Dreaming with the Lord

A Christian Key to Understanding Dreams

Maria Isabel Pita © 2018 by Maria Isabel Pita All Rights Reserved

Sections of this book may be freely shared as long as all quotes are properly credited. Table of Contents Forward...... 5 1—Dreams and Christianity...... 6 2—Body and Soul...... 9 3—Lucid Dreaming Naturally...... 15 4—Reading the Night's Messages...... 19 5—The Theory of Reincarnation...... 26 6—Demons on Our Doorstep...... 33 7—Angels of God...... 41 8—Meeting in Dreams...... 53 9—Dreaming of the Dead and Purgatory...... 62 10—Dreams of Jesus...... 71 11—Time & Revelation...... 77 12—Spiritual Warfare...... 88 13—God's Business...... 95 14—Called to Contemplation...... 101 Afterword—"He and I"...... 107 "Who is such a stranger to human experience as not sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams?"—Tertulliani Forward

From the very first night I began lucid dreaming on a regular basis, I encountered a male dream figure who stood out from all the others. In His presence, I was nearly overwhelmed by the love we felt for each other. There was nothing sexual about it; our love was simply everything. Then one night, I felt his breath in the dream when he told me he loved me, and kissed me. No one in my dreams had ever spoken those words to me, "I love you." That morning when I woke up, I finally dared to ask myself: Could this beloved Guardian Lord of my dreams be Christ—God Himself? Following the clues, I discovered what I least expected, and C.S. Lewis perfectly describes the shock I felt, except I did not draw back, on the contrary: "The shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. ‘Look out!’ we cry, ‘it’s alive’. And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back —I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with Christianity. An ‘impersonal God’—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap —best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion… suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us? So it is a sort of Rubicon. One goes across; or not. But if one does, there is no manner of security against miracles. One may be in for anything.”ii In my autobiographical account, Lucid Dreams & the Holy Spirit, I share how I was led home to Christ through lucid dreaming as a spiritual practice. Dream by dream, my soul was guided along a path in keeping with Christian mystical tradition. But it was only the beginning. 1—Dreams and Christianity

Just as the wheel was invented ages ago, and is the same now as it has always been, so too have people been dreaming and interpreting their dreams. Contrary to popular belief, dream interpretation did not begin with Freud. Nor are the spiritual realms of the dream space the special domain of Tibetan Buddhist monks, Australian Aboriginees, Native Americans, the New Age religion, etc. And yet rare in the growing amount of contemporary dream literature is the mention of Christianity. This is not only sad it is also very strange, for in Christianity (and in Judaism, from which it flowered) dreams and visions play a vital role. Morton T. Kelsey wrote in his seminal work, God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams: "The early Christian church viewed the dream as one of the most significant and most important ways in which God revealed his will to human beings. Dreams were understood to give people access to a reality that was difficult to contact in any other way. Not only do we find this view in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and in the Church Fathers up to the time of Aquinas, but it is the attitude of nearly every other major religion of the world."iii In the third century of our era, Gregory of Nyssa foreshadowed modern depth psychology. Analysts use different terms these days, but Gregory (one of the Church Fathers who wrote about dreams) believed there is a natural foreknowledge that comes in an unknown way through the non-rational part of the soul (the "unconscious") and that it is through this part of the soul that God communicates directly. He also wrote that dreams can reflect our personality, our physical and emotional condition, and give us clues as to the sickness of our body. "In the fifth century of our era, Synesius of Cyrene anticipated many of Carl Jung's theories. Jung went on to say that the nearest approach to his treatment of patients was the classical Christian direction used in France in the nineteenth century by the 'directors of conscience'... The dream, properly understood, was believed to give religious insight, wisdom, and direction... The gifts of the Spirit mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12... are one of the crowning evidences of the action of spiritual reality in the life of human beings, and the dream is one of these evidences, a common and natural one... something other than physical reality can invade consciousness directly... (and) God still speaks to men and women through this kind of experience."iv In the writings of the early Church, numerous references are made to pagans who became Christians as a result of waking visions as well as dreams of the night. According to the third century theologian Origen of Alexandria, dreams, waking visions, and divine inspiration are all essentially the same thing—a way God reveals himself to us, and gives us a symbolic knowledge of the nature of the spiritual world; of heaven. "In addition to the visions and revelation granted to people directly, the New Testament believes that men and women have seen the reality of the nonphysical world incarnated in Jesus Christ, and so they can look to him as their revelation (Rom. 16:25; Gal. 1:12; 1 Peter 1:13)... He is the disclosure of the ultimate nature of nonphysical reality... there is little suggestion in the New Testament that the revelation of Jesus Christ has put an end to direct revelation in dreams or visions. Rather, the latter is heightened."v I know for a fact that dreams are still a normal way to receive visions from God, because it was through dreams that I fully came to experience, understand and embrace the truth of the Christian faith. The Church calls such dreams a Charisma—any good gift that flows down to us from God's love. “By taking a summary look at the teaching and practice of the Church Fathers... we can discern a well-integrated tradition of dreams and dreamwork and recognize its continuity with that of the Old and New Testament... 'Dreams, more than any other thing, entice us toward hope,’ wrote Synesius of Cyrene, a fifth century bishop of Ptolemais, 'and when our heart spontaneously presents hope to us, as happens in our sleeping state, then we have in the promise of our dreams a pledge from the divinity'... Tertullian, a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa, spoke of dreams as one of the charismata of God, and believed that dreams and visions were promised to people of his own day just as much as they were to the first apostles."vi

People would be disturbed to see a cat with its whiskers clipped off. Whiskers are part of a cat’s sensory perceptions, a vital part of how it collects information and makes sense of it. Our dreams are akin to cat’s whiskers, and when we cut ourselves off from the information they provide us, when we ignore what they have the power to tell us, we cripple ourselves. No cat, large or small, should have to live without its whiskers. It is just as unnatural, sometimes even dangerous, for human beings to ignore their dreams. Everything we see and experience in our dreams is part of the knowledge available to us. Our dreams possess the ability to touch upon points in space-time we cannot perceive with our waking mind. Dreams can sense probabilities, experience them, and bring them to our attention, enabling us to act in full consciousness with all the perceptive faculties truly available to us. I spent nearly five years obsessing about having a lucid dream (a dream in which you know you are asleep and dreaming) at least five to six times a month, for I felt that I could never really be happy again if I lost my ability to dream lucidly. And it was true that my well being depended on the richness of my dream life for it was God speaking to me in my dreams. Although dreams remain a profoundly rewarding part of my life, I no longer feel the need to achieve a certain amount of lucid dreams a month. I am much more relaxed about my practice, which got me where I am now. My life is increasingly full of synchronistic experiences—little miracles— slowly but surely bridging the gap between my waking self and my dreaming soul, a gap widened into a dangerous abyss by our materialistic society. But I was raised Catholic, and Christ never strayed far from my heart and thoughts. I was baptized, had my first Communion and was Confirmed. Dreams returned me to my roots as I encountered within myself the living truth of the Christian mysteries. 2—Body and Soul

“Because God created the world, all truth is ultimately one. Therefore, the truths of science, sufficiently verified and rightly interpreted, can never contradict the truths of revealed religion, rightly understood... These features are central to who we are as human persons: substantially one, bodily and spiritual, rational, relational, free, created good, fallen and therefore wounded, but redeemed and capable of being sanctified by God. But even today human reason and free will are often denied by many neuro scientists or scientific popularizers. Their conclusions are in fact bad philosophy masquerading as science... According to this ideology, all that we are, all that we think, and all that we do are completely determined by our biology. We should note, however, that these [New Atheist] writers implicitly appeal to our reason and free will in asking us to rationally consider and freely accept their arguments."vii

Excerpt from my dream journal, November 22, 2013:

Back on a street of the town where I confronted the black magicians, riding in a truck of some kind. When it comes to a stop next to a building, I climb out of it with the decisive words, “I'm lucid.” I fly over an orange metal bar, and glide along a few feet above the street. From the edge of the roof of a building to my right, a strange black-and-white creature peers out at me. It reminds me of the vultures from my previous dream except that it's not really a bird, as there is something fish-like about it's texture. The expression on its “face” I can only compare to a shark's when a camera swims beneath it's devouring down-turned mouth which resembles a frown yet is more sinister, because there is no real expression there at all. When I pause in midair to face it and ask, “What do you represent?” it seamlessly transforms into a great falcon wearing something like a crown on its head. It addresses me in a man's voice: “I was going to attack things of your body, but now I won't.” Then he adds, “Talk to Sondra.”

Two days later, browsing through Kindle books online, I came across the non-fiction title Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence by Sondra Barrett. Immediately, I recognized the name given to me by the falcon in my lucid dream, and bought the book. Almost as soon as I began reading, it occurred to me that I could, when it seemed appropriate, attempt to follow a cellular blueprint when thinking about my dreaming life. I was struck by the obvious correspondences between the behavior of our cells and our selves.

Meeting Other Dreamers in the Dream Space

Blood can be viewed as the physical manifestation of our life-force; our soul. Blood is composed of cells that receive energy-information and make use of it in their own special ways. This information-energy is quite literally Life maintaining a physical vehicle. When my father was dying of Leukemia, and was receiving frequent blood transfusions from multiple donors, he confessed to me that his dreams no longer felt entirely his own; he was sure he was having the dreams of other people mingled with his. His soul was no longer the only one driving his dreams.

"The (cell) membrane holds the ability to communicate with other cells... Just as you and I can tell a friend from a stranger by observing a person’s external facial features, our cells do the same; each cell’s “face,” on its outer surface membrane, reveals uniquely identifiable features... identification codes or passwords that mark “me” or self. These protein “signatures” on the cell membrane, akin to distinctive bar codes, reveal the cell’s identity. These “me” markers also identify the cells as coming from you, a unique individual.”viii

Perhaps, like the trillions of cells in a single body, in dreams our individual souls are surrounded by other dreaming soul-selves we may or may not be receptive to.

"The basic job of our immune cells is to recognize “self” and “other” ... the patterns or shapes of the two cells’ markers fit together like a lock and key. The nature of the fit tells the cell whether what it has brushed up against is safe or not.”ix

In the lucid dream of a male friend of mine who was focused on finding me in the dream space that night, a man led him to my home where he discovered a barrier all around the house in the form of a dog fence. When he knocked on the door, my mother (who does not live with me in waking reality) answered the door and told him I wasn't available, another protective barrier. Like our cells, our dreaming souls seems able to repel or let in other dreaming souls. Even when we willingly seek to lucid dreamshare with others, the mistrust of “not self” comes into play in the form of barriers that have to be overcome. And sometimes these barriers cannot be breached. As a Christian, I believe in conscious spiritual forces that guard our souls from potential harm, a supernatural truth physically reflected by how the white cells of our body's immune system seek out and destroy dangerous invaders. According to quantum physics, space-time is an illusion. What is real are the particles and the connections between the particles. Regardless of distance, particles that have more connections are deemed to be closer and ones with less connections are farther away. Dreaming souls seem to behave like quantum particles, so that the more connections we have with someone, the closer they are to us in the dream space. (Chapter 8 is devoted to the subject of meeting in dreams.)

Fighting Threats to our Physical Health in Dreams

Lucid Dream of January 9, 2014:

… A hostile female was outside my front door. I tried to keep her out but she somehow forced herself inside and cornered me. A small group of people who also lived in my house quickly gathered round. One or two of them repeatedly began partially opening and shutting the door, making a reverberating banging sound. I encouraged them because I saw this action disturbed and weakened the woman threatening me... In this same home, my husband made me aware of our dog's plight. I saw with horror that on his back sat a huge, fat, slightly elongated, hairy-sided creature latched onto the back of a similar organism clinging to my dog's spine and draining him of health and life. My husband helped me remove the pair of “leeches.” I then began pulling long, slender, solid-liquid tubes out of my dog one by one, ignoring my disgust at the slimy texture as I drew them all out completely until none remained. My dog—now a small human child—sat up and let me know he was okay, except for a little discomfort, which was not surprising considering what he had just been through. I made sure my husband threw both of the strange creature-things out of the house so they could not attack anyone again.

“...When an immune scavenger cell receives a tug—let’s say, a message of bacterial invasion— it responds instantly. Elongating its usual spherical shape, it moves deliberately toward its prey. Upon meeting the invader, the cell attaches to it with sticky proteins, changing shape again to wrap around the intruder to eliminate it. This response requires the membrane receptors to recognize danger (that is, “not self”) and attach, while the fabric inside the cell responds and coordinates the cell’s activities.”x Could my dream have been a symbolic pageant depicting the activity of my cells? I have had cellular biology, and its mysterious relationship to dreaming, much on my mind, so perhaps the dream space staged this performance of a bacteria invading my body. The creature attached to the other creature on my dog resembled photos of human cells magnified countless times. I adore my dog, and in the dream he may have represented my animal-physical nature. I appear to have witnessed an immune cell latch onto an unhealthy dangerous cell, which I then eliminated from my house, a symbol of my body and self. Could the long, flexible, solid yet also liquid-like strings I pulled out of my dog be the sticky proteins produced by the immune cell? They filled several “channels” in my dog's body, and as I pulled them out they seemed to purify these channels like a pipe cleaner. In the dream, I knew this action was instrumental in healing him. The hostile female at the door may have represented a disease-causing organism that had invaded my body. The manner in which other residents immediately gathered around this energetic intruder (her feminine nature indicative of her ability to reproduce) reflects my body's immune response. The door quickly opening and closing makes me think of the valves of my heart, through which blood began flowing more quickly in response to my immune system going into high alert. The banging sound and vibration that so disturbed the intruder is also interesting in light of how cells work.

“Within our cellular scaffolding is where humming, drumming, light, movement, “vibes,” and thoughts shift mind, body, and spirit..."xi

Dream of March 1, 2018—Battling an Enemy

I’m hovering several yards above a very dark street, deserted except for a lone figure standing at the corner almost directly below me. In an upright position, I slowly fly over the man, then turn around to look down at him. His face is mostly in shadow, and there is a darkness about him; a sinister aura radiates from his black trench coat and shadowed face staring up at me. I don’t need to clearly see his expression to instantly recognize an enemy, and as he rises up to face me a few yards above the ground, I realize this is a battle I have to fight. In his right hand, he is holding a bright yellow sphere in the shape of a sunburst with sharp spiked ends, and he begins throwing these tapering dagger-like shafts at me, one after the other. It’s all very intense and silent except for my voice quietly but firmly reciting the Our Father even though it’s like trying to talk in deep, dark water. I then begin saying the Hail Mary, and as I pray, I somehow fend off his attacks. Eventually, I can no longer speak, but I keep praying in my mind as I continue intercepting the yellow shafts and bending them, wringing them in my hands in an effort to render them impotent as I sense they are related to his fingers, which I’m seeking to weaken, even cripple. The little spears yield like rubber in my grip even as their owner mentally wills them to become sharp and spiky again so they will cut and penetrate me. But I just keep grabbing them and twisting and bending them until the spiky yellow orb in his hand— which remains the same no matter how many of its shafts he throws at me—begins resembling a bunch of bananas. Then he’s gone.

That morning I wrote: Although I felt perfectly well when I went to bed, I woke with a scratchy throat and sensing I might be coming down with a cold. I looked up an image of a magnified flu virus, and essentially saw what I had perceived in the enemy’s hand. It will be fascinating to see how successful my immune system will be in fighting off getting sick after having this dream.

Dream Notes of March 7, 2018: A week has passed since I had this dream, waking from it with the beginning of a sore throat. It was obvious my body was fighting a bug. All my life, the onset of a sore throat has inevitably meant it was too late – I would get sick and not fully recover for over two weeks. This time, the sore throat went away the next day. By the third day, I was mildly congested, but my energy was back to normal. I remained slightly congested another three days, but without a cough or any other symptoms. Now, on the morning of the seventh day, I feel back to normal. The virus did not take root, and I am convinced this lucid dream was instrumental in assisting my immune system in its struggle with an invader. I kept the dream battle in mind at all times and deliberately did not take preventative cold medicines.

As we sleep and dream we are constantly, among other things, responding to, and ideally resolving, emotional, mental and physical issues. This may be one reason why sleep disorders are so debilitating, and why not sleeping at all would kill us. In dreams we are all of us confronted, often in amazingly dramatized ways, with thoughts, feelings and situations we may be avoiding, or are unaware of, in waking reality. "Many today would have you believe that there has been a longstanding war between science and religion. This is nonsense; it is a myth that has been mindlessly repeated since the Enlightenment with little evidence then or now to support it. Modern science itself developed only in the Christian west. Science as we understand it today emerged in human history within the cultural context of the Christian faith. This is not surprising, since the very practice of scientific inquiry presupposes that the world is fundamentally lawful, rationally ordered, and therefore knowable by the human intellect. But this is precisely the sort of world that a God who is logos – word, reason, truth, intelligence – would create. Modern science grew from the soil of a Christian culture and flourished among Christian believers."xii 3—Lucid Dreaming Naturally

After my lucid dreams made me a passionate disciple of Christ, I began reading the New Testament from start to finish for the first time in my life. One morning, I opened the Bible to my bookmark. I knew exactly where I had left off, because the title for this section was The Escape to Egypt. So I read Matthew 2:13-23, which began with the departure of the wise men, who had been warned in a dream not to return to king Herod after they had seen the baby Jesus. The rest of the passage was about Joseph taking his family to Egypt and then returning after Herod's death. I knew the story, but I was struck now by a fact I had never noticed. In this reading, messages received in a dream were crucial, as was how the dreamer reacted—by obeying the warning. If the wise men had returned to Herod and told him Jesus was the great king the star had led them to, that would have been very bad. And just as fatal would have been Joseph disobeying the Angel who told him in a dream to flee to Egypt, and then seven years later told him in another dream to go home. I knew from earlier readings that the first Angel Joseph had seen in a dream had told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because the child within her had been conceived by the Holy Spirit. That made four dreams I had read in only three pages of Matthew's Gospel. These four dreams were the cornerstones of Christianity. Dreams sent from God and delivered by Angels. I was stunned and thrilled, but not surprised.

Non-lucid, semi-lucid and lucid dreams are all facets of the same experience. A lucid dream is one in which you realize you are dreaming, and are fully conscious of the experience even though your body is asleep. In what I call semi-lucid dreams, I am in full possession of my faculties (as much as I ever truly am, whether awake or asleep) I just don’t have that “aha, I’m dreaming” moment. Some of the most powerful and transformative dreams of my life have been semi-lucid dreams, in which I am compelled to live the dream as I would a waking reality experience.

I do not take any lucid dreaming supplements, such as Galantamine. I had never even heard of them when I began lucid dreaming. After two years of lucid dreaming naturally, I experimented with a little Galantamine a handful of times, but did not like how drained I felt the next day. There was also a different quality to my lucid dreams; they were not quite as richly rewarding, and the stimulating nature of the drug often translated into strong sexual desire in the dream state, distracting me from other intents. Yet it was tempting to think I could become lucid more often, so one night in a lucid dream, I asked a man I encountered on the moonlit grounds of an old university, and who I felt was a professor there, if it was okay for me to do Galantamine now and then in order to induce a lucid dream. He replied firmly, "No, no. We are all hard workers here." I asked a second time, and received the same emphatic response. I got the message, and gladly went back to lucid dreaming naturally.

Lucid Dreaming vs. LSD

I knew from my experience experimenting with LSD as a teenager that at first it appears to be a short cut into other dimensions, but that, in truth, it offers only superficial and physically draining glimpses into our spiritual nature.

