I had a very linear deep-dream the other night. I woke up, checked email, and saw my boyfriend had sent me a link to some video he said related to dolphins. I responded in email briefly, "I just had a dream that involved a dolphin!" but I was busy getting ready for work and completely forgot about his video as well as about my dream, until just a little while ago when he reminded me. It's one of those whole story dreams, from first-person perspective. I wish I'd recorded it sooner because now I think I've forgotten some important stuff.
There are a lot of concepts and words I've forgotten so I have to use some from my mind in this-reality as I've no other way to describe them, though I think they are 'near' not 'exact' in that case. There was a WORD in the dream for 'the gold thing' but I don't remember it now so I just have to say 'of the gold'. There was a word for 'anchoring' that was a little different, but I can't remember that either. Oh well!
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It was a long time he'd been gone. Everybody had avoided talking about it, of course. They didn't want to raise doubt, or weaken faith. But our best and brightest, our most courageous warrior, had gone off to seek the Golden object that was our tribe's spiritual heritage, and he had never returned. How long could we wait, I wondered, until they said something? Would we ever as a people admit to failure? And what then?
It was our right to have the object. Our people had cared for it throughout time, until a couple decades ago. They had seized our cave-lands, the slightly monstrous people who had arrived and demonstrated easily that they were physically superior to us. They preferred to live under the ground, with their sharp teeth and vertical-pupil eyes. They killed so many of our people, and of every creature it seemed, and we had learned to fear them. We sent raiding parties on them regularly of course, catching mostly their women and children who came out of the caves most often, and we did anything we could to make their existence uncomfortable. Initially our people had hoped they would leave, with enough of that. They were tougher, but we were smarter. But eventually it just settled into habit.
The world had started to change a little. Those who knew, told the rest of our people that it was because the golden object did not have an anchor-person. That it needed one of our people to bring its energy into our world. Unfortunately the sharp-toothed intruders had killed all the people who had any idea what the object looked like or where it was to be found--some of them, while they attempted to sneak into the caves to claim it.
But something wasn't right with the world, and anybody with sense could feel it. The crops were no longer just the right amount. The animals took sick much easier. The fish in the sea came in irregular amounts and cycles. The weather had odd moments out of season. It was obvious to our elders that things were out of balance, and the press of the need for our retrieval of the golden object seemed more desperate every day.
He had volunteered, because that's the kind of young man he was. And we believed in him fully, and we painted him with our protection, and we rested, feeling sure that if anybody could bring it back to us, it would be him. He hadn't even been born when the cave-dwellers took it away, but he understood the stories, and its significance.
But it had been a very long time. And he hadn't come home.
There was finally a day of mourning. We had to assume he was not returning. The wicked cavers must have killed him, or perhaps something on the journey to or from them, although nobody could imagine what could possibly hurt so smart and valiant a man, and the legend of his near immortal skills grew as our grief for him grew. It was dark and quiet, with the sky feeling so heavy as if it were weighing down on us, when we finally talked about what should be done next.
The sad truth of the matter was that we had to have the object. If every one of our people had to die one at a time over the next century to get it, the fate of our world rested in our hands. The balance of everything was clearly skewed and getting worse. It was frankly hard to imagine having the slightest enthusiasm for anybody else's success, given our best had apparently failed. But something had to be done.
So I volunteered. I didn't want to. I didn't want to die, I didn't want to go to the caves. I had no idea what I was looking for or if I would even know when I found it. I only knew that it had to be done, and someone had to do it. It felt appropriate, if depressing, that I would be the one. I had no more husband, no more children. The cave people had been the cause of that. It made no sense to send a warrior or hunter, a mother, when I had no value to the tribe that could not be taken over by someone else. I felt a sense of fatalism, inevitability even.
With more sadness than hope, I was prepared for the journey, which would take many days. We had to live out of sight of them of course, or risk extinction. We had gradually moved farther from the caves. It would take 5-7 days and nights of walking to reach them.
{I lost a piece of the dream here, that I had previously. It involved how I ended up inside the cave as the prisoner of the cave people.}
They told me that the man of my tribe had been there. They had tortured him, mildly not severely, to tell them where the object was. They felt that he had found it, in the labrinth of one area of the caves below, but that he had not told them. But he wouldn't give up the secret to them so they could find it themselves. They felt sure, given how many of our most important people had died for it, that it had some great power and they wanted it. He escaped.
{I wondered why he hadn't come home. Now looking back on the dream, intuition tells me that he felt if he did, it would bring their people upon our tribe, searching for the object.}
They told me that I was going to go into the deeper caves and look around and I had better find it. They had been unable to, but I think they suspected we had some tribal secret that would tell us where to look. Several of them roughly pushed me down there, and as we were walking into one of the smaller caves behind a large one, they were giving me instructions, and I stopped in awe.
