Steve Racicot
Anne and the Beach
I had this dream about one year after our friend Anne K. died.
I‘m sitting in the living room of a small two story house. There are several other people in the room. Now I notice that one of these people is Anne K. I‘m thinking that this scene must be a dream because Anne is dead. I walk over to Anne and I tell her that this is in fact a dream and that we can probably fly if we try. She laughs as though I am joking around. So, to show her it‘s a dream, I leap up into the air superman style.
However, I crash down onto the floor, flat on my face. Anne laughs again and gives me that look that says she doesn‘t think I know what I‘m talking about. I get up off the floor and go over to Anne and hug her. Then I step back from her and take her hands in mine and look into her eyes. Her face changes. She still looks like Anne but different somehow—younger, but also different in some way I can‘t quite mentally grasp. I wonder about this change momentarily, but I don‘t pursue this line of thought. Instead, I tell her, “Anne, I know this is a dream because you died and now here you are. Come on. We can fly anywhere we want to.”
Anne is hesitant to try flying with other people in the room watching so I lead her by the hand to a small room off to one side. Once in this other room by ourselves, we jump into the air and fly straight up through darkness. There are no dream images now, only darkness that we move through. “See,” I tell her, “this is a dream. Where would you like to go?”
Anne says she would like to go somewhere far away out of this darkness. “Maybe to a beach in the sunshine,” she adds.
“OK. Let‘s go,” I say and focus on that idea. As we fly along I am hoping that I will be able to remember this dream when I awaken, especially if we go far away.
After awhile we land on a beach that looks like the ones in Brazil. Anne seems happy and relaxed. In a few minutes she leaves, walking off along the beach. I begin constructing a sand castle complete with a small wooden pier that goes toward the ocean. As I become more involved in building this elaborate sand castle I lose my awareness that I am dreaming even though the dream continues on for some time before I awaken. Upon awakening I felt as though I had made contact with Anne in the dream. I liked that I had helped her get to somewhere that she wanted to go. This felt like a helpful interaction with her spirit.
Rebecca
Spiritual Springs
The few times in life that I have gone lucid, was always during what I called my “epic dreams”. These are very vivid dreams in terms of colors and details but also in my feelings associated with them and they were also dreams that stuck in my memory like a pin to a corkboard. In waking life my memory is really poor so that always struck me as really neat that I could have these dreams and remember so much detail. Also, each of these dreams would be connected to my mother in some way. She had died back in 1999. About 6 years ago, I went vegetarian for a year. In that time I had a series of dreams like the one I am going to share here:
I was in my mother’s old truck with my older brother. We were driving down old mountain roads in Pennsylvania just like I had always done with my mother. I turned to him and said, “Do you remember Siddhartha springs?” He looked puzzled (I might add that I didn’t know who or what Siddhartha was. Still not clear on that subject either). I then said “Buddha Springs,” as if this was the more common name we gave this place (a place that had never existed in the waking realm). He then acknowledged that he remembered and we headed off there.
Suddenly I was at the spring. It was a clear mountain spring in the shape of a pool of crystal blue water with white sand at the bottom. All around the spring were statures of various ascended masters such as Jesus and Quan Yin. Even another one that I would later realize was Mahavatar Babaji (of which I had no waking knowledge existed) and also Yogananda (which I also didn’t know existed).
At one end of the spring was a golden spring house. Out of it walked Gandhi. (again, don’t know why all the religious/spiritual archetypes/symbolism). He smiled very sweetly at me. Then I heard a wailing. It was from a woman (who had showed up in other dreams of mine and was not someone I knew in waking life but who felt familiar to me). She fell to her knees at the sight of Gandhi. He comforted her and motioned for her to take an elephant fetus to eat. She did so with thanks.
I walked past the spring to another area. There were Egyptian gods with a large stone scale. I recognized Anubis, the god with the dog head. He offered me two elephant fetuses. I remember holding them in my hands. I chose one. They seemed pleased with my choice. It was then that I realized this was all way too strange. I realized I was in a dream. It was just moments after that,they dream grew darker, like someone put on a dimmer switch, then it faded out.
The strange thing is that a few years later, my sister took me to a really cool place in the Pennsylvania mountains. It was a spring on a mountain top. We had to hike in about 4 miles. It was clear and blue with white sand at the bottom. Right where there had been a spring house in my dream was a big hemlock tree. I dove in the water. It was the COLDEST water I had ever felt in my life and I wondered how it could be so cold and not be frozen. It was September and hot outside. This water bubbled up from the bottom of the spring from somewhere deep in the earth. The strangest thing is that somehow, through her associations, I ended up there with a Native American, who, without anyone’s knowledge that he had planned it, decided to do a ritual right there. Again, the spiritual overtones.
Laurance
Deceased Friend Tells Me I’m Dreaming
I‘ve had a number of lucid dreams interacting with deceased friends, one of them being Don, an individual with a severe physical disability who died several decades ago. In so many subtle ways, our life-long friendship greatly influenced my disability-focused career. In recent years, he has shown up in more dreams. Apparently, due to his disability, I am more prone to recognize him in the dream state, i.e., he stands out from other dream characters. For example, in one of the earlier dreams, I was walking around and saw him sitting off to the side. After I warmly greeted him, he said, “I didn‘t think you‘d recognize me.”
In a recent dream, I was in an office attempting to show some officials key documents, rifling through but having difficulty reading them as is so often the case in dreams. The presiding official told me I didn‘t belong there and should leave. After going, I started walking around a market place with shops and people milling about. Feeling a tap on my shoulder, I turned around and saw Don, extending his arms outward, saying, “Tada!” Not realizing I was dreaming, I said “What?” and, responding to my obtuseness, he retorted, “It‘s a dream!” Slowly realizing he was deceased, I became lucid. Although in several lucid dreams, I‘ve informed others that we were dreaming, this was the first time it went the other way, i.e., a dream entity telling me that I was dreaming. I hugged Don, telling him how happy I was to see him again.
Once again, Don looked exactly the same as he had in life, which, given his earlier comment about recognizing him, got me thinking about his dream appearance. From what I‘ve read, after dying, a soul can choose the look he projects to others, often casting a more robust energetic, rather than infirmed, projection. However, if Don had done that I would have never recognized him; I needed to see him physically compromised. Although perhaps merely my perception of his energetic nature, I asked him how he routinely looks to others in this plane of existence, not just what he presents to me for the sake of recognition. Unfortunately, before he could respond, the dream disintegrated.