Anais Nïn, who participated in a controlled experiment in which LSD was given to creative writers and artists like herself, wrote after her experience with the drug: "LSD's value is in being a shortcut to the unconscious, so that one enters the realm of intuition unhampered... The chemical did not reveal an unknown world. What it did was to shut out the quotidian world as an interference and leave you alone with your dreams and fantasies... But the drug effect does not strengthen the desire to turn the dream, the vision, into reality. It is passive. I have to go on in my own ways... seeking wholeness not by a passive dreaming that drugs give, but by an active, dynamic dreaming that is connected with life, interrelated... which we can enjoy with the awakened senses."

Anais Nïn was speaking of the creative process, but her words can be applied to lucid dreaming, which is indeed “active and dynamic”, offering us not merely a shortcut but direct access to the unconscious. And just as with LSD, what each person experiences in a lucid dream is mysteriously related to their waking reality thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Yet unlike an acid trip, which only seems to transform the world, a lucid dream infuses us with energy by fully immersing us in our innate creativity, where we also consciously encounter more than our self.

I had always believed in the Divine unity of everything, but one night tripping on acid in Tropical Park, Florida when I was nineteen years old, I actually experienced a beatific sense of wholeness I didn't have to make any effort to defend from my modern, too often cynical reason; the drug's energy destroyed all doubts like a laser beam and I felt as though I had become my real self. “It's all so simple!” I flung my arms around my date's neck, an action I kept repeating because our embrace was the heart of the night to which I naturally returned as the tide ebbs and f1ows. I would run off to enjoy the playground, skipping down the asphalt path as if it was the yellow brick road, then fly back to rest against his chest and feel his arms around me as the whole marvelous universe. “It's so simple!” I kept repeating. “Why, how have they complicated it so much?!” I could not for the life of me understand how mankind had managed to mess the world up so badly when life is divinely simple.

When I saw a Volkswagen with ears and a tail attached to it belonging to a fumigation company, I couldn't stop laughing for a long time. It seemed such a perfect symbol of how ridiculous modern men could be, driving a mouse around, vitally cowards deep inside despite all their superficial sophistication. As we walked through the vast park, completely deserted at that time of night, I was torn between my date's golden-haired smiling warmth and a deep, deep love for my shadow. There were no words to describe it, I just knew it was the real me. I thought, 'I should always think like my shadow. It is absolutely pure and fearless, and it's me, the real me!' I could ignore my jeans, sagging like old flesh, and my earth-brown boots, because I was truly that slender darkness dancing on the grass with no worries, no problems whatsoever.

I stood for a long time before the calm, luminous beauty of water. Tall thick blades of grass rising from a lake evoked the columns of an ancient temple, and I imagined that in its youth, humanity had perceived reality more like I was doing now. When I threw in a stone and made a wish, the deep water universe gave birth to galaxies of light.

My date, who was straight, drove us to Key Biscayne. Street signs were ahead of us and then behind us in a heartbeat. When we began ascending onto a freeway, spiraling up and up, I felt as though I was floating as a single cell into the stream of lights surging swift as blood through an eternal and endless body of darkness. We parked the car directly in front of the ocean and lay on its hood staring up at the sky. Soft black clouds wafted around the full moon like furs slipping off a woman's smooth white shoulder. My breathing was one with the rhythm of the tide, the living space of my chest rising up into the earth's atmosphere. The whole world was my body...

When I sat up, my date began massaging my shoulders and back. I closed my eyes, and the pressure of his thumbs and fingers caused three-dimensional scenes to flash behind my eyelids. In white honey-comb like walls composed of countless tiny "stage boxes", I perceived vividly colorful, crisply focused landscapes and furnished interiors, in some of which I glimpsed people. These "walls of life" emerged and receded in rhythm with the pressure of his fingertips digging deliciously into my skin. It was as if my flesh and bones were composed of tense bands of energy containing everything in the world.

Later, we leaned against the car kissing. I was wearing a long necklace from which hung a row of little golden fish. I dangled it in front of his face teasingly, and without thinking about it declared, “These are the keys to the kingdom. Will you come with me?” To which he replied, pressing his body against mine, “Sure, let's go.”

It wasn't until I had my first lucid dream decades later that I experienced a comparable feeling of union with my environment inseparable from a sense of absolute, timeless freedom. In lucid and semi-lucid dreams, I possess the ability to interact with the dream space and influence the experience in a living relationship, and that really is the key. Tripping was essentially passive, the result of my brain's chemistry temporarily altered by other chemicals. When I lucid dream, the opposite happens... something inside me sparks my awareness of being in a dream—part of the dream itself—and offers me the opportunity to thoughtfully engage with it. 4—Reading the Night's Messages

Saint Basil the Great "indicated that the Scriptures were intended by God to be somewhat difficult to comprehend. First, they were meant to exercise our minds and keep them occupied and away from lower things; and second, they were designed to take longer to understand because the things we have to work over longer stay with us longer. For much the same reason, therefore, dreams are obscure and involved so that they require our sagacity and mental agility in no slight degree. He concluded: The enigmas in dreams have a close affinity to those things which are signified in an allegoric or hidden sense in the Scriptures. Thus both Joseph and Daniel, through the gift of prophecy, used to interpret dreams, since the force of reason by itself is not powerful enough for getting at truth."xiii

Symbols & Sense

Early in my lucid dreaming practice, I found myself comparing the visual language of dreams with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

“Hieroglyphs are pictures used as signs in writing. Many depict living creatures or objects (and) some signs represent the object they depict... However, very few words are written in this way. Instead, hieroglyphic picture-signs are used to convey the sound (and meaning) of the ancient Egyptian language.”xiv

Like hieroglyphs, dreams present us with the vivid, colorful, precise and beautiful language of our soul. The Rossetta stone—an ancient Egyptian stele inscribed with a decree written in three scripts one above the other, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic and ancient Greek—provided the key to our understanding of hieroglyphs. Before its discovery, the fascinated but frustrated curiosity archaeologists felt when studying ancient Egypt is comparable to how many people feel about their dreams—that they will never really be able to fully understand them because they don't quite know how to read this pictorial language of their dreaming mind. The first step is to stop taking all dreams literally, for then they make no more sense than a hieroglyphic texts does if we try to read it assuming each image stands only for what it literally represents. One can wonder exactly why the ancient Egyptians chose particular creatures, objects and shapes to represent the sounds and meaning of their language. For example, a picture of a plow = mr which, when combined with the hieroglyph for mouth, and the determinative of a seated man with his hand raised to his mouth, spells the word “love.” Now consider why the ancient Egyptians chose these pictures to mean “love” just as we might ponder the meaning of dream images... A plow makes a path through the earth in which seeds are planted, seeds that grow into food we take in through our mouth to nourish us. We want, we need, food. We cannot live without food. By choosing these images to represent the sound used to write the word “love” the ancient Egyptian scribes who first developed the hieroglyphic language may have been emulating the eloquence of our dreaming minds to express the belief that love, like food, keeps us alive, that love is life. When two feathers are written after the sign for plow it spells mry, “beloved.” The ancient Egyptians may have been inspired to assign certain sounds and meanings to their hieroglyphs by the way dreams combine images to convey meaning.

In dreams as in hieroglyphs, images can represent the object depicted while also forming part of a symbolic language. The ancient Egyptians employed “determinatives” or “meaning signs” which were sometimes placed at the end of words to provide a general idea of its meaning. For example, a rolled papyrus scroll was used to indicate an abstract word or concept. The more fluent we become in the language of our dreams, the more easily we can identify “determinatives” or meaning-signs that help us understand the whole picture.

Years ago, I had two nearly identical dreams on the same night. In both dreams, I witnessed two large airplanes approaching me from different directions, both of them flying so low they grazed the roof of my house on which I was standing. Yet even when the roof collapsed beneath me, I was unharmed and not really afraid; I was much more in awe of this totally unexpected brush with two dangerous but thrilling forces that looked as though they might collide directly above me. The wings of the two planes brushed each other but both moved on without crashing disastrously over my house and property.

When I woke, I was tempted to interpret the dreams symbolically as the union of conflicting emotions coming together inside me, etc. etc. Yet how I felt about the objects and the events of my dream—that they were “other”, “outside of me” served as a “determinative” that suggested a more literal interpretation might be in order. And it was soon all over the news that two massive storms were moving toward each other, Hurricane Sandy approaching from the south, a Nor Easter from the west, and there was a very real danger they would converge where I lived. I suddenly understood my dreams. “Air” moves over “plains”, the two weather fronts. Phonetically “airplane” even sounds a little like “hurricane.” Airplanes are also filled with passengers, an indication that lots of people would be affected by what they represented. New York city was in Hurricane Sandy's path—another disaster was heading the city's way, the biggest since 911, in which multiple airplanes were involved. Also significant is that I had two nearly identical dreams one after the other on the same night, paralleling the two airplanes and the two threatening storms. Fortunately, we experienced only the fringe of both fronts, which included strong but not devastating winds from Hurricane Sandy, and light snow from the Nor Easter. It was nothing compared to the crippling three feet of snow that fell in the mountains just west of us which caused the roofs of many homes to collapse. In waking reality, just as in my dream, I was not harmed by the storms.

In these two twin dreams, I believe I received a very precise message. How I felt about the airplanes, that they were “other” or “outside” me, acted as a determinative cluing me into the fact the dreams were not about my inner life.

I am now using the words of a language common to millions of people to write this book, but how I express myself is subtly different from how everyone else writes. We all share a common dream language by virtue of belonging to one human race, but how our soul expresses itself is invariably unique.

Until the Rossetta stone was discovered, hieroglyphs were an impenetrable mystery. The Christian Holy Trinity is the Rossetta Stone of my dreaming soul. The more I educate myself in the truths of my faith, the more my dreams make perfect sense, as they could not before.

Deconstructing a Dream

When I was nearly finished writing this book, I had a lucid dream that proved a very enlightening gift, even though after I woke up, I felt it would probably just be a dead end, because I was thinking about it literally rather than viewing it as a map providing mysteriously precise clues which would lead me to a hidden treasure, and inspire me to make some important realizations, as we must all continually do to remain as fit as possible on our journey to God. Lucid Dream of August 19, 2018

Semi-lucid, I form part of a large circle of a dozen or more people, including a woman who is only reluctantly holding the hands of the two people on either side of her. I tell the circle to move over to where the ceiling opens up so we can all ascend into the sky together, but the woman wrests her hand free of her partners' and her failure to cooperate makes it impossible...

I become lucid as I decide it's time to ascend up through the pyramid-shaped glass ceiling, and escape into the sky myself. I have no problem making it above flat rooftops, but the lighting is dim and so is my mood even when I feel a strong rush of wind beneath my palms that lifts me higher without my making any effort. I'm lucid but also sad because I feel there is no one in the world I can truly be with; fully dream with. Sadness... I have to face it... There's no one on earth for me. I'm in a dream sky, but it feels as limited as the physical sky. I feel I have nowhere to go, so I stop ascending and just roll over onto my back. I get a little lift when I see the hazy circle of the full moon through some clouds, yet the truth is, I don't feel it has anything I want, so I turn away from it.

Then suddenly it's as if a lifeline is flung down to me from so high above, it vanishes into the hazy muted golden atmosphere. I grab on to the flat black cloth rope-strap, hoping it will pull me up to wherever it came from. At first it seems to be lifting me up, but mostly it's just pulling me through the sky, yet I continue clinging to it hopefully even as I wonder what it is...

Still gripping the rope-strap, I gradually descend until I'm confined in a white corridor where, encountering a nice looking dark-haired man, I let go of it as I look around me. The man, who is busy doing something himself, says, "You should give things more time." I understand he's telling me I should have held on to the rope-strap longer, and I think he may be right. We strike up a conversation which prompts him to move over to a sky-blue barrister's book case, which I can already see into through one side. After he opens it for me, I kneel in front of it and begin rummaging through the contents of the shelves, which all contain photo album-like books. As I do so, I ask him, "What's your name?" and he replies, "Breton." I say, "I like that name, it reminds me of a British butler." But he tells me it's a name more suited to the Lord of the Manor, and I agree. When I ask him what his last name is, he replies Hawthorn. I repeat, "Breton Hawthorn," knowing I won't have any problem remembering it. Getting to my feet, I look down the narrow corridor as I stand close to him while he informs me about a special person named Tyler who I know, and can communicate with more intimately despite the efforts of certain people to come between us. He calls this person "Tyler." This information seems good, but at the moment, I'm more interested in him. "Where do you live?" I ask him, and am a little disappointed when he replies, "Florida" because I live in Massachusetts. As he keeps talking to me (all the time arranging invisible "things" in an area of the white wall) I feel compelled to tell him I'm a lucid dreamer, and that's why I'm asking him these questions.

Dream Notes:

Tempted to believe this dream figure was actually telling me his name, but almost certain he wasn't, I simply Googled "Breton Hawthorn" and immediately found this tome on Google Books: The Masterpieces of the Breton Ballads which led me straight to the page that featured my search word "Hawthorn" and to the two poems (below) at the very end of the book.

"Lord of the Manor" the very words the man in my dream said to me, appear in the first poem entitled Swallows. And in Paradise, the second poem, images from my dream, and my mood in it, are all perfectly reflected, including the moon I put behind me, and the chain, although mine was made of cloth. Traditionally, spirits and fairies meet at Hawthorn trees, another dream clue that I was not speaking to a human being but with the Holy Spirit.

Does the rope-strap, and holding on to it longer in order to see where it might take me (as the man told me I should) mean that 'm going to live longer than my soul desires to remain in this world apart from my Beloved? It seems I'm being gently told I should "hang on" to life and its possibilities more tenaciously, even though I would rather be "taken up to God" sooner than later. And perhaps a "Tyler" will enter my life? But in either case, the Holy Spirit will be here to guide me.

When I asked Breton Hawthorn where he lived, he replied, "Florida" which is Spanish for "land of flowers" and for me evokes Paradise. I can't literally meet him in Florida, but I can be with Him as I continue growing and creatively flowering.

Urban Dictionary: Tyler - The most amazing, wonderful person you will ever encounter in your life. This can refer to the Holy Spirit, Who is a Person, or a promise there is a special person out there I will meet, or both. "Britain's most famous hawthorn is the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury. Legend tells of how Joseph of Arimathea, the uncle of the Virgin Mary, arrived at a hill overlooking Glastonbury Tor with a few disciples and two sacred vessels containing the blood and sweat of Jesus. Where he thrust his staff into the ground it sprouted and grew into a thorn tree. Though the original is obviously not there any more, one of its supposed descendants does still stand on the hill, and other offspring grown from cuttings and perpetuated over the centuries can be found around Glastonbury and indeed further afield in England. This particular hawthorn blooms twice a year, once in May and again around Christmas."xv

Swallows

There is a little path leads down From the great house to our small town; A little white path, by whose side, A bush of hawthorn may be spied; A hawthorn bush with flowers bow'd down, Which please the lord o' th' manor's son. I wish I bloom'd on hawthorn tree, That his white hand might gather me; His small white hand might gather me Whiter than bloom on hawthorn tree; I would I were a hawthorn blossom, That he might set me in his bosom...

PARADISE

Jesus, how great shall be Our souls' felicity When we shall rest above With God and in God's love! The time is short meseems; For Paradise, in dreams Of glory day and night, Makes all my troubles light. When I look on the sky, Up thither would I fly, White as a little dove, To Fatherland above. And when death's hour shall come, I will seek my home, And leave my Savior's foe, This troublous flesh below. Waiting the last farewell, My heart with joy doth swell; Jesus I long to view; My own, Bridegroom true. And when my chains shall be Broken away from me, As lark that upward flies, I in the air shall rise. When I to glory fly, The moon I shall pass by, Sun and each star in turn I from my feet shall spurn...... Then Jesus will declare: Your happy bodies were As treasures secretly In a blest land may be. But in my court each grows Like roots of a white rose, Lily, or hawthorn tree That in a garden be. For hawthorn, lily or rose, Its bloom to earth down throws; But when the winter's over They like to you recover. For our light sufferings, For our short sorrowings, From our true sire and lord We gain a rich reward.xvi

Sometimes a dream prompts us to approach it as a detective would, not like a murder case but the opposite: a case of Life communicating with us. This dream led me directly to Breton poems I had never heard of yet which reflected my dream (one might say uncannily) and the experience proved profoundly enlightening and life enhancing.

Though this chapter ends here, it continues throughout the rest of the book in many more examples of how to read the mysteriously precise language of our dreams. 5—The Theory of Reincarnation

In dream circles, the theory of reincarnation is frequently used to interpret what is happening in our dreams when we experience being another person living a different life from the one we went to bed with. I also took the idea of past lives for granted, before my dreams led me to Christ, and I actually began questioning the concept. I have come to believe that filing such enigmatic experiences under the labels of past, future or parallel lives (theories of modern physics have been seamlessly grafted onto the concept of living more than one physical existence) constitutes a "fast food" attitude to the banquet of our dreams and their possible significance. If the theory of reincarnation is real, then it's just as easy to buy buckets of fried chicken as it is to collect the urns of former incarnations. And we might literally have been fried after many of our demises since immolation is the preferred method of disposing of the body in India, birthplace of major religions that believe in reincarnation—Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.

Irenaeus, the first century bishop, martyr and saint of Lugdunum, France (now Lyon) "used his understanding of dreams to refute the idea of reincarnation or transmigration of souls. 'Since the soul can receive knowledge directly and communicate it to the body after a dream has occurred, there is no reason that the body should make us forget a former life of the soul if it had one'."xvii

It was hard for me to give up my life-long fantasy that I had lived at least one lifetime in ancient Egypt, for I had always believed my intense fascination with this culture, from a very early age, could only be explained by reincarnation. Because of its thousands of years of history and its countless tombs, ancient Egypt is highly prized karmic real estate. I understand now that my childish reasoning was self-centered and superficial. Nevertheless, I made it into my fifth decade of life before finally coming to understand that. And even after I wholeheartedly embraced a personal relationship with Christ, my Lord and my God, I saw no reason to think this needed to interfere with my belief in multiple lifetimes experienced by my immortal soul. This wasn't the first liberty I took with Christian doctrine, feeling that as long as I believed in Jesus, I was essentially on the right track. But not being properly educated leads to erroneous ideas and conclusions which, in reality, are fantasies woven in with threads of fact in only superficially convincing patterns of reasoning. As the heroine in my semi biographical series of novels Lucid Dreams & Spiritual Warfare expressed it: "Lots of people don't seem to believe God is actually a Person, they believe in some sort of amorphous cosmic consciousness we spawn out of like little soul amoebas programmed with all the powers we need to get everything we desire out of life just by thinking positive thoughts. And if we play our metaphysical cards right, we can even choose the afterlife most to our taste and enjoy the endless vacation of death. That is, if we don't opt instead for another trip to the Reincarnation Resort, where we can plan our next life before diving into the magical pool of another womb."xviii

But "Christian hope in the after-life is not limited to the soul’s immortality but involves the entire person who is called to be with God as an embodied spirit. In other words, Christian faith sees the body as inseparable from the soul, whereas in reincarnation, it is the soul that repeatedly advances to a new body, offering no salvation to the old body and simply leaving it behind at each new reincarnation."xix

And “Christ never said that the spirit is good and the body evil. True Christian belief has always affirmed the goodness of God’s creation... The body shares in our dignity as persons, just as much as the spirit. Our bodies reveal us, giving form to our innermost being and unique personality. Our bodies are sacramental—they make the invisible visible. The body manifests the spirit. It expresses the person. Through the ages, many philosophers have spoken of man as though he were divided into two distinct parts: soul and body. This is not the Biblical view.”xx

Lucid Dream of February 8, 2014:

I'm in a pub, and I'm lucid. Looking around me, I consider asking one of the many smiling, relaxed people what the name of the pub is, but that seems silly. I see a door I know leads into a bathroom, and entering it, I head straight for the sink to look at my reflection in the mirror. But instead of Maria Isabel Pita, I see a completely different woman. This does not surprise me, and I lean toward the glass to better examine the dark circles beneath my/her eyes. Wow, they are really black! This woman is not well. I wonder if this means I too am suffering from some hidden illness even though it's not my face I'm studying. The skin beneath this woman's eyes is not only black but very finely wrinkled. I reason it must be some kind of make-up the woman has applied to accentuate her eyes which is caking and beginning to crack. I study her short black hair, which is full enough that she can artfully pin it up here and there in what is considered a fashionable retro style. She has small, delicate features, and is very slender. She is not bad looking, but is definitely past her prime. She is resigned about this, but still rather proud of her looks. On her/my way out of the bathroom, we pass a man, and immediately warn him, “If you come near me again, I'll call the police!” Outside the pub now, I join a stream of pedestrian traffic. It's night time, but the city is brimming with life. I walk quickly and purposefully, sensing my destination is not too far away. I'm very conscious of my tight jacket and pants, high-heeled boots and my confident, sexy stride. I still have a really great figure, even if I am a little older now. Suddenly, I pass the man in overalls again. He appears to be fishing through a garbage can. I, Maria (not the woman whose body I'm inhabiting) senses this man's hostile focus on her, and the danger she has put herself in by angering him. She is very sure of herself; she believes she can fight him off if he ever dares lay hands on her, but I'm worried for her because I somehow know he plans to follow her, and if he catches her alone in the dark, it will be very bad. As she/I keep walking, we delight in being surrounded by people who are all out for a good time. This pedestrian walkway is well lit, and I clearly see the pale face of an attractive blonde man, which somehow confirms my impression of being somewhere in Europe. It's a nice change from living out in the country, and I, Maria, am enjoying visiting a city for a while. I soon lose the dream.

