Dreams of Flying, part 2
I may have mentioned before, but Fall is my favorite season. I was born in November, so I'm a Scorpio (whatever that's supposed to mean).
I am by nature quiet and introspective. I can usually feel when the season turns; I become more myself, more introspective and more introverted.
At first glance, "introvert" seems to refer to someone who is quiet and shy, but that's not quite it. Being an introvert really refers more to the fact that you get your power and motivation and energy from within. With introverts, the spiritual "batteries are included".
Extroverts are "externally powered" and get their energy from others. I say all this merely as prelude to the subject at hand, which is Dreams of Flying.
I wrote in part one of this series that I have always had the sneaking suspicion that I don't just "dream" of flying. I actually do fly sometimes when I sleep, but my mind interprets it as a dream.
In other words, I believe that "I" can dissociate from my body. "I" am not "me". I have touched on this in some of my poetry. There's a verse in my poem "Night Bird" that goes:
Darkness surrounds me
my heartbeat is pounding
my Spirit leaves my body
on the bed sleeping soundly
Bursting through the clouds
Traveling at Night Speed
Silver Moon illuminates the
shoes on my Night Steed....
This may sound silly or far-fetched, but I have a definite reason for thinking it, which I'll get into below. I guess "flying" really is a spiritual thing. My physical body doesn't fly. My soul, or my spirit has wings, and Red Bull ain't got nothing to do with it, either.
Now, the reason I say I am fairly certain I can disassociate from my body, is that I have done it once before while wide awake.
Back in about 1995, my family experienced a grave tragedy. One of my Uncles killed my Step Grandfather. (interestingly enough, this seems to be a family curse. My other Grandpa, who was the sweetest, most patient, even-keeled man I've ever met, apparently killed his step-dad or something like that. I'm still trying to learn more about it, but I'm not sure how much is known about it, by people who are still living.)
Anyway, my Aunt B called me at my college, and told me that Grandpa had "gone to be with the Lord", which wasn't surprising since he was old and smoked heavily. I assumed he died from that. So, I drove my "Oldsie" from Marshall Texas down to Bryan, Texas for the funeral. I didn't know it, but I was in for a profound shock when I got there.
You see, I had just dropped the Uncle in question off at my Grandpa's house a few months before this tragedy. However, when I got back down to Bryan, Texas for the funeral, I gradually began to notice that my Uncle was not around.
The whole family, including his brothers and sisters and all my cousins and such where there, but he wasn't. This fully dawned on me when I saw his clothes and boots neatly folded up next to the couch. So of course, I asked one of my cousins, "hey, where is Uncle T"
She said, "They didn’t tell you?". Baffled, I was like "tell me what?". Instead of telling me, my cousin went and got her mom, Aunt B, who is the "Church-Lady" of the family. She really is good at "saying some words" and handling religious stuff.
Aunt B gently broke it to me that Uncle T and my grandfather had had a fight one night, that ended up with Uncle T shooting my grandfather. No matter how skillfully and gently someone tells you something like that, it hits you like a Concrete Wave.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I gradually began to go into shock. I was a pall bearer at the funeral, and I was able to fulfill my duties, but when we finally got situated in the church, I was fully submerged.
I remember sitting in the first pew on the right side of the church with the other pall bearers. My Aunt B, naturally, was speaking and giving the Eulogy and such. She was in the pulpit, which was up and to my left. I was looking up and to the left at her as she spoke.
At a certain point, I slowly began to realize something was wrong. Something had changed. I couldn't quite figure out what it was, so I kept picking at it with my mind until it suddenly hit me:
I was no longer looking up and to my left at Aunt B. Just the opposite, I was now looking down at her, to my right....way down. I was puzzled for a few seconds, but I slowly realized that I could not only see Aunt B below me and to my right, I could see the whole audience down below me to the right. I took a few seconds to scan slowly around and, yep, I could see everyone in the church sitting below and in front of me to the right.
I thought to myself, "well hmm, I must be in the back left side of the church, up in the ceiling, if I'm seeing things from this angle." I had a sudden bright idea: I could test my theory and see if I really was floating above the pews looking down if I just looked for myself on the front row.
I wondered if I would be there. So I slowly looked toward the area where I was sitting on the front row, and sure-e-nuff, I saw myself sitting there, but I was looking at myself from above and behind where my body was.
I wasn't scared, or really that freaked out, that I can remember. But, as soon as I saw myself, I felt a gentle tug in my abdomen, and heard a weird low "whoosh" and high pitched hum, very low in volume. And as I heard those sounds, I was slowly sucked or pulled back into my body. It felt like an invisible cord or rope attached at my navel was pulling me back into my body.
I seem to remember a slight sucking sound, like an airtight seal being established, and right at that moment, I was sitting in the pew again, looking up and to the left at my Aunt.
I didn't get a chance to really ponder on this too much at the time, because shortly afterward, I had to get up and perform my pall bearer duties again, but of course the experience is permanently embedded within me.
And this is why I say I can fly. I have done it in waking life, and I can't escape the feeling that, every so often, in my dreams, the same thing happens. Very rarely, that I'm aware of, though. Only a few times in my life, that I can vividly remember.
I wrote another poem called "Goodfellow" about one of those dreams. I will discuss it in a future entry. I think I have a song for it as well; if not, I'll make one.
Also, as I close, I'd like to share something I learned much later in life about flying, and about the cord I felt tugging at my belly button in that situation in church.
I was listening to Coast to Coast AM probably sometime back in 2015-2016, and a guest named Robert Moss talking about stuff like this. I went to his website, and bought a couple of his books, and "BAM!" lo and behold, he described how some ancient shamans used to believe they could fly on the sound of their drums and that they were connected to their bodies by a silver cord that extended from their bodies.
I was mind-blown when I read that...I had never even remotely heard of anything like that, but I had experienced it twenty years before!
What I’m bumping right now:
Alfa Mist on my Ones
Miles Davis with John Coltrane