December 26, 2016 – 10:08am

When I was 19 I died but was brought back by a life guard who gave me CPR.

The story of that night, the experience, and the days and weeks which followed is written elsewhere on this blog. But this morning I’m thinking about how dreaming is like the next world but also how it is different.

For reference, I want to also share that my understanding of this physical world and the next world; the soul and the journeys it makes through all the worlds of God; consciousness and unconsciousness; Fear and Love come from careful study of The Seven Valleys, which I have read more than a hundred times since the age of 17.

Here is a good quote to get us started.

This station is the dying from self and the living in God, the being poor in self and rich in the Desired One. Poverty as here referred to signifieth being poor in the things of the created world, rich in the things of God’s world. For when the true lover and devoted friend reacheth to the presence of the Beloved, the sparkling beauty of the Loved One and the fire of the lover’s heart will kindle a blaze and burn away all veils and wrappings. Yea, all he hath, from heart to skin, will be set aflame, so that nothing will remain save the Friend.

Alright. This is the first time I’ve tried to explain this. Let’s see how I do…

Last night I dreamed of my favourite kind of dream. In it, I’m a detective investigator solving a crime. These kinds of dreams always have the feeling that I am alive in them. The feeling of time and place is as though it is a real place and time moves and feels the same as it does in real day-to-day life. There’s a feeling of the pattern of a day: wake up, work, eat, work, eat spend time with family, reflecting, doing something enjoyable like watching a movie or whatever and going to bed.

I’ve dreamed these kinds of dreams since I was a child. However when I was a child solving these crimes things always got worse for me and usually ended up badly. Now that I’m an adult having these dreams I actually solve the crime in the dream, bring the criminal to justice and have a feeling of excellent completion and satisfaction.

Currently, there is nothing in my waking life that gives me as much satisfaction as I get when I solve a crime or help a person in an emergency in my dream. This leaves me sometimes feeling as though a part of my self is missing. It makes me feel like a part of my life is unfilfilled, empty. I am not depressed or anything like that. I just feel that I am missing something. And this morning since I woke up from this kind of dream I thought I’d write about it.

But I don’t want to write about the dream symbols or dreamwork process.

I want to write about what happens to me emotionally when I go about waking up from a dream like that into my real life.

The reason I want to write about it is because this horrible feeling of despair about not living a life that fulfills me is the biggest feeling I remember coming away with on the night I died and came back.

So much happened in the next world it was as though I was there for 30 years and so it’s very strange to me sometimes to acknowledge that I was actually not breathing for about 1 minute at most. Some would describe this in a way as though I “downloaded” 30 years worth of information in one minute. Anyway, the point I wanted to make about this is that when the life guard’s CPR started to work and I was regaining consciousness of my body I DID NOT WANT TO COME BACK.

I did not want to come back. I did not want to come back. There was absolutely nothing on this earth which had any interest to me. Not family. Not friends. Not education. Not a professional career. Not the idea of traveling. Not the idea of owning a business or of acquiring goods. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing of interest to me in this earth.

Let me be clear though. In my inner being, I have a sense of Joy and Connectedness and Peace. It’s just that my Being-ness is not dependent on anything on earth. And my soul just felt like “there is nothing for me here.” It’s like when you are playing a video game and choosing between different levels or terrains and you are thinking “hmm…do I want this one or this one?” Well, I knew what earth had to offer and I wanted nothing to do with it.

So I also had this powerful feeling of how the spiritual world was right here wrapped up in this world and that thinking it was far away was an illusion and that the body was really the problem. So I’ll be honest. That night, when everyone went back to bed, I actually put my face into a pillow several times hoping to just slip over beyond the veil and illusions. But my body betrayed me because of the physiological impulse to breath. After 3-4 failed attempts at suffocation I just rolled over on my bed, staring up at the stupid ceiling. Feeling like a bird surrendering to the cage.

For the next 3-5 years I began a serious practice of mediation because I found the closest I could get to the feeling of being in the next world was when sitting in meditation for long hours. Sometimes I would sit for 1-3 hours. I learned to stay in a state of meditation until I overcome the feeling of not wanting to come back.

There’s more to say about this because I did use a specific technique but I’ll write more about that later. This practice actually helped me take control of my life and did eventually begin to bring me a sense of happiness, albeit a mild sense.

Anyway, the dream I had last night was my favourite kind of dream.

When I woke up to my stupid life where I have no money in the bank, no freedom, no respect, no options, opportunities, blah blah blah then I had the same feeling that I had that night when I died.

The feeling of fulfilment in the dream is so wonderful.

When I tried to write about it I noticed the difference between what feels so wonderful in the dream and what feels so awfully limiting and suffocating in real life and then I found it was too painful to recall the happiness of the dream and the images began to disappear.

And that got me thinking about the ego, and about Thought, and about Vision. It got me thinking about Territory and war. It got me thinking about abuse of children and manipulation of the education system. It got me thinking about real crimes and my powerlessness to do much to stop any of it.

So, here is the parallel between that night when I died and had a vision and this morning when I woke up with a vision.

In those moments, when I was waking up from nearly dying, I could just so plainly see how people were trapped and unhappy. I could see how their True Selves were trapped in veils of ignorance and lies. I could see how they had the best of intentions but how they also were limited by their own experiences and training or education. And suddenly, from deep within me, emerged a feeling of Compassion.

The problem with me though is that Compassion doesn’t come naturally to me.

Because of a long history of negative experiences with humans and because of my fore-mentioned fascination with the unknown, mysterious, invisible aspects of life I have just very little empathy for humans and their ignorant and hurtful ways.

But after my anger dissapates and after my own grief dissolves, and since I have to move through life anyway, like a little cow on an assembly line, I started to notice patterns of thoughts and behaviours which people have, cultural behaviours. And little by little, over the years, I started to see how if I look at things in the right way, I am a lot like a Detective in real life.

The crime is how people hide their True Selves and allow ego to rule.

Slowly, I just started to think that contributing to the process of helping people to see who their True Self is and help them to eliminate the ego-driven emotions like fear and anger, I started to think this was the best part of living.

And finally I found I have something to live for.