Dream Notes: I woke up feeling I had perhaps picked up on this woman because she was in danger. I was consciously myself the whole time, and yet I was also this other woman. Looking straight into a mirror, and seeing another person's reflection while lucidly retaining my conscious identity, is an uncanny experience I'm becoming familiar with. In such dreams, I am unconsciously obeying the second half of the greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

If the woman in the mirror had appeared to be living in another historical era, I would immediately have wondered if I was experiencing a past life, but in the dream I knew, and could see, that she lived in the present. Yet part of me still clung to the idea of reincarnation, so I decided to begin tackling the issue head-on by asking the dream space about it. Lucid Dream of March 6, 2015

I find myself standing in a sunny apartment, facing away from the glass doors and looking across the living room at a white kitchen counter cluttered with miscellaneous items. Realizing that I'm dreaming at the same time I remember the intent I set myself before going to sleep, I approach the counter, hoping to find something on it I can use as a question-answering tool. Almost at once, I spot a pair of large dice like ones I own in waking reality, except in the dream they are dark-blue with black circles instead of bright red with white circles. Picking them up, I ask, “Is reincarnation real?” and roll the dice. They land on the counter in a very surprising way —the dice to my right is poised on one edge, and has somehow succeeded in attaching itself to the other dice with one of three star-like yellow shafts radiating from one side of the single black circle in its upward facing surface. The two intersecting dice add up to the number five—four black circles on the dice to my left, which landed normally, while on the dice to my right, there is a single black circle, from which emanate three long triangular golden rays. I am struck by this strange fusion of the dice. The roll doesn't look or feel complete, but instead appears suspended. I'm wishing I could photograph it as I begin waking up.

Dream Notes: Rolling a pair of dice seems to have enabled the dream space itself to respond to my question and, in this case, I received a very intriguing answer. The dice that landed poised on one edge had a black circle with three golden shafts of light emanating from one side of it, and one of these rays had penetrated the dice that landed normally. As a consequence, there were now no more possible rolls, because the dice were fused together. This detail strikes me as extremely significant. In the dream, I could only roll the dice once, which may seem to imply that we are born into flesh only once. The more I think about it, the more the dice with the single circle—poised on one edge in defiance of gravity and from which emanated three golden rays—seems an obvious symbol of the One Triune God, the Christian Holy Trinity. The impression I got in the dream was that the dice with the star on it was empowered, mysteriously sentient, and had deliberately joined itself to the other dice. The dice with the four circles might represent what physicists call space-time— the three dimensions of space combined with the fourth dimension of time. The fact that no more rolls of the dice were possible seems a wordless but clear response by the dream to my question —There is only one roll of the proverbial dice, we live only one physical life. The roll felt incomplete, suspended, which is in keeping with the Christian belief in Judgment Day, and the resurrection of the dead in glorified bodies in the new heaven and earth.

I promptly emailed both my dreams, along with my accompanying notes, to my mother, and she summed it up beautifully:

"It's fascinating to imagine all the mysterious factors that might trigger such trans-temporal and trans-personal experiences. Reincarnation is essentially a materialistic interpretation of what happens, with lucid freedom, within the realm of the loving and empathic soul.”

I cannot begin to count how many times in dreams I have found my awareness inhabiting the awareness of other people, experiencing events through their eyes and emotions, often not remembering my own identity. I sometimes observe the experience from slightly above it, like a movie I'm living while also watching. The following are two brief examples of such dreams:

Dream of November 13, 2015—The Attack

I dream I'm in a large public place sprawled on my stomach trying to crawl away from gunmen aiming directly at me and others around me. It's horrible! I feel so weak, I can barely move. Lying on my belly, I inch my way toward some concrete barrier, trying to take refuge behind it. Then at last I see some other men run into the theater who I know are on our side, and I dare to hope my companion and I might make it out alive after all...

Dream Notes: In the morning, I found out about the attacks in Paris,xxi a series of coordinated terrorist attacks that occurred on Friday, November 13, 2015. The attackers killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theater. It seems my soul didn't just perceive but also partly experienced this breaking news story before I found out about it in waking reality.

When I shared my dream with a friend of mine who lives in France, he said it sounded very much like the situation that night, with hostages trying to escape any way they could. Then he reminded me of a similar dream I had when the German Airbus Flight 9525 went down in the French Alps. It had been my final dream of the night, from which I woke at around 6:40 EST. Because our Daylight Savings Time started early, France was five hours ahead of us, so 6:40 here would have been 11:40 there, which was shortly after the crash. At the end of the dream, many of us were being led toward the safety of home which took the form of a Cathedral.xxii

In both these dreams, I experienced being other people who were obviously not me in another lifetime. The reincarnation card wasn't even on the table.

On another night, approximately three years later while attempting to induce a WILDxxiii, I experienced a subtle shift in the dark inner space located directly in front of my closed eyes and just below, and beyond, my forehead. The transition was so smooth, I scarcely noticed it as my awareness crossed the threshold between waking and sleeping. Sensing I only had a few seconds, I found myself spontaneously asking in my mind, “Lord, is reincarnation as we conceive of it real?” Immediately, I received an equally silent reply which did not come from my own mind: "The Creator's heart is not a recycle bin.” At the same time, I saw a woman dressed like the Virgin Mary in white and blue robes squatting in an empty white space as she gave birth to a baby, who instantly growing up, became an old man who promptly dove back into her body through her mouth and was reborn, and the ghastly process was repeated over and over again. Shifting back into waking consciousness, lying on my side with my eyes still closed, I kept seeing that disturbing vision. The relentlessly repeated cycle had been selfishly cold and violent. I had witnessed something akin to a factory view of life in which the soul is not lovingly conceived by God, who is both our Father and Mother, but by a mindless metaphysical birthing machine.

After this dream-vision, I stopped asking the dream space about reincarnation. I had received my answer: "The Creator's heart is not a recycle bin.”

Consciousness in the dream space is not limited to our own self but can "flow" into other selves and, to certain extents, share in their awareness through some divine power of the soul. And there is no reason to believe such experiences are limited to the present moment in time. Blood cells jostle each other in our bloodstream, separate from each other and yet part of one living being. This is essentially true of each one of us, for we are all members of a single human race, even as we are also individuals with supernaturally permeable soul-membranes akin to those of our corporeal cells.

The accounts of children who seem to remember previous incarnations often center around a deceased relative born earlier in the family tree who shares the same bloodline. The children are invariably quite young, of an age when the mind is wide open to absorbing information. This includes any knowledge they might receive in dreams, and because their personal sense of self is still developing, when they speak of memories shared with them by deceased relatives in dreams, it might sound to anyone listening as if they are speaking of their own experiences.

"Genomes are found in cells, the microscopic structures that make up all organisms. With a few exceptions, each of your body's trillions of cells contains a copy of your genome: the cells in your muscles, the cells in your brain, the cells in your blood, and so on.... But if the genome is a commonplace thing, it is also quite powerful. A genome is information that affects every aspect of our behavior and physiology."xxiv

Dreams in which our soul temporarily seems to merge with another soul shed a fascinating light on the Christian mystery of the saving power of Christ's blood. We are all born guilty of Original Sin because we share one human Soul the way we do one human Genome. One perfect man—God born into His own creation—can in fact save us all. The redemptive blood of Christ flows through each one of us now, unless we consciously, of our own free will, reject the supernatural transfusion. 6—Demons on Our Doorstep

Lucid Dream of April 15, 2014

I'm lying on my left side in a dark room looking at my reflection in a large mirror standing directly before me. I can see my reflected face quite clearly. It looks just as it does in waking reality, except that my chin is longer and protrudes slightly. Without thinking about it, I carefully but confidently slice into my chin with a razor blade. To me it appears as excess dead flesh, sort of like a foot callous which can be cut into, up until a certain point. With the fine sharp blade, I make two quick incisions, and remove a chunk of this dead chin flesh. I don't feel any pain, perhaps just a twinge, as I study the whitish, almost bone-marrow like interior of the clean incision, which is a narrow horizontal oval shape. Very much aware of the sharp razor I'm holding, I begin to wonder why I did this. I don't think I can finish the job, because I appear to have come dangerously close to the bone. I wonder at how steady and sure my surgical action was, and yet I haven't really solved the aesthetic problem. I then become more aware of my body, and look down at it. That's when I realize I made a terrible mistake. In the reflection, I sliced off a pyramid-shaped chunk of my chin, but in reality, I cut off a small chunk of my left breast! The mirror tricked me! I confirm this terrible fact as I look down at my body, which is curled directly up against the mirror, and then back at my reflection. I do this several times, making absolutely sure of what I see. This is an awful mistake! I don't feel any pain, only a mild sensation in my breast as, sitting up slightly, I bend over to look more closely at the wound. Yes, I accidentally mutilated my round healthy lovely breast! Somehow, I know the missing piece will grow back, nevertheless, this shouldn't have happened. Yet there is nothing to be done now. When I wake up, I will have to put some antiseptic on the reddish inner skin, and keep it covered with a clean gauze bandage while it heals. My face is very close to the clean right angle carved into my round breast, and I think this might actually prove useful as a reality check for a while—in a dream, if I look down at my breast and it is whole, I will know I am dreaming, because in reality it is no longer whole anymore. With this thought, I phase out of the dream.

My first terrified thought upon waking was that this was a dream about breast cancer. My knee- jerk response was to conclude that slicing a chunk out of my healthy breast, with a scalpel-sharp razor, was a clear sign I should get tested for breast cancer. I lay awake for a long time thinking about this dream, and trying to read how I had felt in it without letting the obvious fear bias my interpretation. The focus of the dream was my witch-like chin as I directly faced my reflection while lying down as though on a bed. In the dream, I was trying to make myself more beautiful and therefore more sexually desirable. Cutting my breast was an accident, a trick of the mirror and how it reflected me back at myself. The day before the night I had this dream, I browsed some Christian forums where many people actually still debate whether or not lucid dreaming is satanic, as though the Holy Spirit is no longer present in our dreams at all. Then having dinner alone, I saw an ad (I usually forward through them) for the TV show Salem in which the narrator asks, “What's worse than a witch trial? A real witch” at which point they flashed an image of an attractive woman who nevertheless had some “ugly” qualities to her, including a chin that was a little longer than normal. Yesterday I also began reading Saint Theresa of Avila's autobiography, and foremost in my mind were her remarks concerning the dark doubts and fears that assail the soul as it draws closer to the light of God. In this dream reflection of myself, I recognized the part of me that looks in the mirror everyday and experiences a deep-seated guilt, a spiritual shame for entertaining the notion of attempting to slow down, and perhaps even reverse, some of the signs of aging on my face and body in lucid dreams. The idea was sparked inside me by a conversation with another experienced lucid dreamer, and ever since I conceived of the vain intent, in the back of my mind I have felt uncomfortably like Maleficent—the wicked witch in Snow White—whenever I look at myself in a mirror. Because deep in my soul I know it is wrong to even consider exercising lucidity in the dream space merely for cosmetic purposes. Just before I went to bed that night, I had also seen an ad for a television show featuring plastic surgeons in California, which led me to pondering on how common it is in our culture for women to put themselves under the knife in an effort to stay looking young and beautiful for as long as possible. It is the popular perception these days that a woman has the right to do whatever will help her feel good about herself. The question this nightmare made me ask myself is, “What will really make me feel good about myself, in every sense?” The truth is that honoring the mystery of the aging process, which encourages the growth of a deeper inner and incorruptible beauty, is what will truly make me happy in the most profound meaning of the word. Would it really make me feel better about myself to theoretically prolong my “sexually desirable to a man looks” whatever the cost? Absolutely not. Love is all that is truly important to me. Violating what I believe to be the sacred nature of the dream space by turning it into the beauty salon of my vanity is the last thing that will please my soul. In this Blood Moon dream, I literally put my sensual pride under the knife, and was taught a vital lesson which I believe prevented me from crossing a dangerous, and potentially fatal spiritual line.

Lucid Dream of December 8, 2014—Resisting Temptation

I'm hurrying toward a small garage-like structure in a parking lot when I suddenly see my face reflected in a window, and stopping to look it, I become lucid. An attractive man walks past me, and I know he is going to enter the building. I consider following him, and indulging in some lucid sex. As though he senses my thought (although in hindsight it's as if he planted it in my mind when he walked by me) the man turns around and makes it clear with his expression, and a slight gesture, that “Yes” we are going in there to have sex. His eyes are distinct, they actually meet mine, which is rare with dream figures. This impression is mysteriously confirmed when, staring back at him, I realize that I do not want to indulge the all too common reflex of having sex in the dream space, where there are supposedly no consequences. I can feel this is not actually the case at all, and that giving into this base urge now will be as bad, maybe even worse, than indulging the same impulse in waking reality. Out loud I say firmly, “No!” but I can see the man is determined, in fact, he now threatens me with violence if I resist him. As he moves closer, he tells me, "You're helpless. Who's going to help you? Who are you going to call on for help?” Instead of backing away from him, I fall onto my back so I have a clear view of the open sky as I reply, “God!” The instant I name my defender, patches of blue between the white clouds are suffused with a subtle yet intense golden light and a beauty that is also a Presence. Back on my feet, I see the man striding toward me with his right arm raised and his right index and middle fingers extended in a V shape, as if he intends to gouge my eyes out. I know God will protect me, but I also have to help myself, and as I raise my own right arm, I suddenly find myself standing behind him, and grabbing hold of him... A surreal interlude follows in which I am alternately slamming parts of his dismembered body —his bare arms and his bare legs—against the clean hard edge of a bathtub over and over again. But I haven't killed him, I am only rendering him powerless to harm me. I tell a woman watching over me that I will put him back together because murder is wrong, but that I have to render him impotent first. Aware he is only temporarily unable to hurt me, I hurry away from his smoldering eyes, quickly passing through a small window in the woman's room which opens directly out into the sky, through which I fly away.

Through dreams such as these, I began experiencing Spiritual Warfare before I had ever read what Christianity had to say about it. (And I'll have more to say about it in Chapter 12.)

Dream of January 25, 2015—The Lord is my Shepherd

Final dream of the night: I find myself standing in the rec room beside my husband's TV dinner table facing the door and, to its right, a three-dimensional art work hanging on the wall. A woman is speaking, telling me things about it, and about me, and how I will soon be free. The bottom of the carved wooden shrine, approximately the size of my upper body, is level with my head. One of its subtly painted doors, which looks very old, is carved in the form of an angelic being partially facing away from me. He is opening the door, one arm outstretched as he gazes into what feels like a heavenly distance. I worry this means the door between the worlds will soon open for me, and I will die... I become aware of lying on my stomach in the middle of the room. I appear to be sleeping when I feel myself being penetrated from behind. I seem to wake up from a shock of discomfort bordering on pain as a man forces himself inside me. I know he's not my husband and can't understand how this is happening. Did a stranger somehow break into the house? Pinning me down beneath him, he mutters, “You're very open to me these days...” I realize now that I'm dreaming, and what is happening. I know it's the Enemy, and that by myself I cannot escape him. He says things to me I can't remember now as, turning me around to face him, he seems about to bite my cheek. Remaining calm, I say quietly, “The Lord is my shepherd. You are nothing. You are dust.” At once, I lose all sense of him, and wake up.

My Dream Notes from that morning: Fear! Fear that because the doors of heaven seem to opening for me as my soul opens itself more and more to God means I will soon die. And this is true, of course, because we all die physically, sooner or later. What I continue clinging to is the illusion of my comfortably secure circumstances—a wonderful mountain top home, a husband, a beloved dog, plenty of money. But all these things are gifts from God and mean nothing without Him. I also think I should stop opening myself to the Enemy by dwelling on my sexual sins. I remain haunted by parts of my past, yet rarely a moment passes now when my mind isn't fixed on God, as everything I do and think increasingly revolves humbly and happily around Him. My deepening faith has transformed not only what I believe but what I want out of life. I've lost interest in activities my husband and I (my partner, for we are only legally married) once enjoyed together, which tended to center around eating out and drinking a lot. My taste in movies and television shows, and how much time I spend watching them, has undergone a radical change, and my attitude toward other things—including total sexual freedom and pornography—is completely different now.

Lucid Dream of May 24, 2016

I became lucid twice, but it was a nightmare, the kind of nightmare I have never had in my life, and certainly never when I'm lucid. I was being messed with all night long. One nightmarish situation after another. But I managed to get through them. The last situation was the worst. I was in a room with a loft space full of women like me, all of us looking young and sexy and wearing skimpy black dresses. I was up in the loft with one of them, when I noticed a really big beetle, and how it was trying to crawl up my friend's leg. I picked it up, and flung it away. But suddenly there were more black beetles, and becoming aware of a warm pressure around my calves, I looked down and saw that I was wearing knee-high boots made entirely of bugs swarming around my calves and clinging to them. As I began brushing them away, I said to the woman, “I know this is a dream, but if it doesn't get better soon, I'm out of here!” I tried, but I couldn't manage to dislodge all the maggoty things around my legs, so I flew up to the highest spot in the room, and jumping up and down cried, “Wake up!” three times, watching myself doing it, and seeing my dream body fading as I managed to wake.

