Preface: This is the story of an astonishing transformative dream I had on our last day in Iowa about two weeks ago. The best introduction to this series is probably the first and third chapters, the second being mostly travel-writing fluff. Herewith, then, the dream itself, closely following my late-night notes with only a few tactful omissions. This won’t mean much unless you’ve read the earlier chapters — remember, I went to bed in a terrible psycho-emotional state some would call depression and woke up four hours later completely cured, albeit temporarily — and if you’re the sort of person who thinks dreams are nonsense, it won’t mean anything at all. I know better, however, and for any others with direct experience of an inner life, this dream’s for you…
The first part of the dream is unrecoverable, but I remember that it was absolutely horrific, among the worst nightmares I have ever had. It was so gruesome, it feels like the memory is not meant to be retrieved.
The second part is also extraordinarily gruesome. I’m in a building, at night, with a number of other people. There was a band rehearsal or recording session earlier, behind a glass wall like in a recording studio. I’m standing inside a small alcove looking through the window or glass at the instrument cases scattered around the floor. Suddenly they are soft, black fabric instrument cases, and they are all writing slightly. There are a number of large cases with corresponding small ones. Someone else is in the alcove with me, taller than I am. The cases or bags begin writhing some more. I can see through the fabric that there are shapes like heads inside. EACH OF THE BAGS CONTAINS A DECAPITATED BODY, I realize, and the smaller bags are the heads! Somehow the “head” bags open, one by one, and bloody, dark-colored heads start rolling and flopping toward the window. The man beside me and I are identifying the heads: they belong to the musicians who were rehearsing earlier: “There’s so-and-so, and there’s so-and-so”… In terror, I leave the alcove and start running for the front of the building where the exits are. Other people, maybe 20 or 30, are trying to get out of the building, and we all run out into the night. Outside the building is a wide grassy field. It’s dark. I’m over on the left. To the right, where most of the people are and only barely perceptible to me in the dark, someone or something is catching most of the fleeing people. I know something horrible is going to happen. I am still fleeing, running toward a highway I know is at the end of the field.
The third part is less gruesome but still very scary. I’m in a hilly, partly treed, area like rural Iowa, walking down a concrete road with a beautiful dark-haired girl in a long robe or dress. A very beat-up car cruises by with an evil-looking man at the wheel. He’s thin, sneering, with a red hat. He goes by and disappears around a bend by some houses at the bottom of the hill. We keep on walking. Then I hear his motor gun, tires squeal, and I know he’s coming BACK! “Quick,” I say to my companion, and the two of us jump off into the bushes on the left side of the road, flattening ourselves in a patch of gravel while he roars by, not seeing us.
In the fourth segment, I’m in a car, still with the beautiful dark-haired girl. It’s a red car. We’re in traffic, several lanes wide, with about 20 cars backed up at a red light. Up ahead a famous director is filming a movie. In fact, that’s why we’re backed up, to allow the filming to finish. At some point traffic begins to move through the production company, one lane at a time. I’m assuming they’re just letting us through out of courtesy, since I don’t think they’re finished. As I drive through, we pass close by the director in a tan jacket. I don’t know who he his. He has gray curly hair. He’s YELLING, however, with extreme urgency, over and over:
“RAM THE JET!! RAM THE JET!!!”
(Be sure to read the whole thing to find out what this means!)
It’s as if the scene he was filming has become transformed into a real disaster. I wonder if this is a trick, but he seems totally sincere, and we proceed awkwardly through what looks like a war zone on the divided highway near an airport. I see a large white jetliner landing nearby. Is that the plane we’re supposed to physically ram with our cars? I think it is. Something has definitely happened or gone wrong, and all the drivers are supposed to go ram the jet. There are what look like black-uniformed Chinese/alien figures (not completely human), soldiers or paratroopers, scattered about, but other people, citizens, are executing them. The aliens seem to be weak somehow. I see someone put a gun to the head of one of them, who seems powerless to resist, and shoot him between the eyes. It’s as if vigilantes are mopping up after an invasion. I associate the white jetliner with the invasion. Is it bringing more of the “enemy”? I know we have to make our way to the jet and ram it…
And now the fifth part: a different feeling, but still very edgy. The beautiful girl and I are walking down an unpaved country lane with trees and bushes on both sides. At the end is a rustic building where people are going into watch a movie. Then I’m sitting by myself — I don’t remember the girl at this point. … We’re all watching the movie. It’s a very rustic theater with wooden theater seats. The film is something like a Fellini movie, that kind of foreign film. On the other side of the aisle, someone near the front turns around, looks at the half-empty theater, and says to his companion, “I can’t believe there aren’t more people here!” meaning that the film is so extraordinary, it’s surprising that more people haven’t availed themselves of the opportunity to see it.
