falling dreams
You know how when you have a falling dream, you never actually hit the ground, because if you hit the ground and die in your dream, you die in real life? Supposedly your heart starts beating so fast that it stops.
Two nights ago, I had a dream where I hit the ground, in a way.
I was in a library with a bunch of people that I knew, and I wandered over to the kids' books section and I was just goofing around and not really paying attention to the rest of the library. Then I looked up and saw that everyone else was running out the door, towards their cars, and they were looking up and behind them. They looked terrified.
So I looked behind me, out the window, and there was an enormous commercial plane on fire in the sky. It was headed for the library.
All I thought was, 'Oh no."
And I knew that I was about to die.
The plane crashed into the library with this violent sonic booming noise, and suddenly everything was black. It was a vivid black, as if I had walked into a pitch-dark room and opened my eyes. But I knew, in the way you know things in dreams, intuitively, that I was dead. I knew I had died in the crash. I knew that I felt like I was opening my eyes into the black, but it was a disembodied feeling. I was floating, spinning. As soon as I heard the sonic boom, I felt myself floating. I was killed instantly.
And it wasn't scary.
That's what struck me afterwards.
Death wasn't scary. It was new. That's all I felt when I was dead. I felt like I had to explore this new sensation, this new frontier. But I wasn't scared. And I wasn't scared when the plane was about to crash, because I knew that I couldn't do anything. I was about to die, and there was nothing I could do. I had to accept it.
The whole thing was extraordinarily real. I knew, I knew that I was dead. I don't dream in color. Not many people do, but they think they do because they remember their dreams in color. This dream was in color: the sky was a beautiful cornflower blue, the blue of a cloudless summer sky; the plane was white with a black stripe across the nose, with black windows; the flames were bright red and orange, not much yellow. I also don't hear sounds in my dreams. The sonic boom sounded like someone dropped a stack of textbooks on a wooden floor. I can still hear what it sounded like, it was so intense. There was nothing odd about the dream, nothing to indicate that it wasn't real.
I was sure I was dead. And the thing I keep coming back to is, it wasn't scary.
When I suddenly woke up, I was stiff as a board and my heart was beating very, very fast.
I don't know if it was an 'out of body experience'; I don't know what caused the dream. I have to think about death a lot because of my mom, and in that respect, it was a soothing nightmare. Death wasn't painful. Death wasn't scary. It was like learning how to walk. It was just something new.
Two nights ago, I had a dream where I hit the ground, in a way.
I was in a library with a bunch of people that I knew, and I wandered over to the kids' books section and I was just goofing around and not really paying attention to the rest of the library. Then I looked up and saw that everyone else was running out the door, towards their cars, and they were looking up and behind them. They looked terrified.
So I looked behind me, out the window, and there was an enormous commercial plane on fire in the sky. It was headed for the library.
All I thought was, 'Oh no."
And I knew that I was about to die.
The plane crashed into the library with this violent sonic booming noise, and suddenly everything was black. It was a vivid black, as if I had walked into a pitch-dark room and opened my eyes. But I knew, in the way you know things in dreams, intuitively, that I was dead. I knew I had died in the crash. I knew that I felt like I was opening my eyes into the black, but it was a disembodied feeling. I was floating, spinning. As soon as I heard the sonic boom, I felt myself floating. I was killed instantly.
And it wasn't scary.
That's what struck me afterwards.
Death wasn't scary. It was new. That's all I felt when I was dead. I felt like I had to explore this new sensation, this new frontier. But I wasn't scared. And I wasn't scared when the plane was about to crash, because I knew that I couldn't do anything. I was about to die, and there was nothing I could do. I had to accept it.
The whole thing was extraordinarily real. I knew, I knew that I was dead. I don't dream in color. Not many people do, but they think they do because they remember their dreams in color. This dream was in color: the sky was a beautiful cornflower blue, the blue of a cloudless summer sky; the plane was white with a black stripe across the nose, with black windows; the flames were bright red and orange, not much yellow. I also don't hear sounds in my dreams. The sonic boom sounded like someone dropped a stack of textbooks on a wooden floor. I can still hear what it sounded like, it was so intense. There was nothing odd about the dream, nothing to indicate that it wasn't real.
I was sure I was dead. And the thing I keep coming back to is, it wasn't scary.
When I suddenly woke up, I was stiff as a board and my heart was beating very, very fast.
I don't know if it was an 'out of body experience'; I don't know what caused the dream. I have to think about death a lot because of my mom, and in that respect, it was a soothing nightmare. Death wasn't painful. Death wasn't scary. It was like learning how to walk. It was just something new.