Dreams, Emotions, Lessons, Awarenesses

Last night was not an easy one. The dream began with a feeling of being smothered by someone who had come into the bedroom. It was like someone had lightly laid a pillow across my face and I was afraid to push back for fear of what was coming next.

Then I woke up.

I realized I was frightened and called for Gregory. I couldn't tell if I was calling outloud (which seems to happen a lot in dreams) so I called again, "Gregory, I am frightened. Come help me!" And he did.

Then I woke up for real.

Realizing that it was a dream in a dream I also realized, painfully, that Gregory could not come to help me and that besides his spiritual guidance and presence (which I have experienced,) he would never be able to physically come to help me again. Or embrace me. Or hug me. Or lie next to me.

The tears began to flow and I still felt frightened. I took deep breaths and worked at calming myself. I got up and walked around the condo a while, double checked to make sure the doors were if fact locked, and went back to bed.

In the dark, the dream was still with me. I tried to think about the emotion of fear and think about what message the dream was trying to bring me. The word lonliness came to the surface and the word alone.

Recently I had written about feeling "older" and about the exponential changes one goes through healthwise when the decades are larger. I.E. the body goes through expenentially more changes when your age goes from 70 to 80 than it did when it went from 50 to 60.

Also, I had read an article about an Austrailian scientist who just turned 104 and decided to go to Switzerland for an assisted suicide as we was ready to die based on his quality of life.

Finally, I saw on Facebook that the father of a student at Northeastern University, in a freak accident, was hit by a falling projection screen and might end up being parazlized.

I decided that the "fear" that visited me during my dream was of growing older, of being alone while ill, and of the continued realization that life is so fagile that it can fall apart on less than a moment's notice.

I know all this so why dream about it now? And lessons are not going to change the details. Maybe the other side of the dream is to remind me to live each moment as well as you can (I do,) be grateful for what you have (I do,) don't worry about those things you cannot change (I do.)

A snappy ending to this essay then is "I now pronounce you man and emotion. You may kiss the fear." Or a philosophical ending: "Life is easier to accept by the light of day than it is by the shadow of night."