Who is up for a little dream analysis?

[Makalakumu]

This morning, I had a dream that ended up with me waking up at 3:30 am unable to sleep any more.  I feel rested this morning, despite this, and I had a good work out, so I feel in good spirits. 

 

The dream started with impenetrable darkness.  I felt like I didn’t have a body and that all of my senses were disconnected from my consciousness as if someone had plucked the antennae off an ant.  Then, the galaxy swirled into view.  Except this view of the galaxy wasn’t the typical view of galaxies that people usually have in their minds.  In Astronomy, scientists are able to take pictures of celestial objects by collecting ambient radiation.  Some of this radiation falls into a spectrum that the human eyes can detect and would be familiar to us as sensations of light and color.  Other types of radiation falls outside the visible spectrum and the images formed by these patterns of photons need to be translated into the light and color that human brains can process.  

 

These images look very different from the familiar images formed by photons in the visible spectrum.  They have amazing patterns and swirls, making these normal objects look exotic and beautiful.  For example, if you look at a flower under ultraviolet light, a type of radiation that is just beyond the human capability to sense, the petals have strange striations and vivid color patches as if some hippy artist dropped LSD and painted them.  Bees can sense this radiation and the theory is that these patterns and colors are meant to attract them, acting as markers for pollination.  All of this exists just beyond the human ability to sense and has nothing to do with us and humans would not be able to see it if we didn’t extend our senses artificially in order to notice it.

 

So, when the galaxy came out of the darkness, I immediately recognized that I was seeing it through extended senses.  The familiar image before me was only familiar because the information entering my brain was being translated into something my brain had evolved to see.  What I saw before me was the galaxy spinning in space.  Time had been sped up to a point where the motion of the galaxy was visible.  It takes 100,000,000 million years for the pinwheel of the Milky Way galaxy to complete one circuit.  In my dream, one circuit of the galaxy took about one minute.  

 

I watched the galaxy spin for a while.  The spiral arms rotated around a central bulge that seemed to be composed entirely of sparkling firefly lights so densely compacted that it was hard to distinguish as to whether or not it was one single light.  The arms of the spiral galaxy were more dynamic.  They moved about the center like ocean waves tethered to a spinning buoy.  I could tell that there was some energy fluxing through a medium and that when the energy passed, the medium remained.  The lights that looked like stars winked on when this wave crested and blinked out in the trough.  They would wink on again when a new wave crested, taking the shape of another spiral arm and then wink off as the spiral arm transited that portion of the medium.  At times, the spiral arms were lit, but the stars that composed it were constantly changing and dying away.

 

At this point in my dream, I discovered that I could move.  Initially, I was drawn toward the center of the galaxy.  I was interested in seeing whether or not the lights there were truly separate.  I discovered that they were and that they were blinking on and off regularly as the center of the galaxy spun.  This was happening far more slowly and the center of the galaxy seemed far more stable.  Then, I moved out over one of the spiral arms and examined the lights.  Many of them were like bright conflagrations, almost to brilliant to behold.  These would spring into existence and then fade away quickly, exploding with incredible violence as they passed from existence.  

 

I moved closer to examine one of these lights and some instinct stopped me.  I felt like I was close enough to see a bright yawning hole in the blackness with vague and strange images inside of it.  I began to feel fear and started to speed down the length of the spiral arm to some place where I felt more comfortable.  When I got there, I was near the end of the arm and I was really close.  I discovered that the lights were holes in the blackness, but the holes were honey combed like insect eyes.  Each individual cell was yawning and collapsing into nothing only to be reformed and opened again.  I could see that each cell was distinctly different and that no cell ever formed the same again.  

 

For some reason, this filled me with a great sadness and I took a moment to reflect on that emotion.  There was some part of me that wanted to be close to a particular honey combed cell again and I knew that this would never ever again be possible.  The cells would appear and would be gone forever.  Then, something strange happened.  

 

I noticed that as I had moved closer to the arms, it seemed as if time had stopped, but I could still feel the movement galaxy like the gentle rocking of a ship deck in light swells.  The rocking stopped and seemed to reverse.  Cells that had closed began to open up again and cells that had opened, shrunk and disappeared.  One in particular came into view.  I flew into it and met my grandfather.  I was a child, back in my body, and we were hugging each other as a storm swirled around us.  I could feel his fear as the waves slashed his glasses off and the boat heaved beneath us.  I could feel the love he bore me as he kept an arm around me and asked me to help see in the storm.  Together, we steered the boat into the lee of an island and waited for the storm to pass.  Tears poured down my cheeks because I knew that I had to go and that the next parting would be forever.  

 

I hugged him one final time and then exited the wall of the cell into another one.  I found myself in an old man’s body and realized it was me.  I was surrounded by two adults, one older man and one older woman, who each held my wrinkled hands and cried.  There were a few older children in the room also crying.  I realized that my children were holding my hands and that these were their children in the room.  I looked for my wife and realized that she had already gone and I felt an immense emptiness because I knew that I would never ever see her again.  That unique cell had closed up and nothing like that would ever form in this galaxy again.  I could feel my own cell closing like the throat of a deflating balloon.  Soon, it too would close forever.  

 

As the cell closed, I moved out of my body, out of it, but I knew unmistakably, that this was my future.  I could tell now which cells were the lives of my children and grandchildren and I could feel the motion of the galaxy start back up again.  Before me, the cells of my children winked out and then my grandchildren, except that new cells were opening around them before they winked out.  Then, I pulled back from the honeycomb, back to a view where I could see it as just a light in the darkness, surrounded by other lights.

 

I realized that the radiation that I was detecting from the galaxy was consciousness.  I pulled back again until I could see the whole galaxy before me, spinning and blinking masses of consciousness in and out of existence.  I realized that the medium that was being stirred was matter itself.  At the end of the dream, I recognized that there were no gods.  There was no heaven.  No hell.  Only the blind animating force of nature seemed to be at work in creating the elegant thing before me.  Two thoughts entered into my mind as I watched.  I realized that life was precious and that I would die.

 

When my eyes opened, I felt strangely peaceful and rested.  I went to my children’s rooms and touched their feet.  They rolled over in their beds and I smiled, beginning my morning routine.

 

Thoughts?

[King David]

The initial stage sounds to me like uncertainty, however that is the state I put myself during meditation so it could mean balance or acceptance of the ephemeral nature of existence.  The following sequence of color and lucidity I would interpret as an attempt of the your soul to communicate to your ego to engage some existential reality.  There maybe forces changing your future and you currently feel like you don't have the utilities to engage with the exponents of change, and therefore you must be willing to accept the consequences.

 

King David