Then all of a sudden, it’s as if I’m INSIDE the movie I’m watching, or as if everyone in the theater has entered the screen and become the movie we were watching. Now it’s very Fellini-esque, and everyone is dancing inside an old barn that could also be the theater. It seems very spontaneous, with all kinds of people: men, women, young people, in all kinds of dress… But the most extraordinary thing is that I’m doing a peculiar dance, a sort of rhythmic jumping in a crouched position, where each of my feet come down hard on the wooden floor at slightly spaced intervals, so that I’m going thump-thump with each jump. Thump-thump, as each foot hits the floor a half-second apart, like “ba-rump, ba-rump.” That rhythm is the rhythm everyone is dancing to: ba-rump, ba-rump…
[dream ends]
I wake up and suddenly know that I’m okay! I realize that in the course of the dreaming, I HAVE LITERALLY “CHANGED MY MOVIE.” I’ve taken an utterly terrifying set of events and turned them into a still-edgy Fellini film. (Demons transmuted into art.) It happened by RAMMING THE JET, somehow, which I take to mean facing something in particular head-on or paying attention, but with the utmost urgency.
I’m OK. I’m not depressed or in pain. I get out of bed, go upstairs, and write everything down. I feel I have my self back. I feel more whole. I don’t feel small or unwell. I have tons of energy. None of what has happened or what I feel is necessarily comforting, but it is exciting.
I knew there would be a second dream when I went back to bed. There was! (I may or may not post that one, too.) But I want to go on public record here as declaring that I have never experienced a total emotional shift like this before, and that the spontaneous healing came from within. This has nothing to do with religion but with the reality of the whole person. Me. My dream, my symbols, but rooted in the void. More than anything else, the dream is a larger picture of change and renewal, as well as a strong message to not give up on myself. It should also not have escaped your notice that the “ba-rump, ba-rump” rhythm of the dance of life at the end is the rhythm of the human heart…
This is crucial to understanding what has opened up here, and I hope at least a few of you see the miracle at work.
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I call ‘em as I see ‘em, and every word of this is true. That said, reading over it, I still vacillate between terrible embarassment and the thrill of the art. An art that’s true.
The funny thing is, if I say I had a dream that gave me a winning Lotto number, people wouldn’t hesitate to believe. They’d just take it at face value and feel like crap because they didn’t win. But if I say I had a dream that helped me find a missing piece of my soul — for example
— I figure there will be some resistance. But wouldn’t the latter be a better prize? How could I operate heavy machinery, much less manage my Lotto winnings, with a piece of my freaking soul missing?!?
I’m just sayin’.
John
I think that dreams are just what you describe, and one of this detail is no more amazing or difficult to believe than the one that finds your missing tax forms or resolves your fear of failure for the time being. They are all our very own powerful tool for healing and resolution – mental, emotional or physical. All amazing.
I also believe that the only person who heals us, is us….”Healers” (be it MD, shaman or priest, psychotherapist, whomever-) may be able to guide and aid but without your cooperation, without your willingness to be completely open and vulnerable, they can’t heal shit. And I don’t believe your soul can ever be missing, just hiding it from yourself. My humble opinion.
That said, to be lucidly dreaming, which it seems you were, to enter the dream on another consciousness and change the dream…is so cool, I LOVE it when that happens.
I’m just sayin’.
Yes, the only person who heals us, is us, exactly. And that’s straight out of the alchemical tradition. This is an alchemical dream. See http://www.annebaring.com/anbar08_seminarl1.htm. This article by a Jungian analyst also makes the case for the world changing through individual evolution, always a consolation.
As for missing souls, or pieces thereof, I agree again. It’s all in the dynamic of expressing these things: instead of something being left out, one could say the awareness of it was blocked. Same difference, as we used to say in West Texas.
I’m also going to post the dream that followed this one. It’s like they’re all the same dream, and the last part needs to be attached.
Sounds like you are having some profound growth, which is very cool though painful. If it’s possible, I send healing energy your way. It’s a rough path but so worth it. Hang in there, it’s flying fast and furious which can be overwhelming. Sometimes you need to lie down.
Be well
Hi Rebecca, and thanks for your concern. Fast and furious is right. I’m pretty much a loose cannon at the moment, too, so lying down would be good — or just sitting and doing nothing — but I still feel too much like making trouble, so no resting yet. All is well, however!