IamSundog
Not insane
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2002
- Messages
- 3,426
This happened to me twenty years ago. My (then) wife and I had recently had a baby boy die from SIDS at the age of seven weeks. The months of grieving following this were of course absolute hell on earth. But in the midst of it I had an extraordinary thing happen to me on two different mornings about a month apart.
Normally I would wake at 7:00 to get up for work. I am a night person by nature and tend to stay up late. Then I sleep like a log until my alarm goes off, and I hate waking up and have a lot of difficulty getting my brain unfogged and getting myself going.
These two occasions were identical. I awoke spontaneously and saw my alarm clock reading exactly 6:00 AM, *exactly* one hour before the alarm. I awoke immediately alert, clear headed, calm, feeling great and filled with positive energy (which in itself is unheard of for me, and especially then). I had just been having a very vivid dream in which I had saved the life of a child - the particular dream was different on the two occasions but shared this theme. The successful conclusion in this dream seemed to lead naturally to waking in this exhilarated state. I got out of bed. My wife and other child were asleep and the house was absolutely quiet.
I was in an altered state of consciousness. It was as if I had achieved enlightenment or some sort of “cosmic awareness”. Everything around me was transformed. Everything looked normal in shape and color, and yet at the same time looked magical, “spiritually perfect”, as if made from exquisite crystal and glowing from within with a subtle blue-grey otherwordly light. I looked out the window. Every leaf and blade of grass glowed softly and stood out with hyper-clarity like thousands of crystals in the predawn twilight, absolutely bursting with life and fullness. Everything literally looked like a shining glass version of itself, and it seemed as though I was seeing a “perfect” or “Platonic” version of everything that lies behind its mundane worldly manifestation. There seemed to be glorious symphonic music playing, even though it was absolutely quiet. It was all heartbreakingly beautiful. Even the lowliest things – dirty socks on the floor, a broken footstool, wadded kleenex in the trashcan – glowed with this perfect inner light.
I felt absolutely calm and tranquil and alert. I knew deep in my heart the absolute rightness of all creation. I had stepped outside of my usual self. I was looking into my life and my house from the outside, as if I normally lived on the ninth circle of enlightenment and had just poked my head in down here into a typical mundane life on earth to see what it was all about. Time was telescoped – a minute could seem to contain an eon, even though the second hand ticked at a normal rate around the clock. I did not feel at all surprised at any of this. I felt that what I was experiencing was more real and more normal than my normal life, as if my normal life was a confused half-dream that I could never quite fully wake up from, and that now at last I was fully awake and seeing the world for what it really is.
As I thought about it, the “rightness of all creation” extended to include everything in the world that we normally categorize as negative: grief, hurt, selfishness, sin, war. These too were somehow perfect, just like the dirty socks; they had a larger purpose that was all part of creation’s natural unfolding.
It is difficult to capture in words how profound this was. I know it sounds like hippy dippy new-age mystical gobbledegook, and I wish it didn’t sound silly. I wish I could convey how deep and holy it felt. You would also have to appreciate how screwed up and un-tranquil and un-religious my normal life was (and is!) – how full of sadness and anxiety and frustration and selfishness and short-tempered arguments – to see how strange and unusual this was. I was not into meditation or spirituality at all.
It lasted precisely one hour, during which time I wandered the house quietly or sat at the kitchen table in the twilight. Just before the alarm was to go off the mystical feeling faded as the morning light outside grew brighter, and my normal day began, and I got ready for work and headed out. I seemed to transition easily and naturally into normal consciousness.
This was probably the most important experience of my life, and the most “fortean”. I don’t know what to call it or exactly how to interpret it. I did nothing to achieve it or deserve it. It feels like a gift given to me when my life was at an all-time low. It was hyper-real and does not seem at all delusional or hallucinatory in nature. I did not go on to become religious or especially spiritual, and it did not seem like a requirement to do so. Some years later I took up meditation for a while, and that was beneficial, but I never achieved anything remotely like this from meditating. It did not lead me to conclude definitively that God exists - - in a way, the experience was such that the question of God’s existence seemed kind of beside the point – as though if you have to ask a question like that, you’re not really GETTING the experience – or as though that’s not the pertinent question (don’t know how to put this any better). But I remember the knowledge of that “inner perfection” and occasionally I am able to draw assurance from it when life seems insane and incoherent and cruel, as it usually does.
I’ve pondered the relevance of the vivid pre-waking dream about saving the life of a child when I had just lost my son. Seems to mean something deep, but what exactly?
I was never able to tell my wife about it. In her anguish at the time, she would have angrily mocked and rejected it. I’ve never read about anything exactly like it. It seems to slightly resemble near death experiences just in terms of the lasting impression of a “larger purpose and coherence to life”. I have only ever talked about it with one friend who I know has had a few unusual experiences herself. It has taken me a long time to build up courage to come forward here with it, I guess because it has an intensely personal aspect to it and because I also tend to smirk a bit at stories that sound too gushingly earnestly spiritual.
