Dream of Death an Essential Rite of Passage

[I read this for a YouTube Video, if you would rather watch this than read it]

I was going to write a Blog on Dream flying, but then it occurred to me that I would be getting ahead of myself.  Before you can learn to Fly in dreams, you have to no longer be afraid of dying, because basically the best way of learning to fly is to jump off the top of a tall dream building, a bridge or a dream cliff, and then “pull out of the dive” before hitting the ground.  But if you think you are going to get killed, you certainly won’t be jumping off anything much taller than a foot stool.   So, before you can learn how to Dream Fly, you need to get yourself killed, that is, killed in a dream. The trick there  is that you won’t die, or not die for very long, and when you realize that, then it makes you fearless enough to take up flying without any amount of prohibitive anxiety.

Fortunately there is already a kind of an Archetypical Dream Motif which should culminate in your Dream Death and instant Resurrection.  It is the “Running Away from Monsters” Dream.  Most people have had this dream.  It is the Dream in which you are in fear of losing your life and you are running away from SOMETHING Terribly Deadly, but you feel  like your feet are made of lead and the running is tortuously slow.  Well, even that feeling of slowness is deceptive.  It turns out that you are not slow at all, but that your sense of Time has been distorted because, since you are in Survival Panic Mode, your brain is firing at 7 to 12 Perception Bursts for every 1 Burst that it would ordinarily be firing, and so it is like High Speed Photography that only looks like Slow Motion when you run the film – it’s an Inverse Proportion Relationship – the More Perception Ticks there are, the Slower the Time seems.  Martial Artists spend years trying to be able to consciously flip on the switch for this Panic Survival Sensory Mechanism – the ability to fight in Slow Motion would give one so much time to think.  While it would seem to one’s opponent that one is wildly thrashing, one could actually be cutting the buttons off his shirt one by one with a cavalry saber.   But, in these Running From a Monster Dreams, nobody is aware that it is Slow Motion, and the idea that they are only able to move slowly adds to the panic.

Typically one will wake up before the Monster, or whatever it is catches up to you.   To Close Out this Dream Motif you have to Turn and Face the Monster.  Does anybody ever Defeat the Monster?  Well, yes, I suppose so.  But that is not really necessary.  It is sufficient if the Monster just kills you.  But you should go into this dream prepared.  After you get killed you need to stay in the dream for a while longer.   DON’T Wake up just because you have been killed and you think that ends the Dream. No!  If you wake up too soon the Dream is wasted and you will need to do a Do Over.  You see, you might have to lay on the ground dead for about 20 seconds, but soon enough it will occur to you that you are not ‘really’ dead, and you will be able to get up and brush the dust off from what is now a New Fearless, or Fearless Enough, You.

It turns out that when I finally turned around to face my Monster, it was the Guard with the Mirror Sunglasses from the Movie “Cool Hand Luke”… the Guard with that Remington 30 Ought 6 Hunting Rifle.  I turned and saw that he was about to shoot me, and so I said “Whoa!  I don’t want to see this” and so I turned my back to him.  “BLAM!”  The bullet struck me in the back of my head and knocked me forward so that my face hit the dirt.  The Guard walked up and gave me a small kick and mumbled “he’s dead all right”, and then continued on in pursuit of my friends who didn’t think it was a good idea to stop to get shot (but I was tired of the same old dream of running and thought it was time to try something new.  You know, looking back, I don’t know where the courage came from.  I’m proud of myself – I mean that kid l used to be who turned around). Well, like I said, after 20 seconds I got restless and got up, and looked around.  There was a Gas Station nearby and the Men’s Room was open and so I went inside without closing the door and looked in the mirror and opened my mouth wide.  Well, I could see daylight out through the back of my head and I remember saying “yeah, I’m dead alright”, but then the Paradox hit me.  I couldn’t be dead and be walking around and talking about it at the same time, could I?      

Over the next few nights I got killed some more.  The first night I was machine gunned. And the next night I was hit by a train.  Heck, getting stabbed by a pin hurts infinitely worse than being killed in a Dream.  You know, the Dream Self is not really the same as the Waking Self.  The Dream Self KNOWS that it is operating under different rules and knows that it is in fact living in a Dream. Once this Dream Self knows that it can’t be killed, it doesn’t need to be told twice.  The Fearlessness becomes matter of fact. And once there is Fearlessness, there is no longer Fear of Falling, and without Fear of Falling, then Learning to Fly is just a matter of Practice Makes Perfect.   

So I honestly believe this Dream of Death is perhaps one of the most important Rites of Passage that Dreams have to offer.  Yes, perhaps one doesn’t have to die.  All those Legends of Fighting Dragons seem to end in victory over the Dragon, don’t they?   But maybe people just SAY THAT to trick young people into Turning to Fight, so that they will achieve the REAL Goal of getting their asses killed, and then rising up from the Dead.