Tuesday 18 October 2011

To sleep, perchance to dream...

 
Dreams are strange things. At least mine are. To call them abstract would be doing them a disservice. For the vast majority of the time I can't remember my dreams, I keep meaning to leave a notepad and pen at the side of my bed, but every now and again, I have a dream of such bizarre majesty that it remains imprinted upon my psyche long enough for me to remember at least the key points.

Take last night, for example. I had one of my more strange dreams. I don't remember many of the details, but unusually I do remember some. The summary would be thus:

I was in a band, and we were playing with Slayer. We had got to the end of the set, and we started playing Reign in Blood (I remember a set of stepladders being involved for some odd reason) and we were playing with such ferocity and intensity, that we essentially destroyed the planet. All was not lost, however, as we were given the chance to terraform the planet again. The next thing I remember was wandering around the planet (which was now the size of a large field), trying to find the incorporeal beings who were busy rebuilding the planet (at an enhanced pace). These beings were busy knocking together some pyramids, but were open to my ideas. Before I knew it, the planet was covered in grass and some trees were starting to sprout, and I was in negotiations with the planet next door, trying to get them to flood a field so I could use it to irrigate my planet. I don't remember much else, other than there was a giant toad which was evolving into something else, someone (I think it may have been Tom Araya from Slayer) tried to catch it, and it evolved in mid-hop, so all that was left in the other guy's hand was one giant toad leg.

I've had other strange dreams which I still remember fleeting glimpses of, such as the dream where I shaved a gorilla (a big gorilla at that!), the dream where I was elected Pope, despite telling everyone that I wasn't religious, let alone catholic, but they wouldn't listen, and then, as I was preparing for the Urbi et Orbi speech so favoured by new popes, the devil tried to break into my office at the Vatican, and I remember standing there with my papal staff, wearing the big hat and all the vestments, banging my staff on the floor as the devil tried to break the doors down, and giving it my best Gandalf-like “By the power vested in me, you shall not enter!”. I don't remember anything after that, but I'm going to assume that I defeated the devil and went on to become a great and respected pope. Can you imagine me as pope... It really doesn't bear thinking about.

The other dream I remember is probably the most interesting and thought provoking dream I can remember having. A few months ago, I woke up having had the most vivid dream I could ever recall, and the memory was in a level of detail I don't normally have. The dream started with my death, which in itself is not as unusual as people think, people often have dreams which involve the shedding of their mortal coil, psychologists and dreamologists (a word I would like to think I've just made up, but I'm sure there are people, somewhere, who refers to themselves as dreamologists) say that it refers to a desire for change, self discovery, some kind of transformation, and who knows, they may even be right. Anyway, I died, and then found myself, still recognisibly me, in a graveyard which was filled with glowing balls of light, which at first frightened me, and I tried to run away from them but was then given the knowledge (I know not how) that the lights weren't to be feared, but embraced, so I stopped running and turned around to start walking through the graveyard (which was the graveyard at Dunfermline Abbey). As I walked through, the lights moved away to let me pass, until I came to one particular light which didn't move, and I somehow knew that I was to walk into the light, which I duly did. I clearly remember the light enveloping me, and I then (in the dream) closed my eyes for what somehow felt like just a second, and an eternity at the same time. When I opened my eyes again I was in 'spirit' form and was looking at a 6 month old baby in a supermarket, the baby's dad was standing behind the pram, as it's mother was bagging groceries at the checkout. I then remember, with staggering clarity, instinctively knowing that my spirit or soul (call it what you will) was there to inhabit the body of the baby so that the circle of life could start again. I also knew instinctively that the reason I was about to merge with a 6 month old baby, was that it took 6 months after birth for the baby's neural pathways to mature to a point where they could handle having a soul. I clearly remember my incorporeal form dissolving and melting into the baby I was looking at. The baby closed it's eyes as I disappeared into it's head, and then when it opened them again, it was me looking through them, looking up at my new parents, knowing that I would never consciously remember my previous existence, but that somewhere, somehow, the me that is here at the moment, would always be there, along with all the souls which formed part of the current me.

I'm not, as I have already stated, religious, nor am I any kind of spiritual, but I remember waking up at the end of that dream with a sense of unusual calm and peace. It was the most bizarre sensation.

It certainly was different from dreams of gorilla shaving!

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