I felt completely flat the next day. I hadn't felt that flat in years. I knew I had been through many a spiritual trial. And four nights later, I had the following dream:

I become semi-lucid when I enter a church. The service has ended, but far away to one side of the altar, the organist is still playing a quiet haunting hymn. I make a sharp left up some wooden steps, and think how nice this church is, really big, with lots of dark wood, shadowy. The short flight of steps ascends to a landing and a door, my goal. Expecting an empty stairwell, I'm surprised to find it full of little girls and women all lining the steps, which are strewn with wine- red carpets and lovely white flowers, as if some sort of procession is underway. I stop and talk to one of the little girls. I'm reluctant to step on the rugs, but a woman tells me not to worry about them, because they aren't worth anything in themselves, so I continue ascending and come to another door. I open it, and immediately know I'm at the top of the tower, which commands a spectacular view of the ocean. It is a sunlit, beautiful place, and there I speak to another woman. I tell her I encountered a man twice on my way up whose hair was bright as sunlight. He had appeared each time I opened a door, as if he had actually been the one who opened it for me. I knew him; seeing him made me very happy. I then proceed into the Lady's Room, which is not a bathroom but a long dressing room in which are gathered women of all ages. It is a place for changing clothes and preparing for something...

The following evening—without any previous conscious intention to do so—I told my husband we needed to get a divorce, and he agreed. My deepening faith was a problem for him, he could not share it and, in the end, we had very little in common anymore. Before my shocked self knew it, I was packing my things and preparing to leave the mountain where I had begun lucid dreaming and the Lord claimed me for his own. Yet despite the mental and emotional anguish of separating from a man I had lived with for almost fifteen years, my soul was intensely relieved, and even positively exultant. From the tower in my dream—where the steps were strewn with flowers and all the doors were opened for me—I had seen a spectacular view of the ocean. As circumstances would have it (as God arranged it!) I now live walking distance from the ocean. The women I met on the flower- strewn steps were all there, like myself, to change out of their old clothes into new ones—out of our old lives into a new one in Christ. The woman in my dream of the holy shrine who was quietly speaking to me (and who I now believe was our Lady) had promised me I would soon be free while an Angel opened the doors of heaven for me. As a result of having been born again of the Spirit, I did in fact die, willingly, painfully and yet joyfully, to my old self and life.

"Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives." Galatians 5:24-25 Dream of November 3, 2016

Sitting in a very large movie theater, I'm semi lucid where I occupy one of two front row seats set side by side right next to the glass wall on the right, through which I clearly see the late twilight outside—a tranquil neighborhood, and the blue deep-blue water of the ocean visible not very far away. I spend more time gazing outside in contemplation than looking up at the big screen. I'm sitting in the comfortable slate-blue chair on the left, and the chair to my right is empty—the chair where my ex would be, but not anymore. On the big screen flash a series of scenes from movies, long excerpts in which nothing really happens, because the whole thing is never shown, only these essentially meaningless trailers. The place is full of people, many of whom seem to be talking with each other, idly enjoying themselves. There is a mischievous young man walking up and down the central aisle, where most everyone is sitting, who never stops causing supposedly friendly trouble, but the semi- private quiet seats where I'm sitting are off limits to him. I'm gazing outside thinking about my life, and God. I think how I should be sad that I'm alone, and the seat beside me is empty, but, in truth, I am content; I am at peace. I am not lonely, because the Lord is with me. I'm not really interested in anything that's happening on the screen, but sometimes it gets so loud, I have to look up at it. I vividly recall a trailer featuring a fat teenage girl wearing an old- fashioned corset, like some black comedy endorsement of BDSM, as she literally flies around the house screaming supposedly funny sarcastic remarks at her family. And it becomes even more of a nightmarish parody of a sitcom when her huge breasts, bursting out of the bodice, begin to decay, to rot away along with the rest of her skin, moving up to her face. She tries to make light of this ghastly leprosy, joking that it's just a mild skin condition. I look away in disgust... The next thing I know, I'm walking quickly, hurrying down an almost completely dark corridor deep in a house. I feel both pursued and purposeful as I come to a door on the left, outside of which, and facing it, stands a skinny young woman wearing a formfitting and so extremely threadbare dress, she might as well be naked. She looks like a really poor and abused prostitute, and she begins speaking to me. At first her tone strikes me as derisive, as if she thinks me hopelessly naive and coddled, but she really wants me to open the door. As I do so, she keeps saying things to me as we enter the room together, and I find myself agreeing with her on all points. I remember her asking with urgent exasperation, “What were you thinking?” and me replying, “I have no idea!” I'm acknowledging the full dangerous and twisted extent of many of my life choices. This dark room is my past, and the moment I enter it, I sense aspects of my life looming around me like objects and furniture I can't make out that are frightening presences and forces. It's so dark, all I can really see is this delicate creature, slender and androgynous, with hair so short she might not have any hair at all. This dream figure gives off her own light as she accompanies me into this oppressive and frightening space, so that I wonder if she might be my Angel, who I have put through such hell! Suddenly, there's a half light, and I see that all the “stuff” which was here before is gone, and the room is empty now, although the feeling of what was there still lingers oppressively. I walk over to the window directly across from the door, then turn to face the room. Abruptly, the entire space is illuminated in a flash, and it's like a blow to my soul that makes me exclaim out loud, “Ugh!” The stark emptiness of the place is awful compared to where I live now, which is technically the same room and yet a completely different space, as though it exists in another dimension, in the Spirit—in a “place” full of light and furnished with the most beautiful and meaningful objects of my shipwrecked life by God Himself. The Lord made my new living space happen, He made everything in it, my new life and circumstances are His creation, and so beautiful, the contrast with my old living space is hauntingly awful. Later that same night, I find myself viewing hypnagogic imagery... Three or four banners light up the darkness behind my closed eyes. The one directly before my vision is beautiful, with gold embossed words forming a close up of a crossbeam and a man's dark-haired profile, his head looking down, so I can't really see his features. Then in large golden print at the top of the banner I make out the words:

IN KILLING YOU I SAVED YOU 7—Angels of God

"In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus turned to the disciple who had drawn his sword and told him, 'Put your sword back.... Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?' (Matt. 26:52-53). There can be no doubt what this term meant to Jesus; angels were actual entities that did not belong to the physical world but had power to benefit people's lives, to help people in ways that were set against the destructive power of demons and the devil."xxv

When I first began lucid dreaming, I regularly encountered helpful dream figures. For example, a variety of these Dream Guides, what I initially called them, seemed to appear for the specific purpose of helping me “step” consciously into a dream. Precisely because of the great variety of dream figures I encountered, my Dream Guides stood out. (I’m not writing now of the uniquely special Person I referred to in the Forward.) For a long time, I thought I had more than one Dream Guide because, although most of them were male, they often varied in appearance. But after reading what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about Guardian Angels, I began to wonder if what I, as a lucid dreamer, called a Dream Guide might actually be my Guardian Angel assuming different forms:

"From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life... Angels are beings made by God. They are pure spirits and personal beings. Each angel is a person. They are both powerful and intelligent. Some people are inclined to think that the word “person” applies only to human beings. On the contrary, “person” applies to each of the three divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, to angels and to humans."

Pope Benedict XVI stated: "The Lord is ever close and active in humanity’s history and accompanies us with the unique presence of his Angels, whom today the Church venerates as 'Guardian Angels', that is, ministers of the divine care for every human being. From the beginning until the hour of death, human life is surrounded by their constant protection."xxvi

Thinking back on memorable dreams in which a Dream Guide helped me out, I realized his appearance sometimes frightened me at first even though it was also exciting. But after this initial anxiety, I felt perfectly relaxed and comfortable in his company. Not only that, his presence felt mysteriously natural to my dreaming soul.

Excerpt from my lucid dream of February 22, 2012:

At first, I can’t see a thing, but I’m determined to visualize the streets and houses as I know they exist. I come to a corner and have to decide if that’s zero or 1st street. I determine the next one down is 1st street and keep following my visualization, even though I'm finding it hard to construct an entire residential neighborhood with just my imagination. I make myself arrive at the appropriate address, walk up the steps, and tell my companion—who is a featureless silhouette—to try the key, and it works! “Good job,” I declare, and enter the building with confidence, because I'm sure now that the door to the top floor apartment can also be unlocked. I start up the steps, and when I come to the first landing, I can see it very distinctly. I’m really here! I made it, I’m in a lucid dream! In that instant, someone grabs my waist from behind, and propels me up the remaining steps to the door of the apartment. It feels good, part of the thrill of being conscious in a dream, but I don’t want to get too excited and wake up. We enter the apartment, and I wonder what it is I am meant to discover and do here. The presence behind me is still gently pushing me forward, and I glimpse a man’s silhouette as we pass in front of a mirror hanging on the wall in front of us. A very small part of me is anxious, but I'm really more curious than concerned when I ask him, “Who are you?” and when he doesn’t respond, I repeat, “Who are you?” Managing to turn around then, I'm pleased to make out in the darkness a hard but handsome face framed by shoulder-length hair. “Is there something I’m supposed to know?” I query, thinking he might have something to tell me. In a firm yet kind voice, he replies, “Just go with it.” Understanding that he wants me to simply flow with the dream and see where it leads, I say eagerly, “Okay!”

This Dream Figure remained with me for the entire long dream—which was all about helping a little boy believe in his dreams—silently watching me, and occasionally speaking a few words of encouragement without actually telling me what to do. And approximately three years later, I had a dream that inspired me to begin questioning not only the apparently different identifies of my Dream Guides, but also their human nature: Excerpt from my dream of January 4, 2015:

I’m on the upper floor of a large dark building with a man. We’re on some sort of quest. A gold- framed black portal forms before us. This is the way… A brief period of blackness, and suddenly I find myself transported to the other side of the portal. I think—It’s like a cut scene in a video game. I sort of wish I had had the chance to consciously go through the portal, but here I am. Then a Voice informs me I am in the University, and that from now on I will be able to travel here whenever I wish. It’s quite dark in this long, great room lined with Cathedral style windows to my right letting in a soft silvery light, and immensely tall bookshelves to my left. As I turn in place, looking around me, I’m suddenly a little frightened, because from the direction I arrived—where this structure ends in a black chasm dividing this place and where I came from—I sense a Presence. What happened to my companion? I call out to him, my voice clear but ringing with fear. I glance to my right, toward a section of shelves I sense contain books even though I can’t discern any. When I look back the way I came, I’m terrified to see a figure at least three times the size of a normal man looming at the end, or at the beginning, of the corridor. He’s wearing an ankle-length sleeveless white tunic with a soft hint of blue-gray, and his pale head is clean shaven. When he raises his right arm slightly, I take a step back, feeling utterly helpless. I cannot possibly fight this Being! Then he says, “This is the Hall of Records. You are welcome here.” He is looking directly at me, smiling slightly, and I realize, with intense relief, that he’s not hostile, and might even be considered handsome except that he’s obviously not human. I don't remember his exact words, but he basically informs me he is my Guide, and I am so immensely relieved he seems to want to help me, I wake up.

I sensed a frightening power in this Being who told me he was my Guide, and that I was in the Hall of Records, which looked and felt like an endless place filled with books. Thinking about it, I was reminded of the theosophical concept of the Akashic Records, which purportedly contain the entire history of every soul since the dawn of Creation. The most extensive contemporary source of information regarding the Akashic Records comes from the clairvoyant and Christian mystic, Edgar Cayce, whose works I have not read. References to The Book of Life are found throughout the Old and New Testaments. In Psalm 139, King David states that God has written down everything about him and all the details of his life, including everything that was imperfect and those deeds which had yet to be performed. Dan. 7:10, Rev. 20:12 indicate The Book of Life is to be opened in connection with divine judgment, and Jesus told His disciples, “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)

After these and other similar dreams, I made it my primary intent, when I became lucid, to learn more about my Dream Guide, who I now referred to as my Guardian Angel:

Excerpt from my lucid dream of September 20, 2016:

Walking through what appear to be the silvery-gold ends of fishnets suspended from the ceiling of a dark passage, I make a spontaneous request, “My Guardian Angel, please protect me all the long days of my life!” Even as I speak, I see light before me, and find myself emerging into a dream scene. It is a beautiful day outside, and as I climb a short flight of steps, I find myself in an outdoor cafe of some kind. Noticing a brown public bench just outside the patio of the cafe, I deliberately land on the back of it, and jump up and down on the narrow edge like a gymnast warming up on a balance beam, limbering and stabilizing my dream body and senses. I am high up on what appears to be the side of a great mountain, because far below me I perceive the coast and a city facing the ocean—not a city with skyscrapers, but definitely a large place, although from my vantage point it appears small and toy-like. The scene is clear and luminous, like the most marvelously mild and cloudless day in waking reality. Drifting away from the cafe and floating through the blue sky, I confirm the location I am in is located on the edge of a long cliff. Then for some reason, I concentrate on performing a back flip in slow motion. I feel it’s important I am able to accomplish this in a realistic way, experiencing the change of perspective as I spin in place. At first it seems I won’t be able to do it, but persevering, I manage to slowly flip backward. Suddenly, I find myself very close to a row of men who are considerably taller and look much stronger than human men. There is a vivid hyper-reality to the scene that makes me a bit wary, as though I am drawing closer to the edge of an extremely sharp blade that can cut and hurt me if I’m not careful. I can actually only see the heads of the men and the tops of their immensely broad shoulders, which emerge from the top of the mountain-high wall they are somehow standing in. (I’m reminded of the reinforcing steel bars around which concrete is poured.) Their backs are to me, but the moment I come close to them, one of them turns his head slightly to look at me. His expression is intensely stern, and I suffer the impression that I'm getting a little too close to some seriously powerful goings on. Studying these men who are part of the mountain, I wonder if this dream scene has something to do with my Guardian Angel. The “man” who is looking directly at me has short black hair, and although his skin is vivid with life, his features almost look carved, not from lifeless stone but from pure forces I am symbolically seeing manifested in my dream. Backing away from him a little, I turn and drift high above the world for a few moments. Then sensing some great upheaval occurring behind me, I turn around again. I can now see the entire bodies of the larger-than-life "men." In my field of vision there are only three or four of them, but I know they are all wearing seamless full-length “uniforms” of a shining green, with vertical bands of a slightly darker green color. They seem to be emerging from what looks like a cross between a mountaintop and an immense castle-fortress rising all the way up into the sky from the ground far below. I am looking at a crenellated wall in which the battlements are the heads of living "men." I distinctly feel now that this scene relates to my intent, which was to learn more about my Guardian Angel. As I’m wondering about this powerful and dynamic “process” I'm catching a mysterious glimpse of, I begin waking up.

The Church teaches that Angels are creations of God, but they are not human. The word Angel comes from the Greek word Angelus which means “messenger.” With their whole being they are servants and messengers of God. Angels stand in the presence of God and enforce His will. In my dream, I felt myself in the presence of pure and unimaginably powerful forces. I believe I may very well have been in the presence of my Guardian Angel—the “man” who looked right at me—and that I was permitted to symbolically observe some of the inscrutable work he and his fellow servants of God are engaged in for the good of individual souls and all humanity, which includes protecting us from hostile powers, hence the castle-fortress they were all a part of. It wasn't until I was writing this book and re-reading this dream that I thought to investigate the "uniforms" I had seen the "men" wearing, which shone like gemstones. I Googled "light green gem stones" and the one most resembling the color of the "uniforms" I saw the "men" wearing was Peridot, which I couldn't remember having heard of. This is an example of the dream providing me with a "determinative" to help confirm I was reading it correctly. "The history of Peridot is intrinsically tied to the Egyptian island of St. John (Zabargad) in the Red Sea... These gems are formed deep within the mantle of the earth, and are brought to the the surface by volcanic activity. Peridot is also found in certain types of meteorites."xxvii When I read this description, I immediately thought of Moses parting the Red Sea and the Gospel of John—of the Bible, which is God's Word, and Angels are messengers of God. Hidden forces working deep within the fabric of earthly existence which can come down from heaven... Angels.

Lucid Dream of October 4, 2016

I become conscious of sitting at a small table placed slightly to the right of an open door through which handfuls of people trail in and out from the sidewalk outside. It’s night, and these persons seem attracted, like curious moths, to the bright energy emanating from the voice of a man standing almost directly in front of me. I'm busy writing, yet I also listen to this man when he begins a quiet discussion with the woman at the front of the line. I sense she believes they are merely having a philosophical conversation, which she enjoys, but I know it’s much more than that. I’m not surprised when the man suddenly begins yelling at her, not angrily, simply speaking as loudly as possible, as if she's hard of hearing and there’s just no other way to reach her. “No! No! The answer is Jesus Christ! Jesus is the Way!” As he elaborates on this statement, I look up from what I'm writing to smile and nod. The woman is obviously not sure if she should listen to him or turn around and leave. She doesn't understand that her life depends on the decision, but I know it does. The man’s eloquent discourse at an end, he sits down at the table directly in front of me, and when I glance up from my writing again, he makes a brief statement that culminates with my name, “Maria.” I keep writing for a moment, but then it dawns on me this man said my name like he knows me. I ask another man sitting to my right, “Did he just say my name? Maria?” wondering how he knows who I am, for I don’t recognize him. Staring across the narrow table at him, I ask him directly, “Did you just call me Maria?” Silently, he holds my eyes, and I start becoming lucid as I study his face. He has brown hair with a touch of gold in it and a straight nose, but although there’s nothing remarkable about his appearance, he suddenly has my complete attention. Not answering my question, he rises and walks out of the small public room. Curiously, I follow him onto the nocturnal street of a timeless looking town with no streetlights, yet it’s not completely dark, for I can see the sidewalks. There are no cars or people on this side street, and the act of following this Dream Figure makes me fully lucid. He has come to a stop beside a window, and I realize he is kneeling beside it. Glancing from his profile to the glass pane on my right—the silvery reflective surface of which mysteriously sharpens my lucidity—I ask him, making sure to phrase my request as carefully as possible, “Will you answer my question truthfully, with just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” He nods once, his expression neutrally reserved, yet also subtly hopeful. “Can my Guardian Angel change appearances in my different dreams?” “Yes,” he replies, and looks up at me. Thrilled, and then suddenly so overjoyed I can scarcely contain myself, I shove him playfully over onto his side as I cry, “I have an idea who you are! Are you my Guardian Angel?” This time, he smiles as he nods, and it all becomes incredible now. I don’t even notice the transition to embracing each other as we float just above the ground. I feel as light and happy as a little child in an adult’s strong yet also carefully loving arms. And as we drift over the street, I sense he is just as happy as I am that I finally asked him these questions and, as a result, took a big step forward in understanding “him” by recognizing the creative malleability of his appearance, which even now begins changing. His countenance shifts again and again so swiftly, I'm unable to discern the transitions, but I’m delighted each time, even when he assumes an almost cartoon-like funny face. When he drifts down to recline on his side across a patch of grass in the form of a handsome blonde man, I stare down at him as, smiling seriously up at me, he says, “I almost don’t recognize you. Who is this Maria?” Throwing myself into his welcoming arms again, I ask, “Will you take me to Sean? xxviii Will you take me to Sean, please?!” Grasping my hand, he pulls me forward as he says quietly, “We have to hurry.” We fly into the darkness, which becomes a series of rooms, all well lit but furnished differently and opening as if endlessly one onto the other, so that after a few moments, I ask, “Why do we have to go through all these different rooms? Why is it that we have to do this so much in lucid dreams?” My Angel replies that it has to do with our projections, with our thoughts, our expectations, present and future, and so on. Although this comes as no surprise to me, I insist, “But why? Why can’t we just go straight there?” He does not answer me. We finally come to what is clearly the exit—two rectangular "metal" panels set in a wall. They look very solid, with sharp edges that might actually hurt me if I’m not careful when pushing my way through the one on the right as my Angel opens the one on the left. But we make it through with scarcely any effort, and once more find ourselves outside at night. He is still holding at least one of my hands, and yet he is also standing before me as he begins rising into the sky, which is completely black. It isn’t a solid lifeless black but rather a living mass of clouds. His torso becomes visible to me then as a gray shaft or straight-edged column beneath his face, pale and handsome and crowned by short black hair that merges with the sky. His “body” is manifesting before my dream eyes as a tall “pillar of force” and the darkness of the dream sky is somehow also a part of him, as if what I initially took to be storm clouds are his wings. We begin ascending, and I feel we’re about to do some serious fast traveling, but I lose the dream.