Normally I would wake at 7:00 to get up for work. I am a night person by nature and tend to stay up late. Then I sleep like a log until my alarm goes off, and I hate waking up and have a lot of difficulty getting my brain unfogged and getting myself going.
These two occasions were identical. I awoke spontaneously and saw my alarm clock reading exactly 6:00 AM, *exactly* one hour before the alarm. I awoke immediately alert, clear headed, calm, feeling great and filled with positive energy (which in itself is unheard of for me, and especially then). I had just been having a very vivid dream in which I had saved the life of a child - the particular dream was different on the two occasions but shared this theme. The successful conclusion in this dream seemed to lead naturally to waking in this exhilarated state. I got out of bed. My wife and other child were asleep and the house was absolutely quiet.
I was in an altered state of consciousness. It was as if I had achieved enlightenment or some sort of “cosmic awareness”. Everything around me was transformed. Everything looked normal in shape and color, and yet at the same time looked magical, “spiritually perfect”, as if made from exquisite crystal and glowing from within with a subtle blue-grey otherwordly light. I looked out the window. Every leaf and blade of grass glowed softly and stood out with hyper-clarity like thousands of crystals in the predawn twilight, absolutely bursting with life and fullness. Everything literally looked like a shining glass version of itself, and it seemed as though I was seeing a “perfect” or “Platonic” version of everything that lies behind its mundane worldly manifestation. There seemed to be glorious symphonic music playing, even though it was absolutely quiet. It was all heartbreakingly beautiful. Even the lowliest things – dirty socks on the floor, a broken footstool, wadded kleenex in the trashcan – glowed with this perfect inner light.
I felt absolutely calm and tranquil and alert. I knew deep in my heart the absolute rightness of all creation. I had stepped outside of my usual self. I was looking into my life and my house from the outside, as if I normally lived on the ninth circle of enlightenment and had just poked my head in down here into a typical mundane life on earth to see what it was all about. Time was telescoped – a minute could seem to contain an eon, even though the second hand ticked at a normal rate around the clock. I did not feel at all surprised at any of this. I felt that what I was experiencing was more real and more normal than my normal life, as if my normal life was a confused half-dream that I could never quite fully wake up from, and that now at last I was fully awake and seeing the world for what it really is.
As I thought about it, the “rightness of all creation” extended to include everything in the world that we normally categorize as negative: grief, hurt, selfishness, sin, war. These too were somehow perfect, just like the dirty socks; they had a larger purpose that was all part of creation’s natural unfolding.
It is difficult to capture in words how profound this was. I know it sounds like hippy dippy new-age mystical gobbledegook, and I wish it didn’t sound silly. I wish I could convey how deep and holy it felt. You would also have to appreciate how screwed up and un-tranquil and un-religious my normal life was (and is!) – how full of sadness and anxiety and frustration and selfishness and short-tempered arguments – to see how strange and unusual this was. I was not into meditation or spirituality at all.
It lasted precisely one hour, during which time I wandered the house quietly or sat at the kitchen table in the twilight. Just before the alarm was to go off the mystical feeling faded as the morning light outside grew brighter, and my normal day began, and I got ready for work and headed out. I seemed to transition easily and naturally into normal consciousness.
This was probably the most important experience of my life, and the most “fortean”. I don’t know what to call it or exactly how to interpret it. I did nothing to achieve it or deserve it. It feels like a gift given to me when my life was at an all-time low. It was hyper-real and does not seem at all delusional or hallucinatory in nature. I did not go on to become religious or especially spiritual, and it did not seem like a requirement to do so. Some years later I took up meditation for a while, and that was beneficial, but I never achieved anything remotely like this from meditating. It did not lead me to conclude definitively that God exists - - in a way, the experience was such that the question of God’s existence seemed kind of beside the point – as though if you have to ask a question like that, you’re not really GETTING the experience – or as though that’s not the pertinent question (don’t know how to put this any better). But I remember the knowledge of that “inner perfection” and occasionally I am able to draw assurance from it when life seems insane and incoherent and cruel, as it usually does.
I’ve pondered the relevance of the vivid pre-waking dream about saving the life of a child when I had just lost my son. Seems to mean something deep, but what exactly?
I was never able to tell my wife about it. In her anguish at the time, she would have angrily mocked and rejected it. I’ve never read about anything exactly like it. It seems to slightly resemble near death experiences just in terms of the lasting impression of a “larger purpose and coherence to life”. I have only ever talked about it with one friend who I know has had a few unusual experiences herself. It has taken me a long time to build up courage to come forward here with it, I guess because it has an intensely personal aspect to it and because I also tend to smirk a bit at stories that sound too gushingly earnestly spiritual.