Published in the Lucid Dreaming Experience
Lucid Dream of Nov. 10, 2022
In a place with the look and feel of a very old but well-preserved church, the raised altar area only a yard or so away directly in front of me and my ex husband, who I sense (without needing to see) partially reclining close behind me. (It’s as if we’re living versions of the old stone tombs in the Lisbon Cathedral we visited together in Portugal). The ancient stone of the walls, floors and steps is white, and sectioned off in places by fine black railings.
Suddenly, I notice a man walking around purposefully, and think out loud, “He’s handsome!” even as I wonder why I know this to be true because I can’t see his face clearly, and he’s dressed in nondescript dark clothing like a workman’s. I watch him for a few moments, then leave my place and follow him to an open, slightly lowered foyer directly to my right. He was apparently expecting me, because he immediately sets a container beside me containing tools he tells me I need, and/or are mine. They appear to be medium-sized garden spades with yellow-gold handles, the kind used to dig up dirt and open the ground in which to grow plants. He doesn’t explain what the spades are for, but he does make it clear that he wants me to go somewhere with him, outside in the open, and when I seem to hesitate he says with a smile, “It’ll be an adventure.”
But then my ex steps up beside me, and noticing the spades protests that they’re all still perfectly good tools. He seems to think the man is discarding them, but I know this person attached to the church has given them to me to employ in a way my ex can’t comprehend.
I follow the man, and although I soon lose sight of him, I am now accompanied in a “misty” darkness by my little white dog, Arthur, who trots fearlessly ahead of me. Mentally wide awake (and more than ready to enter a lucid dream after having lain awake hoping to achieve one) almost before I know it I find myself walking through the long open gallery of a place that feels like a magnificent and, I sense, exceptionally vast museum. Yet of course it’s much more than that because I’m dreaming, so everything about the place is mysteriously alive in the most priceless sense.
Then almost at once only a few feet directly ahead of me – and seemingly enclosed in a vertical glass case on top of a human-sized pedestal – I see a dark-red sun against the black background of outer space itself. Swiftly growing more luminous, this sun expands beyond the confines of the glass case as I rush toward it thinking, The Sun! The Son of God!
I’m able to look straight at it, and as I merge with it, I don’t notice the transition to once more walking lucidly around this mysterious-magical display gallery.
When I find myself surrounded by a formless mist-like whiteness (a lucid dreaming term for which is Void Space) I suddenly understand that there’s really no such thing. Tonight, instead of viewing it as an obstacle, I run my hands in a caressing manner through the “mist” recognizing it for what it really is, Love’s fabric! Everything is God Who Is Love! I dare to hope then that grasping this truth has freed me once and for all from the apparent obstacles of walls and ceilings that can sometimes seem to go on forever in lucid dreams, and other such mental constructs.
The dream space is Love’s Divine “fabric”, and whenever I’m lucid, I can be fully conscious of being in a lovingly imaginative relationship with my Creator.
Exploring this “museum” in which everything is placed on its own pedestal, I suddenly wonder about the hour of my death. In that instant, and directly before me, I perceive what is ostensibly a white swan made of marble or porcelain come to life as turning swiftly around, it spreads its broad white wings over the face of an antique wooden clock with a narrow base (reminiscent of the solar disc resting on the horizon, an ancient symbol for eternity.) It’s obvious this supernatural swan’s intention is to prevent me from seeing the day and hour of my death. Then sensing a male presence standing to the right of the bird, I somehow know for a fact that he was directly involved in her swift protective motion.
Just then a woman who obviously “works” in this grand place steps into view in company with another woman she’s showing around. They walk casually past me, but when they pause before some “exhibit” directly to my right, I deliberately say out loud, wanting to gauge the guide’s reaction, “This is a dream.” Turning her head she meets my eyes, and I’m thrilled to observe that she doesn’t appear in the least bit surprised, but is simply aware of the fact that yes, for me, this magnificent magical place is a dream. But her expression communicates that for her, and the person with her, it’s a very real place indeed.
Dream Notes:
The man in the ancient church dressed as a humble worker, but whose attractive power I instantly sensed and was drawn to, is a Christ-like figure. But I also recognize him now as my personal Guardian Angel, engaged in work assigned to him by the Holy Spirit for the good of my soul, which can be likened to a garden that must be consciously tended in order to grow and flower to its full potential and beauty. Hence the garden spades. My ex believing they were being thrown out reflects the fact that spiritual growth is not on his radar.
I didn’t think about it as I was lying awake striving for a WILD, but this morning I remembered November 10 was my late father’s birthday. I believe I have been blessed with some amazing lucid dreams with him “set” in Purgatory, and that I have perceived his progress in that place of purification between Heaven and Earth.
The idea of a purely spiritual eternal heaven is not actual Christian doctrine. Just as Christ was raised from the dead in a glorified body, so will all believers be raised. I have long felt that the experience of lucid dreaming, which is transcendent and yet also a sensual experience, is a mysterious preview of the New Heaven and Earth promised by Christ. Lucid dreaming can be viewed as a foretaste of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. In a lucid dream we inhabit a world created by our waking life memory that is in many respects a glorified world experienced in a glorified body where “matter has turned into soul.”
“At present we tend to think of the soul as somehow ‘inside’ the body. But the glorified body of the resurrection as I conceive it—the sensuous life raised from its death—will be inside the soul. As God is not in space but space is in God… This glorification is not only promised, it is already foreshadowed. The dullest of us knows how memory can transfigure… That is the beginning of the glorification… The “real world” of our present experience… has no place in the world described by physics or even physiology. Matter enters our experience only by becoming sensation (when we perceive it) or conception (when we understand it.) That is, by becoming soul. The element in the soul which it becomes will, in my view, be raised and glorified; the hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal. It will be eternally true that they originated with matter; therefore let us bless matter. But in entering our soul as alone it can enter—that is, by being perceived and known—matter has turned into soul.
C.S. Lewis
Regarding the clock and the swan who concealed the hour of my death (which I think was subconsciously prompted by the fact that it was my late father’s birthday) I was not aware that in ancient Jewish stories the release of the human spirit at death is likened to a bird, such as a swan, escaping the hunter’s snare.