I had found it. I knew it with every molecule of my body that recognized it, and felt as if it recognized me. It was about 12-18" across, at least a couple inches thick if not more, a perfectly round torus (donut-shape) and inside that, a perfectly round sphere. It seemed like it was made of gold light, and yet it was more solid or tangible as well. It was on the ground over at the side and I had the impression it had literally GROWN there, as if it were part of the earth itself, like some kind of cosmic mushroom.
The people around me obviously didn't see it. It was glowing gold and made every part of my body feel a tiny buzzing, but they were oblivious. I felt that they were not equipped to see it obviously, if they didn't, and I felt this only confirmed my belief that they were less spiritual than us, and that my people were the rightful keepers of this holiness. I was not about to tell them where or what it was, so the moment I realized they didn't see it, I continued tentatively walking around in the near-darkness, stumbling now and then, even though since I saw the object I had begun to feel a heightened awareness of everything, including the floor and walls and shape of the caves.
Finally they talked among themselves, gave me a torch, and told me to continue looking on my own. The caves down here were not that extensive, and if it was here, it had to be somewhere fairly close. They implied that if I came to them without having it, it would be the end of me, and they left.
I went back to the small room that had the golden object. By this time it felt like the tiniest elements of my body had magnetically aligned themselves to it or something. I felt like it called to every fiber of my being. I approached it in awe and reverence, and kneeled down beside it, and then slowly reached out and touched it.
I felt the change rush through my body, and suddenly I was 'aware' in a way I had never been before. I felt aware of the cave, of every cave, of the mountains and the depths, of the valleys and the waters and the entire sphere of which our people knew only a miniscule part, I suddenly understood. And I understood something else, which I know knew our people had gotten wrong:
This was not something that was ever 'in possession' of a person. We had behaved as if it were an object that we would take from one place to another. But it was an integral part of the cave itself, 'grown' into the cave. It could never be moved. And although an elder had said the words that it needed an anchor, one of our people, to bring its energy into our world, I didn't think any of us had understood just how literal this was: I was the anchor now. I felt him then, our man of courage who had come before me; he had found it. I felt many people, as if stretching back in a line into the reverse of eternity, all those who had been the anchors for this energy as I was now. And I sensed clearly that it needed one person per generation. We only needed someone to touch it, once every 15 years or so.
I sat down fully and pondered what I should do. I felt that I needed to get out of the caves alive. The energy I now carried needed to 'connect' with the larger world. I wondered how I could do this? And then I had an intuition. The leader of their people who had briefly talked with me, I rewound the scene in my head. Now, with the benefit of the energy, I heard many things I had not heard before, in his voice, things impossible to have heard, but which now seemed so obvious. Such as weariness. He was fed up with the unpredictable, occasional attacks my people made on his, all over the object. He was even willing to lose the object, whatever it might be, if it would just stop the harassment. I smiled in the golden glow of the object; I had a plan!
I went to the top and demanded to speak to the leader. I refused to speak to anybody else, no matter how roughly they treated me, insisting on the leader. When finally they took me to him, I told him: look, it is not here. If it WERE here, obviously, we would have found it by now. We must have misunderstood the elders who said it was, and since they died in the early battles of your days here, we had no way to learn otherwise until now. My people will not stop the sly attacks as long as they think their most-holy object is here and you are keeping it from them. But I will make you a deal. First, I am willing to go and tell my people, and make them believe, that it is not here. This will stop the attacks immediately. Second, if you agree that once per 12 years, you will let two of my people in to search the caves -- alone -- for a part-day span of time, to verify and reaffirm for each generation that the object is not here, so this will never be doubted, then you will not have to worry about our people annoying you again. It is a treaty of sorts.
He was relieved, although he growled and hissed like an animal as if he were not. As I expected, he then agreed.
They gave me my sharpened stick, which I used as staff and spear, and what few supplies I had arrived with, and I set off on the many-days journey for home.
I was going to have to find some kind of food. I hiked around toward the big water that reached farther than I could see, although I knew that there was an end to it somewhere, and a couple of the men of our tribe had been to the other side. I had the interesting sense inside myself that I could almost feel the life inside the water inside my own body, the larger and smaller things, the greater and lesser awareness of the different creature-types. I found that fascinating. I could feel something large and of powerful awareness very near to me and coming closer, and I leaned over the edge of the water and peered into the depths.
A dolphin came to the surface.
Hello, human of-the-gold, it said.
You can talk?! I exclaimed, only to realize I had heard it, and done so, only inside my head.
All creatures will recognize you, he pointed out. You anchor the gold. You are of the spirit of the Mother, he added, and I understood he meant, the larger consciousness that was our entire world.
I realized two things, suddenly: first, that I was going to meet one of nearly every life form, because they would be seeking me out to make contact, as their way of connecting to the energy of the gold; and that I was required to do this, in order to bring balance to my world.
Second, that this dolphin was at least as sentient as my own people, and our assumption that they were rather bright animals was a tremendous mistake.
I was looking down at the dolphin, still in some astonishment, when I suddenly woke up.
PJ
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