was relieved, “I can jump out through it back into the world anytime I want.”  That satisfaction calmed me enough to collapse to sleep.  It had been a long long journey, and all I knew was that I now was re-located to a high desert state, mostly likely in the US southwest.  I fell quickly to sleep, wondering if my new life would be any better here than when I left, and also wondering if I would take the time to see where else this new reality connected to.