A Dream Bead Game

In the wee hours of this morning I had a very unusual dream.

It was almost a waking dream in that the experience in the dream felt real.

I was sitting on the ground with two or three young boys and they were playing a kind of bead game around me, sorting out and arranging strings of colored objects into equally balanced segments. The objects seemed made from nature such as seed pods, beans, stones and the like.

They were placing these arrangements on the ground much in the way Buddhist monks create sand mandalas, which sometimes take weeks to finish and which they then erase after the ceremony.

There seemed to be some sort of ritual involved although it all seemed like play. As they played though, I became hypnotized, gradually losing consciousness and I seemed to hear them discussing the positive effects of meditation and trance on cancer.

It was as though I was also seeing textbooks set out in front of me on this subject.

Finally someone, a much older person, seemed to be speaking and telling the boys that I was getting weaker. Then this someone told the boys to tell me to cross my legs which they did and then told the boys I was going to lose consciousness.

At this point I had the experience I mentioned above.

I didn’t lose consciousness but rather snapped into a state of timeless alertness outside of the dream consciousness. It was as though I had entered empty space and it felt very serene and yet devoid of emotion. I remained in this state for what seemed a few moments and then woke from my dream to go to the bathroom.

It seemed that I had stepped directly from this state of emptiness into my waking state and didn’t pass back through the dream realm first.

It was astonishing and wowed me, so much so that I looked into the bathroom mirror to see if I could see any change in my face.

Nope, it was the same tired sleepy face looking back but the person inside didn’t feel that way at all.

Nor does he feel that way this morning.