A life review, and preview
From the journal, 4/17/1990
I am in a line of some sort. It does not feel like I am dreaming at all. I am hyperaware of my body’s sleeping state. In fact, I pause to consider that when my body is ‘awake’, the sharpness of my sensations is considerably duller than it is now while out of body. In comparison, physical wakefulness is like spiritual sleep. My senses are far more acute in the purer spirit state and preferable to physical experience.
Two girls help the people in line. I am a little disoriented and ask quite sincerely “What year is this?” I feel like it could be any year in this place, a place that feels like a very real “spiritual locale”. It could be any year but I want to know what year it is now. An interesting question I suppose. One girl says: “1924” and I reply “Don’t you mean “1973?” “No, it is 1924” she repeats very clearly. In fact, now that I think of it, it’s like I am selecting a year to experience. This is a place where I can choose to have that kind of thing happen. So after the foregoing dialogue regarding the year 1924 I say, “O.K., I’ll get out here” but the girl says that I can’t. “It’s 1965 now, why don’t you go now, otherwise you’ll have to go much later” [1965 is the year of my birth]. “O.K.” I say- I always seem to say “O.K.” to these people! So all of a sudden it seems like it is 1965. Clothes, furniture, architecture, everything change to match the era. Almost immediately a man approaches to bring me to the theater.
The theater exists to show us the entire content of my life in one sitting so that I can decide whether or not I want to take it. In the audience sits every single entity I will come into contact with or have any effect on with my life. As I see things happen on screen, I see all the branch events all the way to their termination and how those events affect all the people involved- from their own perspective, the perspective of those around them, and from my perspective. It is clear that these 'ripples' my life will create are of primary importance. I have to consider them as carefully in my decision as the events I see transpiring for me.
This is not going to be a joy ride, nor is it intended to be anything of the sort. My sister Debbie is there of course, or maybe her spirit. Presumably this is because she will be making a decision regarding the same family in the year 1967. I don’t believe she notices me because it seems that I walked in on a display of her life, but that once I arrive, we are watching two different “movies” each displaying the images of our individual lives and their overlaps on the same screen simultaneously.
The man beside me seems to feel sympathy for me because of the choice I would be making (or the one I had already made?) I don’t think it’s because he thought that my life in particular would be any more difficult than anyone else, but instead that most spirits had to incarnate in difficult lives to overcome shortcomings that would otherwise persist. So what I sensed was his sympathy for errant spirits in general rather that sympathy for my individual circumstances, though I feel that also.
I sympathize with Debbie because she didn't seem to be getting as much as I would out of life. She also took a number of hard knocks throughout. Even as this thought occurs to me, the guide informs me that she will agree to this life partly as a 'favor' to me, so that she can protect me from certain adverse influences while allowing me to take advantage of what would otherwise be a substantially more dangerous but creatively inspiring childhood environment. In addition, I am informed that her trials are something she can handle because she has a strength I lack.
The first scene is with my father, Debbie, and myself. In it, Debbie is a young girl (and here as well as in all other scenes the ages of all participants are in the proper relationship to each other). Our Dad went out and then as a trick burst into the house making a face which made Debbie scream and cry. Her spirit sitting in the audience mirrored the reaction of her onscreen counterpart just as I spontaneously mirrored that of mine. We were in the interior of a poor dwelling, little more than a shack. I then see many scenes, major and minor which I am fairly certain extend all the way from my birth in 1965 all the way up to my (death?) in the future. Make no mistake here, it felt like I was experiencing every infinitesimal fraction of a moment of my full life from pre-birth to death including sleep, brushing teeth, cycling to work, and everything else. In addition I bore witness to every reaction to my existence within the lives of every person I would ever come into contact with or have any effect on.
There are far too many scenes to recount or remember and I’m not sure they all had to do with the present incarnation. Some, like the following seem to relate to memories my spirit has of other lives while watching as this one played itself out. It does seem that my present father had been significant in at least one other life with me.
There is a scene where my father [in the dream he wasn't my 'father', but a friend] had too much to drink and went out to a boat tied nearby to retrieve more liquor. He loses his balance in the boat and falls into the water. He dies of drowning amid fragmenting ice floes on an Alaskan river. I see his body engulfed, then totally concealed by the jostling floes and black water. His spirit seems to have been pulled out then so that he could rejoin me in a new family. He has to leave before I do though (in order to be born in time to be my father?). I feel like I am traveling with him and experience his early married life with my mother just before re-experiencing events from my childhood.
The gist of the whole experience left Debbie in a very blue-collar and sort of lower 'caste' position as an adult while I am pretty successful in the material sense. When I see the entirety of my life, all of the hardships of my childhood make sense in the context of what needs to happen and what I want to be. I don’t want to be poor (when young) but it doesn’t seem so bad in the context of watching a movie in a theater. This is especially true because the movie has a happy (or at least successful) ending. It does seem that in the end I possess some personal influence and status. I don’t think I was 'just' an artist- there is something else to it. After watching the entire life I am pleased with the choice. I could have taken something else but I chose this life and in the end it really isn’t all that bad. I discuss it a little with Debbie’s spirit and she agrees. We see that the lives we choose are in the end appropriate and beneficial despite certain adverse events.
I have to say that in the early years I focused on, my dad doesn't come across very well. I'm surprised because it's unexpected but at the same time I realize that he chose that life just as we chose ours. There is no point in feeling anything but empathy for him because he had to do those things just as we had to do the things we did in our lives, good and bad.
This dream was incredibly real, during the entire dream I was fully aware of the fact that my body was sound asleep and that this was a spiritual experience. I felt more aware of everything around me than I do when awake, so much so that the idea of being in my physical body again made me think of a loss of consciousness in that my level of awareness would be considerably duller than what I have as a spirit.
The last scene I remember is of me and Kitty riding along a country path on bicycles. We both have binoculars with us and are enjoying a ride through early evening woods. We narrowly avoid being hit by a car at a turn in the road. Or did I get hit? I know Kitty didn't.