Decades ago on his television show, Archbishop Fulton Sheen devoted an episode to Angels. I stumbled on this video after I had these Angel dreams, but it all fits with how my Angel behaved, and what he said to me, in my dream: "An angel has no body. When Angels appear to man, they only have the appearance of bodies. An angel does not know everything. An angel does not know future contingent events. An angel does not know the mysteries of Grace, unless God reveals those. And thirdly, an angel does not know the secrets of the heart and the motivations of the will. [But] an angel can illumine our mind in the way of Truth, and also infuse good ideals. We should not be surprised at that. After all, there is such a thing now, it would seem from our psychological laboratories, as Extra Sensory Perception, in which, in the sensible order, there does seem to be the influence of one mind over another mind. Nothing material passes between the minds."

When I first began lucid dreaming, I thought dream figures who behaved like Guides, and appeared in different forms in my lucid dreams, were actually different persons or entities, but in this marvelous dream I was informed, and shown, that I truly have a Guardian Angel.

Once again, I quote the Venerable Fulton John Sheen: "Every person in the world has a Guardian angel. But why? Because every single individual in the world is worth more than the entire universe. Each one is of sovereign worth, and God has given to each a Guardian. The reason we do not think of Angels is because we do not think of God. Just as soon as we begin to think of God—or rather cease thinking of ourselves as tiny little gods—then we’ll begin to believe in spirits that are wiser than ourselves, that instruct and guard us. There are Angels near you, to guide you and protect you, did you but invoke them! After all, aren’t we much better always when we travel in a society that’s a little bit nobler than ourselves?"

Lucid dreams of January 3, 2018—Twice With my Angel

Lying awake for a long time, I don't even notice the transition into a dream. I believe I'm really sitting in a white room on a white couch. At one point, my sister is sitting across from me on another couch talking to me in her sleep, and then my little dog Arthur is on my left. Finally, I feel the distinct shift and realize I'm floating through black-and-white hypnogogic imagery... I end up in a house that is and yet is not my waking reality home. I'm in a small room crowded with people. I become sharply aware when an exceptionally tall blonde man walks past me where I'm reclining on the couch. Focusing up on him, I declare, “Wow, you're tall!” Pausing to smile down at me, he gives me time to pick myself up, and follow him out of the room. Down a level—reached by two or three flights of steps at right angles—I come to a small room to the right of the front door at the end of the house. I know it's my room, and I walk in. The walls are violet, just like in waking reality. The space is completely empty except for a man's long coat hanging almost directly over the window. The color of wet sand, it resembles a trench coat, yet it also has the subtle thick feel of leather, and is made to fit a very tall, well built man. As I'm wondering about this, a short dark-haired man steps into the room holding a black flashlight, and I immediately don't trust him. I don't want him in here inspecting my space as if he wants to prove something negative about it's supernatural nature, maybe even disprove it. Using my body, I force him to retreat to the front door, where I snatch the flashlight out of his hand. “I'll keep that, thank you!” I say, and with the help of another guy, I evict this snooping little intruder from the house. I experience a False Awakening in which, outside during the day, someone is telling me— showing me by way of a comic-book-style illustrated pamphlet—about the different kinds of demons, and how you can learn to distinguish them. On the top of the list is a demon I didn't know about. I clearly see its name but can't remember it now. (It may begin with an S.) This first and most common demon is very hard to spot because he appears so “normal.” Then there are more obvious demons my instructor indicates, going down the list. I remember seeing demons with pockmarked faces, and demons called “Silver Streaks” who have slight indentations in their temples. Silver Streaks are extremely smart, target intelligent people and try to turn them away from God with arguments that sound convincingly logical and reasonable. Looking up from this Demon Manual, I become aware of being lucid and outside on a clear day in a pleasant public park. Rising and walking in a relaxed fashion, I think about what I can do now that I know I'm dreaming. Remembering my left shoulder—how it was aching a little from editing audio files at my desk all day—I notice a tree. Turning toward it, I think—In honor of the tree I loved so much on the mountain top, I'm going to see if it can help me relieve my shoulder. As I approach it, I see something resembling a wooden seat a few feet up the trunk, with a wooden bar over it that looks like it might provide some mysterious dream therapy... I find myself heading down some steps on which I encounter a happy group of people leaving a gathering, and one of them is an attractive blonde man. As we grab one of each others hands, I ask, “Didn't I send you a card twice when I first moved here?” as I think—No wonder I did, because there's something special about him, and he's here now. We descend the steps to the open door leading out into the night—the actual side door of my home. He walks out onto the gravel driveway, and taking a few steps to the right, stands half facing me where I remain on the threshold. I look at him, at his tall, straight, slender figure, and at his face and his hair, my focus sharpening as he simply stares silently back at me. My perception peaking into lucidity again, I ask him, “Are you my Angel?!” Not waiting for a reply, I hurry outside toward him. I'm remembering one of my first dreams with him, in which he showed me how malleable his appearance can be. Turning to face me, he replies, “Yes” as I step joyfully into his arms. But for an instant, I'm a little afraid he's not really my Angel but an evil entity trying to fool me. Then abruptly I realize he is crying as he says, “I don't want to deceive you.” This is very distressing. Why is my Angel crying!? I wake up...... Asleep again, I once more hurry down the back steps. On the bottom floor, I come upon a door open to the night, and pausing on the threshold, I see a man crouching on the sidewalk facing a group of what I sense are teenage boys. The man's clothes are light in color, the youths' clothing dark, so they look like mere shadows compared to the man's solid and very real presence. He is showing them and teaching them something. I step out and say a few words to the man before heading back inside. But as I begin climbing the steps, I stop and turn back toward the open door. Staring out at the man, I become lucid as I realize he is the same man I saw earlier... My Angel?! Hurrying back outside, I bend over to grab his hand. He lets me pull him up, and willingly comes with me as I lead him away from the group even as he remarks, “I have to work for a living, you know.” He smiles and I understand he is being funny, yet also serious. He looks different than he did earlier in the night, when my doubt made him cry, more solidly built. At the moment, his persona is that of a slightly older handsome blonde man wearing something like a white dress shirt and nondescript slacks. But there is no doubt he is my Angel! Then I see—lying a few feet away on the grass near the sidewalk—a beautifully luminous white motorcycle helmet. I seem to discern fine blue trim, I'm not sure now, yet it's definitely a helmet, only it is shining, almost glowing, like a modern version of armor a Warrior Angel might wear. Delighted, I ask, “Is that your shining helmet? Can we go for a ride?” Feeling happy as a child, and so very glad he came to me again tonight, I add fervently, “I didn't want that other one to be the last dream!” He doesn't respond, just keeps walking companionably beside me, but I know his answer is “Yes.” I don't doubt we can go for a ride together if that's what I want. I even sense he is pleased by my bold request. I feel as I always do when we're together in a lucid dream—like I'm really with my Guardian Angel! Then looking up at the sky, I cry, “Oh my God!” The immensity and magnificence of the vision I perceive stuns me—a huge full moon glowing in a dark sky directly between the two front and downward curving legs of a massive white sculpted dragon partially facing us. Beneath the glorious sight of my Angel's divine dragon bike—the full moon serving as it's headlight!—stretches a vast open courtyard adjoining an equally long white structure. Joyfully anticipating going for a ride with my Angel, I wake up.

"Beginning with what happened at Pentecost, every major event in Acts is marked by a dream, a vision, or the appearance of an angel... the Spirit deeply influences the lives of committed people by the guidance of direct and definite information, as well as by the gradual shaping of their lives... The abundant literature on the subject shows that the Spirit was viewed as a personality to which the individual could relate... Thus the experience of the Spirit was comparable to that of experiencing an angel, and as we have seen, the two were often interchangeable in meaning. In the terms of our Western culture there is simply no other way to describe these experiences except as dreamlike experiences or visions. These people believed that they were in direct contact with a reality that was anything but physical, the Spirit, which saved them from other nonphysical realities that were evil and could destroy them. Nothing else could rescue them from the principalities and powers of that dark world. This is the basic message of Paul and the other New Testament authors."xxix

These dreams with my angel were interwoven with lessons teaching my soul to distinguish different types of demons, and I also had to discern when I was truly with my Angel and not an impostor. Dreams such as these are visions. Words cannot truly describe how I felt and what I saw when I looked up into that dream sky and saw my Angel's ride; only poetry can approximate the visceral-spiritual excitement-joy:

April 25, 2018—Prayer Poem No. 241

So what's next in our lucid dreaming adventures, my Angel? A ride on your cosmic motorbike—with it's full moon headlight aglow between massive curved white dragon stone handlebars— along the gravel of galaxies, seeded with the flowers of planets arranged in solar system bouquets throughout our Lord's Palace? I wonder... Did God plant this entire universe for the human race or do other worlds exist in this splendid Kingdom of embodied Life where souls still live intimately with our Creator, in dreams awake? 8—Meeting in Dreams

In 2012 and in 2014, I presented on the subject of meeting in dreams at the International Association for the Study of Dreams Psiber Conference. In one of the dreams I shared in the previous chapter, I asked my Angel to take me to Sean, a fellow lucid dreamer who is one of the people I believe my soul has consciously interacted with in dreams. My Angel's response was, "We have to hurry." He was apparently willing (or had permission) to comply with my request. After eight years of lucid dreaming with a handful of people also fascinated by the possibility of meeting consciously in a dream, I truly believe my Angel has been monitoring and, on occasion, facilitating attempted dream shares between us. In the dream where I asked to be taken to Sean, my Angel and I were on our way somewhere. At the time, I regretted waking up before my Angel could finish granting my request, but I now believe my wish was fulfilled on another night. Having kept a detailed record of my dreams for nearly a decade, I now perceive how dreams can sometimes be more like episodes in a series than self-contained films that run for only one night. This makes sense of course, because sleep and dreams are part of our life's journey, which unfolds moment by moment, day by day, night by night, dream by dream. In Chapter 2, I mentioned how a barrier was erected around my dreaming soul in the form of a fence when I first began trying to dream share with James Kroll, who I have never met in waking life but know only virtually, which is also the case with Sean. This section begins with a few brief summaries of the best of my dream sharing experiences with James, and concludes with another dream in which my Angel appeared to me, and in which Sean also seems to have partially shared in the experience.

Excerpts from my dreams, and the dreams of James Kroll (my co-presenter at the 2012 IASD Psiber Conference) are followed by comments highlighting the connections between them.

Test Drive

Maria's Dream: I dream I'm sleeping in the backseat of a white luxury car, like a small limousine, when my mother wakes me (false awakening) and we go meet my deceased grandmother on the steps of a building. After a while, seeing the car still parked in the lot, I begin walking toward it. I hope I might have time to go back to sleep, just in case James has a lucid dream, and tries to call me into it. I reach the car, enter through the driver's door, and climb into the backseat, where I curl up comfortably...

James' Dream: I dream I'm outside when I walk over to inspect an old mint condition luxury car. It probably dates back to the 1950's and might be a Cadillac. The car is white with chrome bumpers.

Maria's Comments: The shared visual of the white limousine is striking, as is the action of each of us walking toward the car. Did my conscious desire to find James in my dream impact his dream? If he had looked into the car, might he have seen me sleeping inside it?

Magic Wands

James's Dream: In my dream, I'm in college, and a female performer is putting on an interactive magic show. She needs volunteers from the audience, and I am chosen. Her three provocatively dressed female assistants collect the various props. The lights go down, and the show commences. There is an odd sensuality about the dream; I am led to believe that, as a part of the act, I will be losing some clothes. As it turns out, the act ends before ever achieving any real momentum. I then chat with the three assistants, discussing where the act might have gone, but I'm distracted by small pins embedded in my left index finger, which I pull out one by one.

Maria's Dream: In my dream, I believe I wake in a strange living room. I feel I've been asleep for a long time. James must have found me in his dream! But my dog needs to be walked, so I hurry upstairs to dress. A man's shirt and pants are lying on the bed. I go stand before the dresser mirror, and clearly see my face, but my hair is cut short like a boy's. I turn to look fondly around at my old childhood bedroom. My eye is caught by what looks like the model of a stage, on which stand three elfin barbie dolls with slanted eyes and other details that indicate they represent magical beings. Apparently, my presence activates some mysterious mechanism, because the dolls suddenly step forward, and offer me their tiny magic wands.

Maria's Comments: Aside from the obvious visual bleed through of the magic show and the magical dolls, there is also a synergy between the number of assistants and dolls (three), as well as between the small pins James pulled out of his finger—the tiny magic wands the doll's were holding. The discarded male clothing I saw lying across the bed is also interesting, because in the beginning of his dream, James felt the magic act would involve him losing some clothes.

Exchanging Keys

James came up with the idea of both of us sharing an item in waking reality that would help link us in the dream space, and offered to send me the key to his old childhood home. The key's only value was sentimental, but he thought it would help me to have a physical item of his I associated with our exploration. I really liked the idea of exchanging keys, and of attempting to use them to unlock an imaginary door between our dreaming souls. I in turn mailed James a costume jewelry key, hanging from a long leather cord, with the word ETERNAL vertically engraved on it. As soon as we received each others key, we began sleeping with it next to our bed.

The Gold Ring

James' Lucid Dream: It's late evening at my target beach. I walk to the water, which is at an extreme low tide, and removing Maria's key from around my neck, state in a loud voice, “I throw this key into the water, as a gift to our dream space, so that our dream space may provide a gift in return!” I then turn, and walk toward the rock hoping that, when I look behind me, Maria will be there. Glancing toward the path leading into the woods, confident I will be presented with something, I suddenly hear several people approaching. A woman, who looks to be in her early twenties (later, upon waking, I recognize her as Maria's mother) is accompanied by two slightly younger dark-haired men who look like brothers. One of the men is holding a baby. The woman says to me, “I hear someone has thrown a gold key into the water! We must find it!” Feeling awkward now about having thrown the key in, I accompany her as she walks down to the water. I wake.

Maria's Comments: I emailed James' dream to my mother, Juana Rosa Pitaxxx, and she told me a story she had never shared with me before. When my mother was seventeen years old, her beloved childhood friend, Pepe, gave her a gold ring inscribed with her initials. She treasured the ring so much, she never took it off. Then one day, while she was swimming in Santa Maria del Mar, the ring slipped off her finger, and was lost forever. After her exile from Cuba a few years later, this ring became a symbol for my mother of losing her identity, her country, her life. This ring figured prominently in her early poems, and throughout all her work, a key serves as an important symbol. Mami told me she was not at all surprised she had appeared in James' dream, and said what she did, for her deepest desire has always been, metaphorically speaking, to find that gold ring she lost so long ago. Mysteriously, some portion of my mother's soul seems to have responded to James' gesture of throwing the key into the water, a key given to him by me, her first born daughter, with the word ETERNAL engraved on it. Mami also told me that the two young men James saw her with must have been her childhood friend Pepe, the one who gave her the gold ring, and his brother, Claudio. Pepe is dead, but Claudio remains her dear friend. When my mother lost her ring in the ocean, Claudio was less than a year old, which might explain the baby one of the brothers was holding—Claudio, showing up in James' dream both as the infant he then was, and as the adult he is now? Since my mother had never told me the story of the gold ring, James could not have picked it up “telepathically” from my mind, and in waking reality he has never had any contact with my mother.

Conception

James: Lucid, I address the Dream, “On behalf of Maria and myself, I respectfully request to be shown something relevant to both of us!” I then run down the street, and leap into the air. Quickly gaining altitude, I fly toward my target beach, which is visible beyond the trees. But once I'm high enough to see the water, I realize the scene is not correct; I should be seeing Connecticut in the distance, but instead I see a strip of land about one-thousand feet away. This unexpected land mass has a narrow white strip of beach, but then quickly slopes upward, forming a hill about one-hundred feet high covered with evergreen trees.

Maria's Comments: It is incredible James dreamed of what can literally be described as an Isle of Pines, which is where my parents went for their honeymoon off the coast of Cuba and I was conceived, making it a location relevant to both of us, since I had to be born so we could become friends. These experiences, both involving important moments in my mother's life James had no prior knowledge of, were a wonderful surprise to us. As James wrote in his dream report: “My first dream clearly picked up on a pivotal event in Maria’s mother's life. My second dream was relevant to both her parents, as well as to her conception. And both dreams originated not necessarily from Maria, but from people she loves.”

Maria's Lucid Dream of July 18, 2017 -With my Angel & Sean

I think I’ve gone out at night, where I sit inside a small, dimly lit room listening and observing. I become semi-lucid when I see a man sitting on the other side of the empty space, smiling slightly as he observes me. I shift in my chair, conscious of a wooden beam separating us. To my right, a woman is talking, telling some kind of story, but I don’t plan on being next in line, so after a moment, I get up to leave. As I walk to the door behind me, I realize I’m not carrying my purse. No problem… I slip a hand into my right pocket, intending to find my car keys in them, and as I do so, I recognize my ability to do this more and more easily. I step outside into a small dark and empty parking lot. What? My car was stolen? Turning slowly in place, I look around me and think—No, I’m not stranded, because I’m dreaming. Holding my arms slightly up and out (like a statue of the Virgin, although I don’t consciously think of her) I begin rising gently off the ground as I gaze up at the night sky. Directly above me, I perceive a golden haze of starlight, with individual stars shining through it in some kind of geometric shape. Brimming with peace and praise, I say quietly, “My Lord and my God!” I don't need to raise my voice, for I know I am heard. “My Angel!” Continuing to float up into the partially overcast night sky, I begin to perceive—forming within clouds illuminated from within by a suffused golden light—what appears to be the figure of an Angel. As I watch, it grows larger and larger, more and more distinct, until there is no longer any doubt it is my Angel responding to my call! And as his golden form slowly becomes visible to me, I realize he is immense; colossal! I never imagined he could be so big! Then realizing he is extending one of his hands down toward me, I fly up to meet it, and even though his fingers are as big around and as long as my body, I don’t hesitate to touch one. He holds it there for me as I caress it, full of awe at how real it feels, just like living skin. He is still emerging from the heavens when, with infinite patience and tenderness, he cradles me in his open palm and I kiss it in grateful awe. Still holding me in his hand, my Angel reaches the ground and seamlessly takes the form of a human-sized man flying on my left. His right shoulder and my left shoulder seem to merge as I cling to him, but not because I’m afraid I’ll lose my grip, for we are completely together. And at last I see his face, in profile above the top of his strong bare arm. He is a very handsome fair- skinned man wearing a white garment that leaves the upper part of his chest bare, and a fine silver chain hanging from around his neck ends in a sharp point. Then I glimpse something else near his neck over his shoulder—a golden crucifix-shape about the size of my hand, its edges studded as if with precious gems. And although I do not see it, the position of his left arm on the other side of his body indicates he is holding something extended before him. A sword? As we fly just above the ground, I gaze in wonder at his face. His short hair is a dark blonde, and his profile—fine-featured yet strong—doesn’t look exactly as I expected it to. Maybe because in this lucid dream the lighting is bright and clear? To my right, I glimpse a flash of dark-blue water like an ocean running parallel to where we're flying at high speed through something akin to a narrow covered walkway. But my surroundings are primarily a white blur because I have eyes only for my Angel, whose smile tells me he is just as happy as I am. I feel he has been waiting for this moment as eagerly as I have. It is so wonderful being with him like this at last! And as we fly, my Angel speaks to me. I hear his words, but I don’t understand them with my mind—what he says flows straight into my soul and eloquently deepens the joy of being with him. Then I become aware that he’s speaking a foreign language as I begin perceiving more of our surroundings—what look like open cloth booths beneath a white canopy selling colorful items. “Wait!" I exclaim. "You’re talking in Italian, but I need English.” Looking amused, he tells me that isn't true. I'm sure I’ll be able to remember all this clearly when I wake up. But just thinking about waking up begins ending the dream as my Angel slows down, and we come to a stop at a white counter in an alcove akin to a small seaside bar. I hear my Angel say “German” as I catch sight of a silver plaque on a bottle. The “bartender” refers to my companion as a man or a boy, and feeling the dream slipping away, I protest, “But wait, I thought you were an Angel” as I wake up.

