Dreaming While Awake
I focus my mind on the bureau before me as I once again enter the dream state. Oftentimes, it was a chore to walk straight,…
Author: Stephanie Williams
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I focus my mind on the bureau before me as I once again enter the dream state. Oftentimes, it was a chore to walk straight,…
I focus my mind on the bureau before me as I once again enter the dream state. Oftentimes, it was a chore to walk straight, to see clearly when I was in such a belligerent condition. I needed something more, something vast and infinite to hold onto, but I didn’t yet know what it was.
I was asleep, and yet, there was a part of me that longed to be awake, that longed to cry out his name in the middle of the night. Kilda, Kilda, where are you? I shivered as I hugged the bed sheets more tightly. I longed to be conscious as much I longed for him to be baptized in the name of Jesus, but I knew as my head spun out of control that it was not my right to decide these types of things. It was not my duty to wonder where he was, to be cold at night when there were ample supplies of warmth.
As I suddenly realize what is taking place before me in what is perceived by most as the real world, the lights magnify, my alarm bell cheerfully whistles its “good morning” to me. The dream world was such a tender place, such an open door, and I believed with all my heart that I was still there. I grovel at the sight of the green novel next to me titled, Sleep Now, Quiet Forest, because my body was anything but quiet. I suddenly felt so out of place. What was this dream made of? Of what substance was this recited prayer composed?
Gathering enough strength to walk again, I find my way over to my dresser, gasping for breath, searching for something real, something tangible to hold onto. My vision was still foggy, my eyes were still adjusting to the brightness of the lit room. Without consciously knowing where I was headed, I slid across the hardwood floor, realizing that I had slipped on the paper mache` red flower that was once taped to the outside of my bedroom door. I then came to the understanding that the prayer that was now needed in order to snap me back to the waking world was not a recitation of any kind; it was strictly a plea that came from my subconscious, the type that was genuine rather than generic.
So I closed my eyes and prayed in tongues which were not recognizable to my conscious ears, but were highly familiar to my subconscious ones. I knew not the detailed exactitude of my words, but I did know the gist of what I pleaded to my Father in heaven: “Please help me to discern the difference between the dream world and the real world. Please, I beg of You, on my hands and knees, pull me back to reality, no matter what it takes.” Within instants, I was back on my feet again, as I felt a light ethereal pull help spring me to my feet once again.
After I was once again in the safety of my own bed, I made yet another request of my Father: “Please keep me here in this world… Please don’t let me leave it again. I need to stay here, I can’t take this.” My mind was churning as I thought to myself, This world… isn’t real. I was suddenly drawing a blank, being pulled yet again into the dream state, against my will. I needed more oxygen, but the only way I knew how to gain it back was to ask for more of His presence to fill me and to make me whole again.
These types of dreams that now faced me, I better knew how to manipulate, as I was aware of them. I was not only aware of my dreams, but of the dream state itself. I saw my pink aura flashing as I communicated with one whose aura was purple: It was Makta, as I distantly informed him of my dreams within dreams, allowing him to enter only the first or second layer—and that was only because my Father had asked me to allow him brief entrance. I told him that the Lord had requested that I have this dream within a dream because I was going to soon be married to Kilda, but it was not to Makta, because our silver cords were not tied. He didn’t care enough to know how to respond, so he left me alone, leaving the tranquility of the hallway near my bedroom door.
Feeling relief from finally knowing who my true love was, I then exited my bedroom door, deciding that it was time to defy the laws of time. I couldn’t now see any of what was now before me, but I could feel it all: my trip to Ireland that left me breathless, as I walked along its misty, vacant shores. I was somehow being pulled back in time, to an ocean, but I missed it. And in another flash, another pull, it was a white snowcapped mountain. Mt. Everest, so it seemed. Hugging that white baby snow owl was the most endearing part of my dream; I was in love with him, in love with his personality, because he was so frightened of the future. Frightened of the height and depth of those wide-ranging mountaintops. But my hug was what gave him the confidence he needed to spread his wings and fly above those hilly crevices. I watched with tears in my eyes, with the pride of a parent, as I realized that he was no longer a baby. His future was looking upwards and I was the one to help him know this.
With light serenity, I was again on my bed, gazing at the ceiling and wondering what had really happened. I asked Father to show me in my inner eye, the space in the middle of my forehead where visions took place, and I gasped as I watched it all unfold like a film screen. I remembered it all, but I only remembered feeling it. Now that I knew how to see again, I could let my body rest. The owl was Kilda, and I knew that he belonged to me, that I had helped him to spread his wings after all those years of having been clipped and beaten and bruised by the cold mountain wind. The fear of the Lord was now more permanently carved in my spirit body, so even if my physical body needed rest, my spirit body did not.
