childhood recurring dream, that had been real to an Uncle.

[Lee]

this is a strange one, that i'd like to share.....make what you will of it,  i'd like some opinions.

to start.....i'm now 50, and the following happened between the ages of 4 and 7 yrs old, and I remember it all as vividly as if it were yesterday.


at around 4 yrs old, I was seeing a large (man sized) shape, blur, oval, in my bedroom. I saw it often, usually on awakening during the night.(no idea what was waking me)
It wasn't frightening, or menacing.....and not a constant thing, but I always had the feeling it was watching me, or just wanted to be with me.

Then one time it came to my bedside chair and appeared to sit......this frightened me a bit, and I went and woke my parents and told them what had happened/been happening.

Dad very matter of factly replied that this was his Brother, who'd dearly loved me, but died when I was a baby......that he was my Guardian Angel, and to not be afraid because he was visiting to keep me safe.

After a while (maybe a few months) I stopped seeing this and all was fine.

Dad had never mentioned this Uncle before, and there were no pictures, etc. of him in the house.......i'd not even known he'd existed.  This was the only time he ever mentioned him, and Mom never mentioned him at all.......up to that point.

Forward to when I was late 6 or early 7 yrs old.

I began having a strange dream......leaving from a dark, closed business building, into a back alleyway in a city somewhere... a small alley where all the buildings were dirty brown brick with dirty lights hanging over each rear exit door.......from the few signs and advertizements I could see in the alley, everything appeared to be old (to a 6 yr old).

on stepping into the alley I saw a Police car to the right, with a single red light revolving on its' top......the car was maybe 20-25 yards away.

For some reason I turned to the left, away from the car and began running (at this point I realized in my dream that I wasn't a child but a grown man, my shoes and pant-legswere mans size and style).
I hear someone behind me shout, "STOP OR I'LL SHOOT !!!", which really scared me, but instead of stopping I ran faster....as fast as I could.

Then I heard a gunshot......and felt a terrible pain in my back......and began falling forward/face-down.

Then, i'm leaving the back door of the same building, into the same alley, and the same dream plays out over and over again, several times a night, but I never fell all the way to the ground.......eventually i'd wake up and on falling asleep again would dream something else.

my Parent's weren't easy to approach about things like dreams, or much else for that matter......but after having this same " dream-loop "  several times over a period of a week or so, I told my Dad about it.

when I first told him the basics of the dream, the color drained from his face and he asked me to tell him EVERYTHING that I could remember about the dream.......when I did, he began crying and physically shaking.....and told me that he'd explain it to me when I was older, but that it was just a dream and to try to "change the dream" if I started having it again.........which I found quite easy to do.

I never forgot that dream, and approached him about it when I was in my early teens......he remembered me having it, and told me what he couldn't before.

when I was less than 2 yrs old, his older Brother had gotten liquor-sick at a bar party, and had broken into the backdoor of a local dry-cleaners' shop to steal a clean suit to return to the party in........the Police caught him exiting the backdoor, into the alley, and when he ran from them, he was shot directly in spine and killed instantly.....this was Chicago, 1963.

i've pondered this dream my entire life.......Dad has absolutely no idea how I knew anything about what had happened as this was quite a shame on the family and was never, ever, spoken of......

it has no bearing on my life, and if I never figure it all out it's no big deal.......but i've always thought it "odd".

~Lee~

[Tony Crisp]

Lee - Suzanne Segal, speaking from her continuous experience of being the infinite says, “The vastness carries a non-personal desire to expe¬rience itself. This appears to be the purpose of human life—for the vastness to meet itself everywhere it turns. The notion of personal growth or inner development is contrary in every respect to the way the vastness exists. The quest to awaken implies a sense of futurity that precludes basking in what actually is right now.” (From her book Collision with the Infinite)

By vastness she is referring to her experience of being everywhere are once and so had a blanket awareness rather than a local one that most of us have. So mentioning this type of awareness, Stanislav, M.D. Grof, commenting on this area of extended awareness says that often what is experienced relates to the present personality, adding to the understanding of its composition and makeup. At their best they give clear information about the lives and environment of long dead ancestors.

Another way of describing this is that I feel that our personal awareness is just like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. So our personal awareness, limited as it is by our body’s senses, is above the surface of the water, which is like individual waking self-awareness, or our waking self. In this there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is seen, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us though our dreams. 

There is a zone within dreamless sleep that is worth noting. Usually in dreamless sleep we are unconscious. In other words we have no experience of existing.

If we enter this dreamless world of sleep with awareness – i.e. lucidly – it becomes an infinite ocean of consciousness in which you are an integral part of the cosmos and all that exists in it. Here there is the possibility of gaining insight into how your present personality was formed out of this ocean of possibilities and collective experience. Christianity has called this zone spirit or God, and Buddhism has named it the Void. In nature it is experienced as formless, having no features and is thus indefinable. Yet it also is seen to be the fount from which all phenomena arise. It is also experienced as being self existent and unchanging. In this zone you have moved beyond the limitations of your personal memories and experiences and are immersed in a collective ocean of consciousness. This zone is sometimes entered by people using meditation. What happens is that one enters sleep and yet maintains personal awareness. This allows consciousness to penetrate levels of self usually completely hidden. People aware at this level say they have access to all knowledge.

Tony