Here I am again for about the fourteenth time in 3 or 4 months in a setting of confusion…all these confusion dreams have been about either which train to take, which subway to take, which plane to take, which line to stand in or which hotel room is mine. Thankfully, this time there is no combination of directional confusion, and worse, merged with money issues: the loss of money, the inability to do a money exchange, the theft of money, or the impossibility to buy a ticket … just stuck wondering… where to go and, moneyless.
This morning’s dream is about hotel rooms and who occupies them and what they are doing in them: usually a remote control entrance into embarrassing theatre stages in which I’m not pleased to be either a participant or an observer. Hotel rooms have people doing things in them that are far more personal than in train stations or subway stations or airports.
Not that it really matters.
It’s all in my own mind’s creation of people and places.
Is the hotel room issue worse than the ‘where am I supposed to be going’ confusion?
Only the personal interactions that are so embarrassing and I ask, “Where oh where is my own hotel room?”
Out of this, and I wake up, physically, and go to the washroom.
So how am I going to get back into this dream, and settle out this confusion issue?
I go to my latest ‘enter the dream’ default to enter Dreamtime.
In my mind, I do the prostration of kneeling down forehead to the ground then standing and spreading my arms wide in the same manner that I’ve seen in a magazine years and years and years ago of some famous American Indian sitting on a horse at the edge of a cliff opening his arms to a setting sun as he’s viewing an incredible vista of the Badlands in South Dakota.
In my mind, I vocalize the Sufi Sam prayer “Ya Allah, with love, with reverence, with humility, I surrender to Thee and Thee alone, and Thou dost raise me spiritually.” I synchronize my breath and my movement with the prayer words, drawing out the breath as long as I can, and making the in breath/outbreath as subtle in flow as possible.
No flying off this time. No arms becoming wings.
Instead I remember meeting a French guy thirty years ago who could do back flips the same way my gymnastic trained daughter could, at my simple request, “Hey Katie, a backflip, please.” Great parlour trick.
As I stand up and spread my arms, I push my feet off the ground and I can feel my body invert head over heels to do a vertical somersault. I observe the movement is still a little tight. I flex my body and I bow down again to touch my forehead to the ground, into the visual sensory blackness. I leap up. This time it’s higher and I feel so animated I’m a Walt Disney cartoon, but I want to remain in my body, not be an animated cartoon, splendid though it is. I point my mind down into the consecutive contraction of the muscles that cue my body to remember this neural sequence of firing motor neurons so I can jump for joy and do the backflip when I return to the physical world.
Yes, I am dreaming and I am lucid and flyable. I sense the linear line connecting the forehead to the knees to the dorsiflexed ankles and to the end of my toes and it’s not touching the ground.
My body a foot off the ground? Enough!
The next stand-up and spread of my arms is a leap into freedom, even though correctly there is nothing to leap off of.
I’m levitating.
Oh levitation. Oh air-full delight. Better than a really good chocolate bar. Better than…
I’m ready for the Beyond. I’m in the Beyond. Oh Dreamtime.
And as suggested in commentaries that I repeat to myself before I retire to bed, I ask to the Dreamtime, “Beyond my projection, what is the reason for this confusion of trains, and planes, and subway cars and now hotel rooms?”
And nothing seems to come. And nothing seems to come. And nothing seems to come.
Still in levitation though. Still floating.
I could wait or I could vocalize the question again. “Oh Dreamtime, beyond my projection, what is the reason for this confusion of trains, and planes, and subway cars and now hotel rooms?”
And nothing seems to come.
No answer. So why not do Zkir?
It can be really hard to do meditation practice in Dreamtime. Some adherents say close your eyes in Dreamtime and the lucid dream grounds to a halt because lucid dreaming requires at least a modicum of movement, like clapping your hands or turning a few circles of the body to continue the lucidity.
Others say close your eyes, go ahead and meditate.
So I close my eyes and I ask the Dreamtime, “Beyond my projection, what remains of me when all the layers of my Identity disappear?
”And I chant a Zkir with my eyes closed. “Lā ilāha illā allāh hu” which means, “There is no God but God.” There is no Infinity, but Infinity.” There is no Creator, but Creator.”
So many meanings to express the Ineffable, the Sacred.
And I’m transported.
Floating as a unitary being in a vast black space.
Oh Vastness.
This time it’s not even cosmic, just black space.
Oh Vastness.
I’ve been here before but never so free, now, in this lucidity. And I sense the light in whatever contains my heart centre.
And I chant, “La una illa anta.”
“There is only Thou.”
“Only Thou.”
“Thou.”
And I’m floating around in this black space and my heart light is beaming a projection Towards the One. Or is it the other way ‘round?
Not exactly Returning but definitely Tuned IN. There is still a ME to recognize the Tuning-In process, but that about is all the physicality, all the personality I can sense.
And the question of confusion of direction or which hotel am I in or where’s my money gone or why am I confusing… has nothing to reside upon.
Confusion?
Gone!!! Pafooey!
The lucidity grounds to a halt and I wake up. It’s eight o’clock and my arms and hands are sandwiching my partner Shafia’s hands and arms.
Her fingers are twitching. I see her eyelids vibrating. I know she is dreaming. REM sleep-time. Lucid dreaming practice time.
I whisper, “Go lucid baby. Go lucid.”
For a moment I close my eyes and I pull her dream body into black space. We are floating together as a four winged being, drawn about in the attraction to the One Light. Just a short moment.
I open my physical eyes. I see a look of consternation, of deep focus in her brow.
I say, “Smile baby, smile.” She awakens and laughs, and I am laughing. We are laughing.
“So serious?” I comment.
She says, ”I was getting blessed by Hazrat Inayat Khan and I met Noor-un-nissa.”
A smile follows.
That’s another dream…her dream…and all in 45 minutes of real time.