Being pulled to another night, another dream, it was two weeks later. I was getting ready to do a public reading of my piece, The Waterfallen Piano, for Creative Writing class. But almost instants after I arrived to class, I knew that I couldn’t. There was an emergency, there was something that I knew not what. It was sickness, it was spiritual danger with Ellie and I was being pulled to where she was, although I didn’t know why.
Two days later: the night dream turned to daydream, to reality. It unfolded exactly as it did in the night dream. Amazed. So I walked away from it all, knowing that my being there was somehow wrong, that I needed to be elsewhere. I sat on a bench near Ellie’s house and waited for our meeting. I felt as though I had been here before, had been inside this secret garden. Or maybe it was a secret door, a secret window, that had paved the way to tea parties made from Alice in Wonderland’s world.
She finally came out to meet me, after I waited for about 30 minutes. I recalled the reading of her spirit that I had given her about a week prior and the reason for our meeting. It wasn’t easy to wait on matters that cut so deep, but that was the reason that we had chosen to drink Barry’s tea from Ireland.
I slowly ambled to her room with her as I watched her past unfold in my inner eye, and I momentarily felt as though I was going to collapse… As if the dream weren’t going to last.
Her father was a drinker, a smoker, and he never knew what to say to his children. So instead, he beat them. But he bruised one of them especially harshly: the one who had all kinds of disabilities, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He was wounded, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t eat right for days, weeks, months, years. Daddy didn’t know how to talk, Daddy didn’t know how to walk his life, how to live his life, so he brought his babies right down with him. Anger was all Ellie knew, she only knew her Daddy’s harsh words. Her daddy’s cigarettes, her daddy’s cocaine, her daddy’s mouth of misguidance.
But Ellie couldn’t talk about it in her room, she only mentioned it briefly. She said she wanted to break one of her filthy habits, one of her disgusting dreams that killed her a little more each time she carried through with it. She wanted counseling, but she didn’t know how to ask for it. Just like her daddy didn’t know how to ask, just like he never taught her how to ask.
I knew what that habit was as soon as it came out of her mouth. She never told me what it was, but I knew the sound of that habit. And I told her that she should never let that overtake her, to never let her past get her, because that filthy dream that was in her head was nothing but a lie. That dream was going to be popped like a black balloon because it easily deflated, easily disenchanted.
She then showed me some of her paintings, some of her pretty, scenic escapes. There were soft-spoken lakes, sandy boats, lifelike sand castles. I was in awe and wonder at these fragments of faith, which I knew she had within her, but did not always allow to channel to the surface, to swim to reality. I was half-expecting twin turtles, sea horses, and paper sand dolls to jump out of that strawberry tea we were sipping on, but they never did.
She then asked me if I had ever read the book, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz. I said that I hadn’t. She pulled it out and showed me a line that particularly stood out to her, which I assumed was like a window to her soul: I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. Complicated, yet dreamy.
On my way back to my room, I stopped to observe nature’s power, nature’s paradise. I had seemingly never previously glanced at the depth of its beauty till this very moment, this very blessed daydream. What was it about this tree that stood out to me? It was green. Very green. And at that point, I knew that my aura was green whenever I was near Ellie. I was half-expecting it to speak to me, it seemed so alive. Everything at that moment seemed alive, even the quiet wisps of whitened sky above me.
As soon as I arrived to my room, I left Ellie a note, informing her of what I had seen in her spirit and the images that had come to me in my inner eye. But it went beyond ordinary sense perception, and I secretly wished that she would open her own eye enough to try to understand. I knew that it would frighten her, but the message had not come from myself or my own thoughts, which I then further explained to her. Ellie was well-acquainted with magic and the mysteries of the universe, so it wasn’t completely unreal to her.
Later that evening, she left me another note. She said that as she was reading my messages, she felt something light and gentle that was tapping on her shoulder, guiding her to open her Bible to the Book of Psalms. It was Psalm 37, whose beginning reads:
“Do not be provoked by evil doers;
Do not envy those who do wrong;
Like grass they wither quickly;
Like green plants they wilt away.”
As I read these lines for myself, I sensed the Holy Spirit tugging on me, telling me that Ellie would be the one to inspire one of my future stories, one of my future dreams. That Ellie would be the one to help me understand my marriage with Kilda, as his aura was green whenever he was near me.
I never did know if she had decided to try to eliminate that filthy habit, that abysmal book of black dreams from her life. But I did know that it was integral to hold onto heaven’s love above all else, in spite of whatever pain may come attached. And that is what I knew I needed to do with Kilda as I hugged onto that white baby snow owl, all the way back in the recesses of my dreams within dreams. I then allowed him to seep through every layer of my every dream, no matter how deep, no matter how distant, no matter how faraway. It didn’t matter because he would always be right here with me, right inside my spirit. Right inside my heart.
“She opened her life
And found relief through His eyes
And put down, she put down
Her knife” (Between the Trees, “The Way She Feels”)
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