Sean's Lucid Dream of July 18, 2017 I become lucid, my mind is groggy and I know I need to look for Maria. I'm waiting in a room, in line to be served for something. I'm patiently listening to this old guy talk, about nothing in particular. My lucidity slips and I realize he is pulling me back into my dream. So I step out of this building into a sunny town. I think I'm in a French town, in the south of France, or perhaps Italy. I also feel I'm not too far from the coast. I recall what I need to do, and realize I need to find Maria. I forget to head for a church, or use a prayer, and I just scream her name, but this time I try something new. I suck inwards and scream, using my (super sonic) voice like a giant vacuum, “MARIAAAAAA!” sucking it in, everything, and I feel her getting pulled toward me. Then I spot her up above, flying overhead. She's wearing yellow, and she look like herself for a change, and I'm overjoyed about this! Once she touches down beside me, we give each other a big hug and hold hands, and are just so happy. She is positively beaming; the smile she has on her face just remains there. I have a feeling it isn't only me she's happy to see, but something else. It's like she's here with me but also elsewhere, experiencing both at the same time. We are walking, and when I turn to talk to her, I cannot see her. It’s like she is, and yet isn't here, like I was able, before, to focus into the dimension (for want of a better word) she is in, but can’t do so now; I just can't focus my eyes to see her. She was here just briefly, and I try to imagine her, to get her form back, but it’s no good, it would only be her shell. But the feeling still remains with me. It was a pretty incredible meeting.

Maria's e-mail to Sean: Yes, it was incredible! Because what I did not mention in my dream report is that the Angel’s face looked a little like yours! In another lucid dream where I saw my Angel’s face, it was similar but slightly different from last night, which I did mention.

Let me break down why I don't doubt we were together:

At the beginning of our dreams we both found ourselves in a room with a man talking and feeling we were next in line. You felt you were in a place near the coast as I did, and both of us thought of Italy. The golden color in both our dreams. My beaming smile and radiant joy. How I descended from the sky to you, just as my angel came down to me. Your impression that I was with you and yet also experiencing something else. How I hugged my Angel’s finger (approximately the size of a person) and clung to him, just as we hugged and held hands. How intensely happy we both felt. Your dream enriches mine, and mine yours, in a way that confirms we were both blessed last night by this experience – an Angel’s touch, God’s gift to us, to show us we are on the right path! I have a thought about the foreign language my Angel was speaking, and also about the silver German plaque on the bottle, which I'm going to investigate now...

Sean: Ah! I did suspect, actually, while I was reading your dream – that you were also experiencing two different dreams. Even to the end, when you were surprised the bartender referred to the angel as a man or a boy, and you knew you were with your angel – so how could he be both? I think this may be our first confirmed ‘spiritual experience’ dream, which I have been hoping for for a long time now! Obviously it's just the tip of the iceberg, but plenty enough to get excited about! Looking forward to hearing what comes from your investigation in regards to the German plaque.

Maria: I listened to an audio clip online and I believe Aramaic is the language I heard my Angel speaking. In the dream, it sounded like Italian at first, but when I told my Angel he was speaking Italian, he said that wasn’t true, because he wasn’t speaking Italian! Regarding the The German plaque I saw on the bottle in the dream bar: Saint Eustace is currently best known for his cross-and-stag symbol featured on bottles of Jägermeister. This is related to his status as patron of hunters; jägermeisters were senior foresters and gamekeepers in the German civil service at the time of the drink’s introduction in 1935. According to legend, prior to his conversion to Christianity, Eustace was a Roman general named Placidus, who served the emperor Trajan. While hunting a stag in Tivoli near Rome, Placidus saw a vision of a crucifix lodged between the stag’s antlers. He was immediately converted and had himself and his family baptized, and changed his name to Eustace.

Sean: Wow that is interesting. I was going to ask why you were being shown this, then I saw which parts you put in bold. When Sean and I had this memorable dream share, he was reading the Bible for the first time, and a few days earlier he had, also for the first time, attended Mass with his wife and daughters. 9—Dreaming of the Dead and Purgatory

"Saint Augustine admitted that it was easier to describe what the Angels and demons do than to explain what they are. In discussing the dreams that people have of the dead, he stated that it is not the dead people themselves who appear (just as one does not expect the living person to know when one dreams of him or her), but 'by angelical operations, then, I should think it is effected, whether permitted from above, or commanded, that they seem in dreams to say something'."xxxi

Almost everyone I know has dreamed at least once with someone who has passed away. I have had many dreams with my father, and a few with my maternal grandparents. What Saint Augustine says about such dreams makes a great deal of sense to me. And yet, having often experienced the very real possibility some people do in fact remember dreaming with each other on the same night, I wonder if it is not also true (for everything is possible with God) that sometimes when we dream of a deceased person their soul is actually consciously with ours. I believe in Purgatory. I also believe I have sometimes dreamed of Purgatory. So perhaps, on special rare occasions, our souls are permitted to visit with loved ones there. I agree with C.S. Lewis who wrote: "Our souls demand purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, 'It is true... that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy'. Should we not reply, 'With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first.' 'It may hurt, you know'—'Even so, sir'."

Great fairy tales can be spiritual allegories. Imagine Cinderella strolling into the palace to meet the Prince before her fairy godmother helped her become as beautiful as possible. In this spirit, I personally look forward to the purification of Purgatory. Of course, our souls might be instantly purified and transformed after death as if by a magic wand, but in the story, the process of Cinderella's beautification requires some creative transformative work, and only then is she ready to enter the King's Castle and dance with the Prince.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church par. 1031 states: "The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned." Even before I read what the Church teaches, I believed in a transitional state after death, in part because of my dreams with deceased loved ones. The doctrine of Purgatory is well supported by Scripture and not, as some have argued, a relatively recent invention of the Catholic church. "Some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament... refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it... The Bible speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell... Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture. Look at it this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was purgatory, then this one verse directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If the limbo of the Fathers was a different temporary state, then the Bible at least says such a state can exist. It proves there can be more than just heaven and hell."xxxii

In my dreams, my deceased loved ones are "somewhere" that is not heaven. A place (a spiritual state) between earth and heaven?

My very first lucid dream occurred when I was thirty-three years old, three days after my maternal grandmother passed away. I found myself sitting across from her in a place resembling a small airport waiting room. Looking over at me, she said in Spanish, “I’m dead, aren’t I?” to which I replied, “Yes, you are.” The next thing I remember is walking with her through a dark space. Helping support her bent form, I encouraged her to straighten her back, assuring her that she didn’t need to stoop anymore because she was no longer confined to her physical body. I distinctly remember looking down at our clasped hands and thinking, “When I wake up, I will know this was real and not just a dream. This is really happening." Just before waking up, I found myself standing in a well lit interior resembling a post office just as a tall and slender figure strode cheerfully into the space declaring, "I'm here to pick up the package!" This person had an attractive fine-featured face, gently waving shoulder-length blonde hair, and was wearing a white uniform. Watching this intensely energetic and androgynous courier proceed to the counter, collect what he had come for, and stride out again, I felt the "package" was my grandmother's soul. The night before she died, I had dreamed of my Abuelita, who was Christened Rosa, standing in a colorful garden, and as she smiled at me, the antique lizard pin she liked to wear on her dresses suddenly transformed into a colorful butterfly and flew away.

My father died more recently, and I have dreamed of him often. In the summer of 2006 (a few years before I began lucid dreaming regularly and intelligently) I had this vivid little dream: My father (I call him Papi) and his third wife are sitting together at a small round table on an upper balcony of an outdoor restaurant attached to a hotel. Although the sun is shining brightly, they look sad and depressed. Walking over to them, I remind Papi that we’re supposed to visit the pyramids together. He tells me he doesn’t think he can make it. I’m very upset, and insist we have to go. I remind him that he promised me we would. A few days later, I received an email from Papi informing me that he had been diagnosed with Leukemia. In the months that followed, we grew closer than we had ever been. The pyramids of ancient Egypt (a civilization I have been studying since I was a child) are monumental expressions of a powerful belief in immortality, so metaphorically speaking, my father and I did indeed visit them as together we confronted death. Seven months after his diagnosis, he passed away. The evening after his funeral, I was standing in the bathroom of a hotel on my way home, and as I brushed my hair, I heard my father's voice saying joyfully, “Maria, my love! You were right, Maria! You were right!” His voice didn't register in my physical eardrums, yet it was clear as a bell ringing directly in my mind. And that night, I went to bed determined to dream with him...

I find myself standing in a small town staring at the entrance to a theater, and at once I become lucid. I concentrate on the open door through which people are streaming out onto the street, absolutely determined my father will be one of them... and there he is! Immediately, we're embracing each other, but I notice that he looks a bit groggy and confused. He warns me, in the way he always did when he was worried about me, "You have to be careful here, Maria." I keep my eyes on him, and although I miss the transition, his face changes and I'm hugging a man with a similar build and complexion to my father's but who isn’t really Papi anymore. Then abruptly he collapses at my feet as though shot in the heart by the man I now see standing nearby. The stranger's intently aware eyes stare straight into mine, and although he's an attractive man, his cold sharp smile scares me so much, I understand I have to get away from there as fast as possible! I launch myself into the sky, and flying away from the scene, wake up.

At the time, I thought of this man as one of my Guides protecting me from the dangers of a “place” on the "Other Side" I was not prepared for, but to which the force of my grief and love propelled me, hence my father’s warning. I now think of "him" as my Guardian Angel, whose appearance "disabled" whatever had taken my father's place and had me in its grip, as he deliberately frightened me away from there.

Not long after Papi's death, I had another dream with him:

I find myself walking toward a long white structure on a perfectly luminous day. The single story building is surrounded by a white stone walkway punctuated with matching benches overlooking lush grass and flowering trees. I follow the path until I come upon Papi sitting on one of the benches. I ask him if I can sit with him, and he promptly moves over as he apologizes, "Sorry, but here we tend to sit in the center just because we can." I reach for his hand and cling to it. In the peaceful silence, I become acutely aware of being there with him. I look around us, and the lucid sense of being fully present in the moment intensifies as I say, "You know, we’re sitting here now in reality, but we could also already be sitting together on the Other Side with nothing to fear, not ever..." To which Papi replies, "I feel we could be, because of the sun."

Minutes after waking up from this dream, I walked outside with my dog, and a fine mountain mist enabled me to look directly at the rising sun. There it was, in all it’s orange-gold splendor— the solar disc as clearly visible to my naked eye as the full moon. The vision felt like a blessing, like a gift from my father telling me we truly had been together in my dream. Of course, I understand now that my father wasn't referring merely to the solar disc but to the Son of God. Because of Jesus, and His gift of the Holy Spirit, my father's soul and mine could, for a few precious moments, be together in a dream.

Lucid Dream of May 6, 2014—Asking Papi About His Life on the Other Side

It's a lovely day and I'm walking up our long curving black driveway, which is surrounded by trees in full summer leaf. Everything feels absolutely real and more vividly sensual than normal; even the slightly rough texture of the black asphalt beneath my bare feet tempts me to lie down on it to experience it's unique sensation more intimately. I dismiss the urge, and for a few moments the world goes dark, but not completely. There is still luminous sky to the right of our tallest tulip tree, so that its familiar outline defines the edge of the darkness. Relaxed, I continue walking, simply waiting for my vision to completely return, which it does just as I round the final curve in the driveway. When the house comes into view, I see a man walking toward me. Behind him, a small group of people is gathered at the top of the driveway where it merges with the brick courtyard. My heart literally seems to expand in my chest when I realize the visitor is Papi! He strides across the grass toward me, smiling his uniquely wonderful smile. Above normal clothes, he is wearing an unusual flesh-colored fur cape, long and affluent-looking yet light enough to billow around him. Hurrying to meet him, and gazing joyfully at his face and into his eyes, I cry, “Papi! I didn't expect you!” but he lets me know (without actually telling me so) that he only dropped by to say hello but that he can't stay; already he's turning toward the big car around which the others are gathering. I suffer the sinking sensation I am all too familiar with. Once again it is obvious that I desire to spend more time with him than he does with me, which makes me very sad. “You can't just stop by for five minutes, Papi!" I protest. "You have to stay! Please, Papi!” I will not let him leave so soon... Abruptly, we are all inside a small rectangular room I feel is part of my house, although not in waking reality. It appears to be some sort of antechamber where guests can congregate, as they are doing now, some sitting, others standing and talking in the even light. There are no lamps, no furnishings at all, but a dark-haired man with his back to me (my brother?) is loudly and passionately playing a piano. Papi is standing a few feet away from me, smiling and saying something to someone. He looks happy and healthy, which makes me glad but also confuses me. Can it be that his leukemia is in remission? He's been sick for years, and yet he's still alive and looks perfectly healthy... A transition I can't remember to sitting in a large dark room. Diagonally across from me, Papi is seated in the center of another couch. Keeping my focus on him, I somehow manage to pull myself up into a standing position so I can walk over to him. “It's okay," I tell him, staring intently down into his eyes. "I'm lucid now. I wasn't lucid before. I understand that you're dead.” Smiling, he replies, “Of course I'm dead.” I sit down beside him on the couch to his left, and as I ask him many questions, our positions relative to each other occasionally shift slightly. I wish I could remember everything we talked about word-per-word, but I know for a fact that at the beginning of our long conversation, I clearly picked up from him that life after death is not what he had expected it to be; it is much like physical life only infinitely more dynamic, for he is constantly and profoundly engaged in its unfolding. At one point, while we're both standing, he tells me about a female acquaintance who covets a particular golden mausoleum for herself. I realize he's making a joke about dead people tomb hunting the way living people house hunt. I exclaim, “You don't really live in mausoleums here!” and he smiles at me the way I remember him doing whenever he was pulling my leg. Well into our conversation, I ask him, “Is there an infrastructure here?” He looks away, and the wonder in his voice is shadowed by fear as he replies, “Maria, it's as if the center of the city is alive...” This makes wonderful sense to me. “It must be the heart,” I tell him, as in the Sacred Heart. The vision that flashes in my mind is of an open city square filled with a misty dark-blue light manifesting between the buildings and joining earth and sky as it thrusts out slightly like a woman's breast. It is unfathomably alive and yet only one intimate connection—like a tiny bay in an endless ocean—to an absolute and Supreme Being, all-knowing, all-nurturing, all-giving and unending Life. It is nearly impossible for me to describe what I felt in this vision, but I instantly grasp that "where" Papi is now constantly manifests his innermost thoughts and feelings—his soul. Excited, I tell him, “I have a theory, Papi, that we're all like cells in the single body of humanity, so here, individual souls might be like cells bringing this world to life.” I seem to comprehend that where he is, the activity of “day-to-day” life centers on experiencing and “working” with your soul, which is effectively turned inside-out. When we are once more sitting, and embracing each other now, I say, “I've asked you a lot of questions, Papi, and I've been dreaming for a long time. It's going to be hard for me to remember everything you said. Let's go over the points we covered. First, the infrastructure here is alive...” I phase out of the dream.

Dream Notes: I got the feeling that Papi and everyone else in that "place" was metaphorically suckling at the same Divine "breast” which cared for them while mysteriously helping them grow. When I shared my dream with Mami, she pointed out how at first I had to insist my father stay and spend time with me, and how it was my determination that obliged him to actually sit down and talk to me in a lucid dream. I know Papi loved me, but he always cut our phone conversations short when there was the real danger they might become more personal. This time, I didn't let him hang up! In modern spiritual parlance, my father is inhabiting one of countless concensus realities created by souls who prefer a more earth-like existence while they continue to learn and grow spiritually. I think my father is in Purgatory. The Sacred Heart I had a vision of in the dream, when Papi described the center of the city as being alive, connects where he is with God, but it is not heaven, which is full and unimaginably glorious union with God. In her book Fire of Love: Understanding Purgatory, Saint Catherine of Genoa writes, "No happiness can be found worthy compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise. And day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed. Sin's rust is the hindrance, and the fire burns the rust away so that more and more the soul opens itself up to the divine inflowing." I had not yet read this book when I had this dream, but I believe I glimpsed the truth of this "divine inflowing" my father informed me was at the heart of everything. During his final weeks in the hospital, I was in the room with him when a Catholic priest arrived to see him. Papi asked me to stay, but when the priest, standing at the head of the bed, opened his Bible and began praying, I mumbled some excuse, and fled the room. I went outside and sat in front of the ocean watching the seagulls, my back to the hospital around which vultures constantly circled. I'm sure it's no accident I had this incredible dream with Papi now that I have fully embraced the Catholic faith into which I was baptized and confirmed. When he retired, my father was Director of USAIDxxxiii in Central America, which might explain the word I found myself spontaneously using in the dream—infrastructure—for much of his work consisted in overseeing the development of more modern infrastructures in poor rural communities.

Dream of June 5, 2015—Abuela in Purgatory

Walking purposefully, I suddenly come upon Abuela standing in some large common room. I almost walk past her, but then pause, becoming gently lucid as I understand that I'm seeing my dead grandmother. She looks very much like herself, and is wearing something akin to a hospital gown made of a thin pale fleshly material marred by stains of varying sizes and degrees. I ask, “Abuela?” even though I know it's her. I can't remember our exact words to each other, but I begin by asking her how she's doing, and she tells me that she's fine, even though she is undergoing some very intense treatment. I reply, “Yes, I already knew that from another dream” as I remember glimpsing the process, which consisted of something flowing into and out of her. And as she speaks to me now, I receive another image of what her soul is experiencing. A great force is flowing into her like an invisible river's powerful torrent, but it is not water, or even the amorphous so-called “energy” of material science—it is a Living Power/Quality/Vitality/Pure Life actively engaged in purifying her. The crude analogy of a soul enema comes to mind, because it is definitely uncomfortable and yet totally necessary. I suffer the impression this "area" of Purgatory is akin to a hospital wing, and she seems content there, if not exactly happy, because she is making progress, getting better slowly but surely. This lucid interlude with Abuela slips into another dream where I watch as she morphs into what looks like another woman, but it may be a more youthful version of her. As she demonstrates to me something of what she experiences in her “soul treatments” I perceive a greenish-gold “energy” building up inside her that forms a subtly glowing aura around her before abruptly “climaxing” in intensity and “snapping” into a golden egg-like frame around her—I literally see a gold-edged aura embracing her, as well as the other women in the group standing around her. They all appear to be undergoing the same "treatment." They stand there filled with a Splendor so bright it can barely be contained, their forms vibrating as though fit to burst with its radiance. Then they all begin dancing in a stop-motion-film kind of way, their arms and legs jerking up and down as their heads turn stiffly from side to side, almost like robots except there is nothing mechanical about their wholehearted exuberance. It's more like a ritual dance in which their gestures script a language expressing what their souls are experiencing. To me it looks as though the intensity of their joy is so great, they simply have to dance and dance even if their motions are, for the time being, painfully retrained. Yet watching them, I know all that matters is they are filled with this golden Light-Life which is such a pure and absolute joy, it's wonderful to be around them.

