Feb 22, 2014





What Will It Take: A Tale of Love

The conditions for reaching that pure and blissful connected love are specific, if not impossibly complex. But might the strength of that draw be enough to pull us toward it as a guiding light through all the obstacles we face? Is love a magnetic force like consciousness belonging to a body?

For once, there was no question I was aware of asking preceding this vivid dream, other than me spending a couple hours searching online for ideas to adjust my wardrobe, particularly focusing on an underbust corset and how to trim a long dress I own. But important elements in the dream prompt me to record it while it's fresh. When I have vivid dreams without investigative prompting, the dream seem to channel issues around the world I never would have been aware of.

I'm with Shantey, a sister-type whom I grew up with, at our old apartment complex. Something is amiss. A powerful tyrant is in the area and is searching for us in their quest to gather and subdue all free occupants of the previous order. He is enacting a new order. I grab Shantey's arm and pull her to the back of one of the complex's by the line of bushes and fencing. "We need to run." I exclaim to her in an urgent whisper, pulling her into hiding just in time before he turned the corner to see where we had stood. We trace along the wall of the complex to the next break, and wait. He already had caught up at the far end. I pull Shantey back to wait. "Wait. Stand in line with the tree." I walk her slowly as the man walks in line of sight with a tree a quarter of the way between him and us. He is shouting for us to hear wherever we may be in the complex, making ultimatums with an arrogant confidence that they will find us eventually. We've evaded him so long now that if we're caught, he likely will unleash a darker punishment on us than any others he's caught.



I swear he spots us as we make the quick run from the tree to the other apartment structure. And this is why. While we were passing, I caught a glance that sent a surge of recognition through my mind. I know him. He looked like Chris, Shantey's brother, my childhood sweetheart. But it wasn't quite him. Either way, my halt to get a better look had let him surely spot us. My urgency swells and its as if the music sped up and my awareness and panic heighten. We run.

In the next break between structures, an open-topped hover craft, beaten up like an old model truck, drops down to pick us up. My ex-boyfriend and a couple of our guy friends are in the cab. I see a strange sight repeat over the scene where the bushes and fence stand. A classroom of students with their backs facing me appears. Is this hallucination? I think to myself. Or could it be that I'm actually unlocking sight into the overlapping realms?! We jump in the open back of the hover vehicle. The ride is adrenaline producing, like a roller coaster without the harness.

"Did you see that?" I ask Shantey excitedly?
"See what?" She replied. I guess only I did.
"I saw a classroom of the other realm, I think I'm figuring out how to see them!"
She had no idea what I was talking about.

We're out of danger from capture for now, but my grip on Shantey is loose. I take a risk at the next slow turn we make to let go, pull her up, wrap a tight arm around her, and connect with two handholds instead of one.  With a firm grip now, I shift my attention to the sights of the town beyond the vehicle as we fly some fifty feet above ground. I catch sight of glowing figures advancing upon a parking lot with weapon outlines in their possession. "Do you see this?" I asked my driver.
"Affirmative on the cloaked team." He says. I'm relieved to hear him verify. All at once they each approach the window of a parked car where they pull out out an long orange glowing device to add to their weapons. This is an operation in progress. What are they up to? I wonder.

We fly in front of their target and I glimpse inside. "They're hitting a laboratory." I announce in dismay. Large clear vats with blue liquid in rows, and what look like small water heaters like you'd find in a house are lined up in another two rows to the side of them. Radioactive signs and caution labels zoom into my awareness. That team is loyal to that man back at the apartments. An explosion blasts out of the front entrance. I urge James to get us out of here. We are in danger for bearing witness. The team loots the lab of some advanced technology to enhance their current weaponry.

We get out around the corner. A woman from our team walks up with the same strange orange tube we saw the special ops team with. "Where'd you get that?!" We ask in terror. She is oblivious. "From that explosion. I found it. Cool, huh?" Shit. Next thing we know she is blasted forward with a powerful, but non-deadly force that sends her tumbling to the feet of our driver. I turn into the face of a different man from before, but know by his stance and stern look, and the men around him, that he was the leader of the operation we just saw. One of our guys try to rationalize with him. "C'mon, man. She didn't mean any harm. She didn't know. You can have what she found and we'll be on our way." The man gazed at him with an impossible to decipher expression. Was he buying into our man's rationale? In an instant, the man raised his gun and shot our woman dead. My awareness again opened and panicked, though I didn't move. He turned to Shantey next to me and shot into her shoulder at a downward angle, then pointed to me standing in front of him. His gun pointed down at an angle a foot from my head. I searched his face. Somehow my body was not tense. In detached analysis and acceptance, I analyzed the moment. If he shoots me, will it hurt? Will this kill me? I dreaded the thought of the intense pain of a bullet tunneling through my body at such a devastating angle from my head into my chest. I honestly searched for mercy in his face and believed it might be there for me. He pulled the trigger. My consciousness pulled out almost immediately, so all I felt was a focused attention at something to the upper left of my head entering at an angle. No pain.

