***
It started with a sleepless night. I was late to bed, as I couldn’t seem to relax. I wandered back downstairs a scant hour and a half after snuggling down with every intention of staying there for a long, leisurely while. I woke, however, and after tossing and turning in frustration gave up and got up. Even Ani, dangling head first off the end of the sofa, merely opened one eye, gave me one of those looks that say, “Yeah, right….” And went back to sleep. I couldn’t blame her.
I couldn’t settle to much, not even research, so ended up cleaning files on the computer… it was that bad…drinking hot milk and listening to the whine of a lone mosquito. I threw in the towel after a couple of hours and went back to bed to try again.
This seemed far more promising… I composed myself and began to drift….
Nebulous images form on the threshold of dream, flitting across the inner screen like vague ghosts, tantalising and intriguing…
Aware, at some level of residual wakefulness that the conscious mind was running the events of the day, the worries and concerns that nestle there, the images created by emotions and reactions, I did not pursue them. It is best, I find, to simply relax and go with the flow. So I let them happen… watched them arise from the mists and fade into nothingness… waiting for that final step over the threshold into slumber…
Some unguessable time later sees me frantically scribbling notes in the black- clad journal that lies beside the bed. It is a dreamcatcher of sorts… deployed in theoretical readiness to crystallise those magnificent thoughts that seem to meander through the mind between sleep and waking. I say ‘theoretical’ as I can seldom rouse myself from that state enough to catch them… and usually find they have dissolved into a sepia mockery of memory while I dangle over the edge of the bed scrabbling hopelessly for the pencil…
Last night, however, the moonlight provided enough illumination for the elusive prey to be pinned in an illegible scrawl to the pristine pages. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Whatever we can translate into words from those ephemeral images seems to become fixed in accessible recall. There was no magnificence… no profound philosophies were revealed, no inspirational lights switched on.
Instead there was the story of a place and a moment in time. It had been haunting me since the weekend. It is one of those high places where you can see for miles in every direction. A place of rowan berries and melted stone, where the sky seems low enough to touch and the past rises from the ground, touching you through the veils of legend across time, space and realities.
It is a place that evokes sadness. The green silence should be simply beautiful and peaceful, yet for some reason it held a deep sorrow and sitting at its centre the past touched the heart with ghostly fingers. Snippets of a story surfaced in response to emotion and were lost to the winds.
Last night the story played out on the screen of images that marks the borderland between waking and dreaming, bringing once again that sense of place. Writing it up this afternoon I could barely see the keyboard for the tears. Yet the words themselves are nothing but words.
Does it have a basis in truth? Certainly it fits within the little known from the archaeology… but there is nothing to say it is factual. Many scenarios would fit and most of the ‘facts’ are speculation. Is it a glimpse beyond time, or simply the attempt of the mind to understand the essence of the place? How can we know? And does it really matter?
It is true that the emotions match the place, true that through them there is a sense of familiarity and kinship with those who walked there thousands of years before… and through their story, glimpsed or imagined, a deeper understanding of human lives, our connection to each other and our roots in the land we walk.
Somehow, I think that matters more than proving the reality of a dream.
***
Heart of Albion – Stuart France & Sue Vincent
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
DREAMS…EMOTIONS…..A FORM OF REALITY?????
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I think you are absolutely right, Sue. A lovely and moving piece of writing. xxx
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Thank you, Alienora xxx
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I like to think that dreams are memories of being part of an unseen dimension. You have captured your journey beautifully Sue 🙂
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Dreams can be many thing, I think, but always seem to hold a kernel of possibility in there.
Thank you, Robert 🙂
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i agree, and i think that dreams are just another state of our being.
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another door of perception….
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yes –
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Hi Sue – I can certainly relate to “Nebulous images form on the threshold of dream, flitting across the inner screen like vague ghosts, tantalising and intriguing…”. They are fascinating. I’m lying there, between waking and sleep, and something appears in my mind that I know my waking self didn’t conjure up – its a glimpse into the inner me, the me unknown to the outer me, I suppose.
I remember reading of someone who always saw masses of strangers’ faces before she dropped off to sleep – she didn’t know any of them. Adrian
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It is a strange country, that inbetween place… and full of mystery and numinous possibility.
I see some odd things there.. and once the processing of the day is over, some valuable things.
I think you are right, however we choose to rationalise it, that in these moments we glimpse a deeper aspect of self.
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I was once told that, during our dreams, we are travelling in the “spirit world”. Any thoughts about that?
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Again, I think there are many levels to that.. or maybe it is just open to interpretation.
There is a lot of evidence for being able to direct travels in dreams.. whether you accept that as the subconscious knowing more than the surface mind, or look at it in terms of the freeing of the astral form to travel. I always inclined to the latter.
But I honestly don’t think it matters… either way we are accessing parts of our greater self to which we generally do not have access.
The proof of the pudding, as they say.. results are what matter, and dreams give them.
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First – sorry for the duplicated comment on your other post – WordPress is messing me about!!! 🙂
“… accessing parts of our greater self …” – that puts it very well – thanks! A
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*chuckles* Technology is wonderful sometimes…:-)
I can recommend Astral Doorways by J H Brennan, if you are interested.. a highly readable book, nothing arcane.. Herbie actually does know what he’s talking about.
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Thank you!
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My pleasure 🙂
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Hi Sue, just a reminder to something I know you know- that we can be drawn back to the same place time after time in our wanderings from one vehicle to another. Linear time is an illusion we employ to maintain our sanity, but is still an illusion. Always radiate love to those you touch in the in between, and to the the reflections of yourself you encounter in your wandering. Our love and positive intentions CAN make a difference, even to something which appears to be in our “past”. Cheers, and best wishes for deep, dreamless sleep.
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I agree with you about time… it is a complex subject but I don’t honestly feel there is any separation between then, now and tomorrow… only now across the aeons we think we perceive.
And yes, I do think how we handle the now we are in has repercussions throughout what we think of as time. 🙂
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In your visits to ancient sites, do you ever wear stones to amplify your ability to see and hear? If you haven’t tried this yet, may I suggest rutillated quartz as a good way to begin. It amplifies your own energy in every sense.
Living only in “now” opens up so much- perhaps sometimes, too much.
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Thank you.. I love rutilated quartz. My grandfather made me a ring from it when I was a child…he taught me a good deal about stones back then.
I don”t generally use them.. I seem to ‘get’ quite enough as it is these days 🙂
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Yes, I can relate. My stories also come to me in my dreams, even places which I then look up online and find that they are real. Reincarnation or astral travel? I don’t know. But I do love dreaming except for the horrible dreams – but I guess that’s life.
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