Excerpt from my Dream of October 21, 2014—Another Talk With Papi I have edited out how I became lucid and ended up sitting on a couch talking with my father: I'm sitting on the edge of the couch, gazing down at him where he reclines against it. At this point, I ask him a question I can't recall now, but I vividly remember his response. “God is there...” As he says this, I suddenly notice slender shafts of golden light shining down from above and behind him as though cradling him. “You feel pain in your essence...” He rests his left hand over where his physical heart would have been, and I observe a soft white light that seems concentrated in his chest area. “Forceful people come to you...” A perfect understanding fills me as I look at his face, and the light, and listen to his words. We stand up together, but I move over to another couch, where I find pen and paper and quickly write down his responses to me word-per-word, determined to remember them when I wake up. Then I go stand beside him where he is leaning against one wall, while Abuela silently observes us from a few feet away where she stands close to an adjacent wall. A question rises up from my heart without my conscious intent, “You can't ever see God?” Papi looks shocked, even a little angry or upset, as if what I just said is ridiculous. I add quickly, “Of course you can see Him! You see Him all the time because He is everything. He is All!” Papi's mollified expression seems to confirm the truth of my words as I lose the dream.

Dream Notes: I think it's because I wrote down Papi's responses to me while still in the lucid dream, not after a false awakening, that I was able to retain them, for otherwise I feel they would have slipped away. Nevertheless, it's impossible to describe how I felt seeing my father resting against those "fingers" of golden light. Just seeing them, and being in their Presence, was a blessing.

Saint Catherine of Genoa wrote, "...See, too, certain rays and shafts of light that go out from that divine love towards the soul... Two works are wrought by these rays: the first is purification and the second is destruction. Look at gold: the more you melt it, the better it becomes; you could melt it until you had destroyed in it every imperfection. Thus does fire work on material things. The soul cannot be destroyed insofar as it is in God, but insofar as it is in itself it can be destroyed; the more it is purified, the more the self is destroyed within it, until at last it is pure in God."

I believe now that in the dream, I misunderstood why Papi got such a pained look on his face when I exclaimed, "You can't ever see God?" because my soul already knew the answer—that he could not, in fact, see God yet because he was still in Purgatory, and only the souls in heaven experience the Beatific Vision—directly perceiving and communing with God. 10—Dreams of Jesus

Romano Guardini writes in The Lord: "Religion then! But there are so many, one might object; Christ is just another religious founder. No; all other religions come from earth. True, God is present in the earth he created, and it is always God whom the various religions honor, but not in the supremacy of his absolute freedom. Earthly religions revere God’s activity, the reflections of his power (more or less fragmentary, distorted) as they encounter it in a world that has turned away from him. They are inspired by the breath of the divine, but they exist apart from him; they are saturated with worldly influences, are formed, interpreted, colored by the historical situation of the moment. Such a religion does not save. It is itself a piece of 'world'... Christ brings no 'religion,' but the message of the living God, who stands in opposition and contradiction to all things, 'world-religions' included. Faith understands this, for to believe does not mean to participate in one or the other religions, but: 'Now this is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ' (John 17:3). Men are to accept Christ’s tidings as the norm of their personal lives."

Countless people through the centuries and across the globe have dreamed of Jesus. And for decades, an amazing and well-documented phenomenon has been happening in the Muslim world. Both men and women with no prior knowledge of the Gospels have been dreaming of Jesus Christ, and even having waking visions of Him. Like some of the mystical experiences I have had, these dreams are more than just dreams. What sets them apart is the intense reality of the encounter, and the effect the dreams have—the desire to surrender your heart, mind and life to Jesus Christ. These dreams appear to happen to Muslims who are seeking, as best they can, to know and please God. Young and old, educated and uneducated, men and women, even radical Muslims are coming to Christ and getting baptized as a result of a dream in which Jesus appears to them, despite how dangerous, even deadly it can prove for them to even be caught with a Bible. Social ostracism, death threats and arrests can result in going apostate. A Muslim girl who converts to Christianity is at the mercy of her father and brothers, who can beat and torture her to force her to deny her conversion. Yet even former leaders and imams of mosques are becoming Christian pastors and devoting themselves to helping other former Muslims who are endangering their lives in order to follow Christ.xxxiv I have read dozens of accounts of Muslim believers who have dreamed of Jesus, and this example combines features common to many of them:

“I was sleeping when I saw a beautiful man whose clothes were such a bright white, I could almost not look at them. He said to me, ‘I am Isa, your Savior. You will follow me.’ Then he took my hand, and led me toward a garden so beautiful, I knew it was Paradise. But at the entrance we stopped, and he told me I must read the Bible, and that it would lead me to life.”

Also of great interest is how open Muslims are to believing the man in their dream really is Jesus. In the Qur'an, Jesus is called Isa and is considered a great prophet and teacher. The Qur'an describes the miracles Jesus performed as signs of God’s mercy, not as indications that Jesus Himself was divine. The Qu'ran says Jesus was assumed into heaven before he died because he was God’s holy one. Muslims believe Jesus’ enemies could never have killed him because he was God’s chosen servant. When Isa appears to Muslims in a dream, they recognize him, but they do not really know who He is, until He enlightens them.

"The dream as a medium of revelation was given great emphasis in the new religion of Islam. This new spirituality, with roots in Christianity and Greek culture as well as in the Arab world, placed the dream in as central a position as any other culture. That same influence still exists in Islam today.... The mystical Sufi tradition, far from being an archaeological curiosity, is still very much alive in modern Islam. A similar tradition was also alive in Christianity through the Middle Ages... (But) The medieval church feared any questioning of its authority, and confidence in a direct contact with God through dreams was just such a threat. The church thus gradually came to a position about such experiences that made it unnecessary (even unseemly) for most of us to take notice of them at all. All necessary truth about God had been laid down, and people did not need direct contact with God anymore."

Well, God ignored that clerical Memo. And today, more and more people all over the world are dreaming of Jesus, and converting to Christianity because of dream visions and experiences. As I can personally testify, in such dreams the soul feels God's love with such pure intensity, it is overwhelming, unforgettable and potentially life changing. The receptive soul falls in love with her Lord and her God and desires to do anything she can to please her Beloved. Dream of July 8, 2015—Comforting Christ

I enter a small unfurnished room in a great Mansion. I can’t remember everything I was doing out in the city and in other rooms within the building, but at once, I feel everything was leading me here. A young man, his body wrapped in a white sheet, is lying on his back on some kind of a slab not much wider than his body. I cannot recall whether or not his lips are actually moving, but I clearly hear the words he says over and over again, “I did this. I did this. I did this...” Even though His expression only hints at the fact, I understand He is in great pain; He is enduring unimaginable anguish. I sit down beside him, also aware that his words are not filled with self recrimination or despair, on the contrary—He chose this suffering and, even now, He is Master of the agony. He is not waiting for or longing for death. Instead, by permitting Himself to be crucified, He has defeated death. I have known, almost from the instant I entered the room, who He is. Mere seconds have passed from my opening the door, to my coming to sit beside him, and now I gently turn His face slightly toward me. Bending over him, I gently kiss His right cheek once, and then again. I know this is all I can do to comfort Him, and that somehow it is enough, at least for now, even though I wish with all my heart and soul that I had the power to ease His torment. His flawless skin is gently flushed, like an early morning sky just before the sun rises. His straight hair frames His face, and its smooth dark length—subliminally lightened by a red-gold sheen—disappears into the white sheet wrapped around his body. I am gazing down at a handsome man who is Jesus Christ. And yet subtly but intensely, His face is more beautiful than any mortal man’s could ever be, and does not resemble any of the actors I have seen portray Him. Gazing at Him, I think about how I could never have imagined His face. He is a man unlike any other in his gently luminous perfection, which cannot be measured feature by feature, only experienced. I'm amazed yet not truly surprised that I'm looking upon the face of Christ. When I kissed him, his skin felt tender as a child’s against my lips even though His face is that of a man in the prime of life, what a man can look like. I understand “part” of Him is still crucified, that he will continue suffering until His redemption of humanity is complete. He has already risen, but I know that in my soul He is still lying as if in a tomb, fresh from the agony of the cross and not yet ascended to the Father. Comforting Him, being with Him, accompanying Him in his pain, I know it is my own soul—which lives forever in Him—that is being saved as I desire above all else never again to leave my Lord's side. Dream Notes: I heard Him repeating the words, “I did this” and in the dream I understood what He was saying to mean: “Nothing was done to Me that God did not will.” This dream has helped me understand that in loving Jesus Christ more and more every day—in striving to obey Him, to walk with Him in all my thoughts, feelings and actions—I am also mysteriously comforting Him. I could never have imagined His face as I perceived it. I feel that for every soul, His face is uniquely beautiful, and yet Jesus also was, and forever remains, Himself, our Lord and our God.

Lucid Dream of September 7, 2017—Asking Jesus What He Wrote

I’m gliding swiftly just above a shadowy street, passing a dark city park on my right. I know danger possibly lurks there amid the trees, so I veer to the left and travel even more swiftly along a sidewalk lined with shops, my progress unimpeded by a homeless family sleeping on the sidewalk covered by blue and red blankets. Recognizing the old cobblestones of a street in downtown Boston I’m very familiar with both from waking life and dreams, I stretch my arms out and begin flying... Oh yeah! This is a dream! It’s daylight now, and as I fly down the street, I recall my intent to see what Jesus was writing in the dust (or “on the ground” according to other translations) as John observed and recorded in a passage of his Gospel (John 8: 1-12) I know I’m flying in the direction of the ocean, a perfect place, and simply by willing it, I pick up speed. I soar swift and sleek as the figurehead of a ship skimming through the blue air so that around me all is a white surf-like blur. I slow down as I near a boardwalk and perceive steps leading down to it. I land at the bottom of the steps, but now I realize that what appeared to be sand is actually stone. So I inform the dream that I need sand (what I feel Jesus wrote on vs. dust) and close my eyes. When I open my eyes again, the darkly speckled stone has transformed into little shadows on sand. I even see a slight but distinct oval indentation in the sand the shape and size of a large fish. Perfect! Kneeling beside it, I say, “Lord, please let me see what you were writing in the sand… in English, so I can understand it” and close my eyes. When I open my eyes again, I see large carved or embossed letters with flowing lines, very fancy and lovely, obviously not a modern form of writing even though the letters themselves are recognizable as the English alphabet. I seem to distinguish, from left to right, the letters C, X, and R. At first I think Jesus was writing what He came to give us—eternal life and salvation through His birth—as I imagine the letters might spell CHRISTMAS. My vision moves slowly along the row of letters, clearly distinguishing each one. I try to memorize them, but there are too many, and they don’t seem to form a word I can read or recognize. Bending even closer to them, I take one of them in my hands. I realize then the letters have become miniature swords, or perhaps unusually large letter openers topped by carved and painted figures. I see a dragon’s head, a knight’s helmeted head, and then, on two smaller ones, the white head of a horse in profile, its mane flowing into the hilt. There are lots more of them than the alphabetical letters I originally saw. Intrigued, I curiously handle a few of them before I wake up.

Dream Notes: I think perhaps the letters appearing in Old English is my Lord’s way of teasing me, and reminding me that a positive sense of humor is His gift, like everything else. Since I had asked to be shown what Jesus wrote in English, I looked up Old English letters, and there was the script from my dream. When I looked up “Old English Christian manuscripts” numerous illustrations came up that reinforced my impression this was the language I had seen in my dream flowing from letters into dragons, knights and horses. I should have been even more specific and asked to see what Jesus wrote in modern English! Old English may technically have come up because it literally came first, was closest to Christ’s time, and because it was used to illustrate Christian manuscripts. But I still feel it was the Lord playing with me in the most wonderful way, like a Father both indulging and teasing His child. I emailed this dream to friends and family, and discovered another fascinating dimension to the experience when V., also a Christian dreamer, wrote me back:

"That is so amazing! This is my dream from that night: I am somewhere… I write… it is fading now, but I am with a lot of people. There is one guy who is there dressed in white. I am watching him, and I tell my husband, “Look at this guy, he just jumped right in to help everyone.” I keep watching him and commenting on how great he is. My husband gets annoyed with the praise I’m heaping on this man. As I watch him, he is pouring white sand, or is it blessed salt? It is also sparkly, and he is picking up this sparkly sand/salt and pouring it into everyone’s hands as they come up to receive it. I say to my husband, “You usually can’t see goodness, but this man has manifested it and is giving goodness to everyone who comes up to see him.” I think as I watch him – Is this Jesus? I wake. "I thought it interesting, Maria, how we both saw sand, and Jesus was there giving words or goodness to us on the same night! "That day we had gone to a Vermont cheese place my husband likes, and next door to it was a new Scottish store. We went in to look around, and there were what I thought were letter openers, one with a sword, one with a dragon, another a horseman. The lady told me that they were not letter openers but large pins for kilts! So I had to tell you that!"

Mami also remarked on my dream: "Perhaps what Jesus wrote cannot be grasped by our limited minds, and is a secret we can share precisely only in this way, thus partaking in His Being. I think He distributed salt in V’s dream because we are all called to be the salt of the earth." 11—Time & Revelation

A decade ago, I dreamed my husband and I were the only customers in a dimly lit shop. We entered a small cave-like alcove in which were displayed exquisitely lovely and colorful pieces of expensive-looking jewelry. I selected a tiny butterfly pin and took it out to the cashier, a young woman. She rang it up, I paid with a credit card, and she handed me a receipt for $0.00. It had to be a mistake, but she insisted I take the receipt. The next day, my husband and I were standing in a check-out line at Whole Foods when I noticed the register was subtracting prices instead of adding them up. I said to him, “This feels really familiar” as the cashier, a young woman, continued ringing up our items, unaware of the problem. I paid with our credit card, and was handed a receipt for a negative amount —$220.00. I pointed out the error and a manager was sent for who, after nearly half-an-hour attempting to correct the problem, declared that in all her years working there she had never seen anything like this. The computer, which was working just fine again, had simply decided to credit instead of debit us. The exasperated woman swiped our credit card and handed me a receipt for $0.00. We walked out of the store with the manager’s apologies and lots of free food. Much more importantly, my dream had come true. This dramatic fulfillment of my dream took precedence in my mind over its setting. I am certain now this experience was meant to get my attention, and it worked; I was inspired to begin paying more attention to my dreams. A cave-like space filled with colorful jewels can be read as symbolic of my deepest self and spiritual treasures, and a butterfly is traditionally a symbol of death, transformation and resurrection. At the time, I couldn't know that the most important part of this dream would gradually begin coming true as I was led to Christ through my dreams. I now understand how the receipt for $0.00—which I was handed when I chose to buy the butterfly pin—foretold how I would die to my old self and be born again; how Christ paid for my sins; and how I will always have everything I need if I believe in Him, even though in the eyes of the world I seem to have very little, or nothing at all.

Saint Athanasius, a Bishop of Alexandria, wrote: "...When the body lies in bed, not moving, but in death-like sleep, the soul keeps awake by virtue of its own power, and transcends the natural power of the body, and as though traveling away from the body while remaining in it, imagines and beholds things above the earth, and often even holds converse with the saints and Angels who are above earthly and bodily existence, and approaches them in the confidence of the purity of its intelligence; shall it not all the more, when separated from the body at the time appointed by God Who coupled them together, have its knowledge of immortality more clear? For if even when coupled with the body it lived a life outside the body, much more shall its life continue after the death of the body..."

In some respects, lucid dreaming can be viewed as a foretaste of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. In lucid dreams, we inhabit a world created by our waking life memory that is in many respects a glorified world experienced in a glorified body where, as C.S. Lewis expressed it, "matter has turned into soul. At present we tend to think of the soul as somehow 'inside' the body. But the glorified body of the resurrection as I conceive it—the sensuous life raised from its death—will be inside the soul. As God is not in space but space is in God."

I have had countless dreams in which I experienced events happening somewhere else on earth while I was sleeping, and future events involving other people as well as myself. The laws of time and space as we experience them with our waking body and perceptions are seriously relaxed and sometimes completely broken in dreams, which mysteriously set our soul free. It's a well known fact we would die without sleep, but scientists are now discovering that the need to dream is just as vital to our well-being. Dreaming may even be the reason we need to sleep at all. Whether or not we remember our dreams, they help keep us alive and healthy. So far, the dreams I have shared in this little book have all been vivid and unforgettable, whether they were technically lucid or not. I personally believe lucid dreaming can be a gift, a charism which, in this day and age, the Holy Spirit is pouring out as a healing balm for the self- centered materialism of our age that does its best to suppress our soul. More and more people, young and old alike, are learning about lucid dreaming and attempting to awaken this ability in themselves. Eight years ago, I was one such person, and now I am a disciple of Christ. The dismissive phrase, It's just a dream—the equivalent of stepping on a caterpillar in its cocoon—has had a deleterious effect on our inclination to remember our dreams by implying we don’t need to respect or pay attention to them. But dreams are part of our God given creativity and there is no reason to believe we can love and communicate with our Lord only when we're awake. On the contrary, for although we bring personal baggage with us to our nightly vacations, in our dreams there are no worldly distractions. To any Christian reading this who believes God no longer reveals Himself to anyone through personal revelations or dreams—and are suspicious of any such experiences as possibly dangerous delusions planted by the Enemy—I refer you to Scripture. When the Pharisees accused Christ of receiving his power to cast out demons from Satan, the Lord said to them: “Any kingdom divided by civil war is doomed. A town or family splintered by feuding will fall apart. And if Satan is casting out Satan, he is divided and fighting against himself. His own kingdom will not survive. And if I am empowered by Satan, what about your own exorcists? They cast out demons, too, so they will condemn you for what you have said. But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you.” Matthew 12:26-28 Since I became a passionate disciple of Christ as a consequence of my dreams leading me to the Gospels, by the Lord’s own reasoning, my dreams were decidedly not sent by the Enemy. Simply because some people might be attracted to lucid dreaming as an opportunity to do whatever they please without consequences does not make lucid dreaming evil. The fact is that we humans can abuse just about anything. But it's only an urban legend that you can completely control what happens in a lucid dream. This is actually not true, because we are not completely in charge of, or alone in, the spiritual realm of the dream space. I believe it is very important Christians not turn a blind or judgmental eye on dreams and lucid dreaming. Anyone not raised in the faith or wavering on its edge who is captivated by lucid dreaming will not be inclined to immerse themselves in Scripture if a priest insists lucid dreaming is evil. Origen Adamantius, a Hellenistic scholar and early Christian theologian, wrote: "Many have been converted to Christianity as if against their will, some sort of spirit having suddenly transformed their minds from a hatred of the doctrine to a readiness to die in its defense, and having appeared to them either in a waking vision or a dream of the night... That in a dream certain persons may have certain things pointed out to them to do, is an event of frequent occurrence to many individuals, the impression on the mind being produced either by an angel or by some other thing."

