This is a long dream, so I have divided it into three sections, ‘Before’, ‘Through’, and ‘Insight/Vision’
Dream from Nov. 2007
PART 1: BEFORE
Something very big has happened.
The world is collapsing.
BIG change.
People are herded/pushed to an edge. Below, what looks like a river of lava. The lava is very thick, viscous, and fills the wide, deep channel nearly to the top. There is no way around or over the edge. The people fall in as the crowd presses against them.
All sorts of people. Most are round/overweight. This is, in part, what has brought about the collapse / destruction of the world.
I’m at the edge near a bare tree (dead? dormant?). I have been here for a long while and have been perplexed about what ‘do I do now?’ In front of me, to my right, is something like a lava waterfall falling from above.
At one point, I had climbed the tree. Weathered boards are nailed to the trunk. From horizon to horizon are hundreds of thousands of people. Running. Fear. Panic. Something over the horizon and out of view, something very big, has collapsed/imploded. An enormous column of smoke/dust rises far above the horizon, roiling into a kind of cloud as it continues upward. A kind of pressure wave/shock wave expands as a circle, outward from the collapse/implosion at its center. It grows faster than people can run. There are no people – no nothing — behind the leading edge of the wave — it is swept clear. Those now at the edge of the lava river had left significantly before the collapse. Others left later. Still others left even later, too late, or not at all. Many had left significantly sooner, but they are far fewer than those who had waited longer and much longer. Even so, the edge of the lava river is as far as anyone can go. And still the crowd presses forward. They do not know about the edge until they get there — they do not know that there is no way across or around.
It seems that I am aware that there is something to do, but I honestly don’t know what it is – my next action, the next step, is completely unknown, a blank. I am simply ‘stopped’. I see all this fear in people, but I don’t feel afraid. Standing, stopped, at the edge, I am perplexed more than anything, with no idea of ‘what do I do?’ The crowd has not yet spread to where I am, but soon will.
From my vantage point in the tree, I had noticed, scattered among the crowd, areas that seemed more ‘open’, less dense, where the crowd seemed to be moving ‘around’ something within it. These seemed to be people who are different from the rest of the crowd. They are not afraid. They move at a steady pace, in the same direction as the crowd which spills around them like water flowing around an object in its path. They are not pushed or crowded or jostled in the same way as everyone else is pushed and crowded. I notice them because of the ‘space’ around them, like a bubble that ‘gives’ as others encounter it, but it does not ‘pop’.
Then, I notice that some people jump in on purpose. There is a sense that they seem almost happy, excited, eager.
There is a man moving along in the crowd, nearer to my location. He is not resisting. He clearly knows something about what has happened or about what is happening [something ‘behind the scenes’]. He is going with the flow of the crowd, not fighting or struggling or panicking like the others. There is a kind of ‘space’ around him, so that, while he is in the midst of the chaos, he is not being crushed by the crowd as so many others are.
When he gets to the edge, he looks at it a moment, as if surprised and also ‘ah, so this is what it looks like…’. Then he hugs himself around the knees and lets himself fall in.
This catches my attention. He is not afraid. I am not afraid. As the crowd grew, I saw people pushed in, struggling, grasping to hold on, afraid. I didn’t see falling in as an option – falling in was done by people who were afraid, who were trying not to fall in.
When I see the man, I see there is another way.
‘I can do that!’ I realize with sudden clarity. All confusion/perplexity vanishes. In that moment, seeing him fall in not afraid, not resisting, I think/consider ‘at least death (heat) is quick in the lava waterfall’. I had anticipated pain and had held back, in part, because of that. But his openness, excitement, looking forward to something, is stronger than my anticipation of pain and bigger than any uncertainty I’ve had. In that moment, I understand that whatever pain there may be, it will be very, very brief. Intense, but brief. It is clear that, whatever he knows, the lava river is no barrier.
I follow, let myself fall in like a dive – palms together overhead in a ‘prayer’ position.
There is a blank space, as if the dream ends, but it continues….