My thoughts were still alive. I empathized with our men and how they were fairing with this murder, how they must be scrambling. I tried to return to my body to get an update on its condition. Is my body dead? Trying to return was like pushing against a magnetic force. I fought it far enough to enter slightly into my body. Discomfort swelled. I was in bad shape, barely alive, critically recovering. The state of my body was undecided, so I pulled away. I know I'm in a hospital now being tended. My sense of time is lost. All that guides me is my connections to the people who love me watching and caring for my body. I feel their distress in snapshots of empathic connection. I see their actions like paintbrush strokes of color.

Finally, I return and awake into my body. Chris is beside me, anxious, angry, but relieved. There is sadness in his eyes. I knew one of us had died, and the other two (myself included) survived, but I asked about our status. He explained the woman died, but Shantey was fine. She was shot into the right shoulder, but it missed any organs. I, however, was paralyzed. My legs were useless. The bullet somehow messed up my lower spine from the top. My brain was fine though. A fact I thought to be a miracle in itself. I imagined myself with part of my brain damaged, how my speech would change, how processing would diminish. I was okay. Chris opted to care for me. He picked me up out of the short hospital bed and walked me out. As we walked to a bus, I lean on his shoulder and whisper sweetly "I've fantasized about being this close to you for so long. Only took me losing my mobility for it to happen." I laugh sincerely amused, but content. I sense a supreme protectiveness emanating from him. This pose conveys a perfect compliment between us. Me, a strong, idealistic woman, debilitated. It unleashed a core of myself, a sweet, honest, loving, humble, humorous, playful personality. I was happy and free, and exactly where I wanted to be. He was devoted in his protectiveness, which held remorse seeing what violence had done to me. I became his duty. Having clear purpose served him well. It looked so good on him.

I wondered to myself, Why is Chris taking care of me? Wouldn't Jim be doing this? 
Yes, I thought. Absolutely he would. That apparently was all my dream self needed to recognize. There was no sense of replacement, who had the rightful place, or comparison between them. With consideration to the sequence of events, him being the one to lend the care was most appropriate.

Aboard the bus, he sits across the isle from me. His respectful distance was sweet, but I wondered how amazing sex would still be with him, and whether he'd be able to overcome any guilt at engaging so with a disabled woman. He hadn't mentioned the incident of the shooting yet, but I wanted to. "It's weird. He only shot the women." Chris looked at me. "The man who shot us, he only shot the women. Why? There were men there too. Why not shoot everyone? He only needed to shoot the one who stole the item. He turned to us as an extra indulgence." We met thoughts and laughed together as we both said "He must hate women." As if we cracked a serial killer's motis operandi. "Maybe his mother or wife turned him rotten." I added. We linked hands and shared a beautiful moment of humor. He was grateful I eased the tension in his heart about what happened. That we could laugh about it. I showed him I really was alright. And I meant it. I felt great. He didn't need to feel the burden of remorse. Finally, I had him attached to me. I was in bliss.

ANALYSIS
That last realization, when we both said "He must hate women" put the entire dream in perspective. Only as I was typing this into that paragraph did it become clearer to me. However, I can't seem to express the words to inform a reader. I just have a feeling of understanding, even though I couldn't rationalize it out for you. All I can offer is this back story, Chris in my real life has been distant, and difficult to contact and develop an intimate relationship with. He served two tours overseas, and disclosed upfront to me that he has a negative perception of woman, understandably, from the emotional betrayal he witnessed to his buddies and himself while on duty.

I'm not interpreting this dream to mean that the only way I'll get us close if by immobilizing myself. That's silly. Rather, it offers me a look into the mental processes he faces in reference to us. He has a strong sense of protectiveness for me, while an offset of himself self-sabotages and seeks to protect him by eliminating the threat I pose to his established suspicion of women. He's melancholy, remorseful and disgusted even by the state of affairs, how life has ended up for us. His protective side only emerged in the dream after the shots were fired. I felt the shooter served him as a leading commander. He was sent to eliminate the threat. He easily eliminated the oblivious female, shot his sister but not severely, and hesitated on me, but only if . Let me be clear that the shooter was NOT a depiction of Chris. Take it as it was depicted to me, a commanding force under his rule. Even the tyrant was Chris, it resembled him, was an aspect of him, but not ultimately him. Recognize the Chris, who I saw as really Chris, who cared for me, had vengeful feelings for the shooter. The shooter is more akin to a defense mechanism, employed to remove threats.

Chris felt remorse that I was injured because he simply never wants to see me in danger. I was an innocent who had no place at the barrel end of a gun. He was angry to see the violence of war enter into the domain of home. I know Chris has a strong sense of protectiveness for his family, his loved ones. This helps me visualize and understand what I think I know about him. It doesn't grant me clues on what to do.

Here I was just shopping for ideas on how to upgrade my current wardrobe toward what I want it to be. I can't find the styles I want to wear at reasonable prices. I was envisioning meeting Chris again for the first time in 8 years or so wearing an outfit that would compliment our fantastical and adventurous natures. Somehow me winning his closeness by being immobilized related to that, I guess. But I have been asking this question. What will it take. I've been asking that all my life. For the conditions to align for us to be together in the way we both imagine. How does that become reality with so much interference and contradicting factors? In a way, this dream was suggesting it becomes a reality as a natural, and unsuspecting course of events. So, do we trust it by going along the linear path of dealing with our obstacles as they come? If we hurry it, does it result in sacrifices like my dream depicted? I don't know. But it's a fascinating journey we play with the fates.

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