Lucid Dream of June 20, 2011—You Will Soon be One of Us I had been lucid dreaming only four months when I had this dream that seriously frightened me.

From a dream, I walk into a building and follow a dark current that assumes the form of an automated black ramp on which I make myself comfortable. I’m fully conscious of the fact that I’m entering a dream which will be a lucid dream, because I intend it to be. I know I have arrived somewhere when I see sunlight and sky. Stepping off the flowing current of darkness, I deliberately walk instead of launching myself into the sky. I don’t want to miss anything I might be avoiding by immediately taking flight. I come to an open space before me I immediately recognize as an airfield. The planes are not jumbo jets but they are still large and powerful looking. A woman is standing at one edge of a chain link fence dividing the area I'm in from the planes. She’s wearing a dark-blue uniform with gold buttons and her blonde hair curls around her face. I stop directly in front of her, and raise my hands before me in prayer position. “Namaste,” I say, then pause before asking her, “Who are you?” “You know what I am,” she replies, and I think she must be an angel helping souls cross over, hence the airport. Then she adds, “And you will soon be one of us.” I don’t like the sound of that. “Does that mean I’m going to die?” I ask, and almost regret being lucid, since this dream seems to have become a harbinger of my impending death, which seriously distresses me. She doesn’t reply, and I inquire urgently, “How soon?” Again she is silent, and when I keep pressing her for more information, she backs away from me as I accuse in a loud, challenging tone, “If you were a real angel, you wouldn’t be frightened of me!” Finally, she informs me it will be two years and two months from now, and concludes with the word, "Thanksgiving." A bit more politely, I demand to know if she is positive she has the right name. “My name is very similar to my father’s,” I tell her, and as she walks over to check a large book, I say a little desperately, “I’m Maria Pita, not Mario Pita” emphasizing that there is a mere one letter difference in our names, so she might very well have made a mistake about who is going to die. Looking down at the book and smiling slightly, she says as if to herself, “I didn’t know that.” I’m relieved, because she seems to be admitting she made a mistake; that she didn’t look carefully enough, and it was actually Papi she was referring to. (In the dream it makes sense he will die around Thanksgiving even though in reality he is already dead). I begin walking away, and when I look back over my shoulder, I now see a black woman smiling at me in a secret, knowing way. Raising a hand, I say, “Good bye!” even as it occurs to me that I should have asked her name. She is still smiling, but there is a challenge in her voice as she calls after me, “Are you going to make me cry you a friend?” "Yes!" I reply happily, and wake up. When I read this dream now, and the accompanying Dream Notes, I cringe at how arrogantly rude I was to this dream figure when she scared me by, I thought, implying I was going to die soon. I was still fully in the grip of the New Age religion, and even considering learning more about shamanic dream walking. When the woman said, "And you shall soon be one of us" I reacted just like a frightened child by figuratively stomping my foot and yelling at her, demanding she assure me it was all a big mistake. I had been immersed in lucid dreaming circles for months, where shamanism invariably came up, so I reassured myself by imagining the female official was a master shaman, and interpreted her remark, "You will soon be one of us" as flattery; as a promise I would soon excel in the art of dream walking. Yet even as I wrote out this interpretation in my dream notes, deep down I was still frightened by the way she had looked me straight in the eye when she said, "And you will soon be one of us." Seven years later, I can finally understand this dream. The planes I glimpsed beyond the barrier separating us are indeed expressive of flight, but they were much greater and more powerful than my little self, their silver metal wings catching the light. The lovely lady was guarding a mysterious border between my dreaming soul and the "armored" Angels I perceived as planes coming and going. And what she promised me came true, for which I give thanks every day. "You will soon be one of us" meant I would soon be a Christian. When I kept telling her I was Maria not Mario Pita, she said, "I didn't know that" and smiled as if she was speaking gently to a silly child, because of course she knew who I was. But who was she? Did she give me a clue when, at the end of the dream, she showed herself to me as a black woman, and offered to "cry me a friend"? I know now that in Aramaic, "black" means "sorrowful." Was the friend she would cry for me, who would soon enter my dreams, her Son? I have every reason to think so. According to legend, the original Black Madonna dates back to the time of the Apostles and was painted by Saint Luke, who created her using the top of a table built by Jesus. It was while he was painting her that Mary recounted to him the events in the life of Jesus he would later include in his Gospel. For centuries, there have been reports of miraculous events and spontaneous healings occurring to those who made a pilgrimage to the portrait. It gets its name "Black Madonna" from the soot residue that discolors the painting, the result of centuries of votive lights and candles burning in front of the painting. But at the time, it was impossible for me to even consider that the golden-haired (expressive of light, life and illumination) guardian from my dream—who in the end showed herself to me with black skin—might be the Virgin Mary. When I first began lucid dreaming, I had no way of interpreting my dream in this light because none of the books and articles I was exposed to on the subject were written from a Christian perspective.

Lucid Dream of January 20, 2018

I exit the black elevator that has brought me to a spacious apartment room. I turn around. I want out of here! I see light through a door at the other end of the large space. Looks like a good way out. As I fly toward the door, I encounter a large mirror. Curious, and knowing it won't block my progress, I watch my image approaching. I'm smiling brightly, and look just as I do now except my hair is more golden. Pleased by what strikes me as an accurate reflection of myself, I pass right through the glass into a starry sky which leads me directly to a sunlit door. As I exit the room, I glance down at the elaborately embroidered garment I noticed I was wearing when I saw it reflected in the mirror. The front is divided into panels, each containing a human figure or two, and one of them makes me think of an Etruscan wall painting. Each narrow panel appears to represent a different era of earth's history. Outside it is nighttime, and I find myself in a great, absolutely vast expanse. As I think—My Lord!—I'm propelled forward and upward. I experience the sensation of a force like a powerful wind beneath the palms of my hands—what I imagine the wings of an airplane might feel if it could feel. I become aware of something evocative of a giant fountain around which many, many mostly invisible people are gathered in the darkness. I perceive something like a massive ghostly wave of glimmering white water arching protectively over them, which is barely discernible as it rises high into the sky. I get the impression I'm flying above a large square or park in some great open city. Then in the near distance, visible just beyond the ghostly fountain, I clearly see not very far below me a long white roof belonging to an immense and magnificent structure I recognize as a church somewhere in Europe. I become aware of it because it is in the process of being demolished! Watching from above, I distinctly see and experience what is happening. The great structure, which I know is perfectly sound, is deliberately being torn down. This should not be happening! I can feel the sacred power emanating from its ancient yet still solid foundations as they begin collapsing downward into darkness. That's when I feel, and then begin hearing and seeing, the bombers flying from left to right over the fountain plaza. The sky is filling with immense, plane-like shapes. Supported by the wind of the Spirit, I turn away from the besieged building and continue flying safely along. But as more and more black planes keep coming, I inevitably find myself directly beneath them. There is no getting away from them, they dominate the sky so that no peaceful place remains in this dream space. I know I can't be hurt, but it's still distressing to be in the middle of a bombing raid. I glimpse black ovoid shapes falling from the black planes, which radiate a single-minded destructive power as they drop nightmare bombs over all the world below in an air raid to end all air raids! I know I'm dreaming and safe because God is with me, but eventually it just becomes too overwhelming, so I cry, “My Lord!” Instantly, I am enveloped; protected. I seem to be inside a Christmas tree, within an intimate opening at its heart. I'm surrounded by what look like Evergreen branches, but they aren't prickly. The tall branches form a bell-like shelter around my dream body, close enough for me to reach up and touch one of the green round clumps, which is smooth and tender yet firm. What I perceive as green pine needles are contained in spherical egg-like shapes as if by a golden rope indistinguishable from the branch from which they grow. I am completely protected by this living shelter in the midst of the devastation happening just outside and all around me. I begin waking up.

"Saint Hildegard called God's vigor viriditas, the 'green' energy of agape love pulsing through the entire universe. Over and over in her writings, she chooses viriditas to express God’s vitality and the ways His goodness and love charge the whole world with life, beauty, and renewal— literally, with 'greenness.'...this 'green' force animates every creature and plant on this planet with verdant divine love."xxxv

When I read these words a few months after this dream, I was reminded of the evergreen that had surrounded and protected me when I cried out to my Lord. And another passage, in which God speaks to Saint Hildegard, also took me back to this dream as it confirmed my thoughts concerning it:

"Everything on earth is hurrying to its end. The world’s troubles and its many disasters tell you this. But my Son’s bride, the Church, will never ever be destroyed, no matter how many times she’s assaulted. At the end of time she’ll be stronger, more beautiful, more magnificent than ever before. She’ll enjoy the sweet embraces of her Beloved. That’s what the vision you just saw means... as the world nears its end, the Church will meet with much violence."xxxvi The white otherworldly fountain I saw is the Baptismal fount and the Holy Spirit. The living Christmas tree is Christ. The immensely beautiful sacred building I witnessed being attacked is the Church. Jesus told his disciples, "But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come." Matthew 24:13-14

"Hildegard’s use of metaphors suggests that she saw no separation between symbol and fact. Metaphors were reality to her."xxxvii

This is certainly true of dreams that "speak" to us in metaphors that are completely real experiences to our souls. In dreams, we also do not experience time and space as we do in our physical body. In my dream where I was told "You will soon be one of us" I was given information about my future not because there is such a thing as predestination—the Bible clearly states that God gave us Free Will—but because the Lord knows each soul intimately; He created every soul, and so of course He already knew how I would respond to the dreams he would soon begin blessing me with. I don't believe telepathy is a so-called psychic ability. I think in terms of being receptive to information provided by messengers of God. It is wrong, and dangerous, to imagine that we ourselves have special powers in dreams, or in waking reality through occult practices. Such self- centered arrogance opens a soul to evil spirits that often seduce it with material success for the sole purpose of keeping it away from Christ. In the case of dreams in which I experience being someone else in moments of extreme fear and distress, I imagine this is my soul responding to their soul's "cry" the way I instinctively would in waking life if I heard someone scream for help. But unlike our physical body, our soul does not fear being hurt during such transcendent moments of empathy. As for the glimpses I have caught of the future in dreams, I believe they were gifts delivered by angelic messengers for reasons I cannot fully understand, but I do what I can to make the best of them by sharing them. And I have learned that the past also remains mysteriously accessible to us in dreams, not because we are reliving previous incarnations, but because everyone and everything exists forever in God. Perhaps I was given the following dream simply so I could include it in this little book? I don't know, but it was certainly fascinating. Lucid Dream of June 9, 2017—The Year of Our Lord

I'm in a large white space with other people who are all, like me, wearing Medieval-style costumes and armor. But this is not a theatrical production because the sword I'm holding is a real one made of a dark silvery-blue metal. It's a long sword, with a broad blade that tapers at the end. The hilt is large and the metal is heavy although somewhat thin, as if it's a very old sword made centuries ago. It feels strange to be holding this sword, but if I'm going to use it, I should make sure it's a good one. Raising it before me with both hands, I suddenly realize I'm going to have to do some actual fighting with this sword! I'll be cut to pieces in a few seconds! I don't how to sword fight! I walk away... I slip into lucidity as I open the front door of my house and step out onto the porch, where I experience the real sensation of a very gentle rainfall. It's surprising, yet sweetly refreshing. It's still night, but the darkness is alleviated by a lovely ambient blue light. I realize I'm not in our actual front yard but in a grove of trees illuminated by this soft blue radiance. Rising a few feet off the ground, I drift contentedly between the trees, happy to be lucid. The trees are much broader than they are tall, their branches stretching out in a sinuous way beneath a dark green canopy. These trees do not look native to Massachusetts, where I live. As I rise a little higher above the trees, I perceive starry golden lights close to the horizon of this celestial blue mist, beneath which I discern a road of sorts. Taking a deep breath, I exclaim, “My Lord!” wanting to thank Him for everything, and feeling there's something I need to do, that He wants me to do, in this dream. Without thinking about it, I turn to my left, descend, and walk out of the misty blue grove of trees. I emerge into a sunny day at the edge of an open square surrounded by the high walls of a castle or some similar protective structure. An open air market is underway. There are no booths or canopies, just three long narrow tables, covered with white cloths, arranged at right angles to each other. Before the table closest to me stands a short figure wearing dusty silver-gray chain mail armor that looks like its seen a lot of use. I can't see his face because he's wearing a helmet, but I assume he's a man. He's holding a sword in both hands before him, the hilt level with his chest and the blade extending all the way to the ground, its point in the smooth dirt. I somehow know he belongs to a force of knights protecting the people of this town. I remember my earlier dream in which I was holding a sword, but although this scene is the real thing, the atmosphere is relaxed; everyone obviously feels safe now. I walk over to the nearest table, behind which stand two women selling necklaces. Focusing on one of the pieces, I pick it up and run it through my fingers. It's made of narrow and smoothly rectangular small white stones strung together on a very fine gold chain. I ask the women, “What is this stone?” but get no response. They don't seem aware of me at all, like I'm invisible to them. I have to repeat my question a few times, raising my voice, before they finally register my presence. “What is this stone?” I repeat, and one of the women—who is wearing some sort of white apron over a long plain dress—replies, “Rapta.” I repeat, “Rapta?” And she says, “Yes, rapta.” Putting the necklace down, I take a step back before asking them, “What year is this?” I get the distinct impression I've gone back in time, and that I'm experiencing a real historical location and event. Once again, I have to repeat myself as they stare at me, bemused by my question. Then the same woman replies slowly and clearly, “The Year of Our Lord 1429.” When I repeat what she told me, she nods. I'm sure I can remember this because Columbus discovered America in 1492, so I just invert the 9 and the 2. Repeating the date to myself, and the name of the stone, I wake. In all my later dreams, I'm talking to people about this lucid dream, and in one of them a woman tells me the name of the stone is namma not rapta.

Dream Notes: I was completely blown away when I Googled “The Year of our Lord 1429” and discovered what I had not previously known. In fact, I have always had conflicting feelings about Joan of Arc, and so I have never read much about her. Well, that morning I did!

"During the Hundred Years’ War, on April 29, 1429, the 17-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc leads a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since October... "At the age of 16, 'voices' of Christian saints told Joan to aid Charles, the French dauphin, in gaining the French throne and expelling the English from France. Convinced of the validity of her divine mission, Charles furnished Joan with a small force of troops. She led her troops to Orleans, and on April 29, 1429, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. Bringing needed supplies and troops into the besieged city, she also inspired the French to a passionate resistance and through the next week led the charge during a number of skirmishes and battles. On one occasion, she was even hit by an arrow, but after dressing her wounds she returned to the battle. On May 8, the siege of Orleans was broken, and the English retreated."xxxviii Then I Googled “white stone rapta” and this was the top search result: Revelation—What is the "hidden manna" and the "white stone”: In the quote from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, it is Jesus speaking: “To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17). If I had Googed “namma” first instead of “rapta” I would not have found anything of any significance. I distinctly heard and repeated “rapta” when the woman replied to my question, as if I was meant to remember “rapta” because it would provide me with the right search result after another dream figure linked the white stone with this quote from Revelation by telling me the stone's name was “manna.” Rapta also sounds like the beginning of, or a compressed version, of Rapture. I felt I was in a moment of the real historical past, and it seems I was. And my earlier dream of holding a sword—and being expected to really fight with it even though I was a woman with no training—ties directly into this dream. Could the lone knight I saw guarding the people, who was shorter than I expected an armored man to be, and who held a sword similar to the one I had held in my earlier dream, have been Joan of Arc? I also read an account of the event penned by a young noblewoman, who described very emotionally the miracle of their salvation by Joan of Arc. Her account ends: “My mother invites Joan of Arc to sup with us. She politely declines saying that she must tend to the other sick and wounded and help feed the hungry. I cannot make sense of all that happened today only to say that a miracle happened, and Joan of Arc was part of that miracle.” I am in awe! I feel God has blessed me with this dream as encouragement to keep confidently wielding a pen as Joan did a sword. I have had it in mind for months now that my next novel should focus on Spiritual Warfare.xxxix

"A divine Voice told her to articulate what she saw and heard in her visions, and for these reasons: So now you must give others an intelligible account of what you see with your inner eye and what you hear with your inner ear. Your testimony will help them."xl 12—Spiritual Warfare

July 2015 Dream and Notes

The Gospel of John film Jesus walks purposefully out of what feels like a hotel bathroom, with only a white cloth around his hips, and strides to the foot of the bed where a young woman lays naked. I'm seeing this as though kneeling on one side of the bed, my face level with her body as Christ stands over her, purposefully waiting. He is going to penetrate her, it seems physically, and this is wonderful, the greatest of honors for her. But part of me thinks in despair—He's going to have sex with her? Christ wouldn't do that. And yet I'm afraid this is what I'm witnessing, and that he desires her simply because she is young and slender, seeming perfect for now. As these thoughts play out inside me, Jesus remains standing there, waiting, a gently determined expression on His face, and gazing at Him, I begin recognizing my own negative thinking and fear.

I often think about the woman Lydia, in Acts of the Apostles, who was healed of a bloody affliction she had suffered from for years simply by touching the hem of Christ's robe. In my dream, Jesus was standing over me—a woman with so much sexual sin and perversity behind her, a woman who was constantly objectifying her own body from the most base male point of view. But Christ did not condemn me; He healed me. However, the morning after this dream, I was almost sure it had come from the Enemy, and worried it might only be a false and potentially damaging consolation, because it was the Gospel of John Jesus played by an actor, and not the real Jesus I felt I had seen recently in another dream, and to whom no mortal man could compare. So I tried to dismiss this dream as perhaps the devil trying to make me lose the feeling left by the dream where I was comforting Christ, the first time I felt I might have seen a semblance of his true countenance in a dream. But in truth, the Lord was kneeling over me, offering me His healing and transforming Love.

Dream of September 27, 2015—Hell

I'm walking outside during the day on a commercial backstreet, looking down at something in my hands, when I become aware of a vehicle backing up, passing me, and continuing to retrace its route before stopping close behind me. I make a mental note of this and, as a precaution, step between two other cars, which will make it harder for the people in the pickup truck to get to me, because their behavior is suspicious... I retreat into what appears to be a spacious white auto body shop. I'm sure now the people in the truck are watching me, and have sinister designs. As I stand looking out, a young woman appears from the street (the truck is just out of sight) and walks into the shop through the broad opening. The driver has sent her out first, I know this, and despite the fact that she's wearing a formfitting white shirt and pants that contrast strikingly with her long black hair, there is absolutely nothing pure about her. She's looking directly at me, smiling at me, and she is completely evil. I stand my ground as she draws closer and half circles me, never taking her eyes off me. It's impossible to describe the evil I feel emanating from her, like a foul miasma just barely contained by the confines of her appearance. I know she's here on behalf of her master. She comes very close to me, smiling in a wicked, insidious way as she looks me up and down. I retreat into a corridor adjoining the open shop, but then I step out again, because as she turns back toward the truck and her master, the evil threat she poses intensifies to the point where I simply have to do something! Raising my hands, I form the sign of the cross with my index fingers as I command, “In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone, Satan!” I know that she knows that I know she isn't Satan, but he is nearby; she is working for him... Then all hell breaks loose. Satan and another of his followers (a young man who was in the truck with him) literally storm into the body shop. But thankfully there is an invisible and impenetrable barrier between where I'm standing in the back, and the front part of the shop. I observe, hear and feel everything in excruciating detail, but at no point do I feel threatened or even frightened. Satan—an amorphous masculine form of furious fire—is enraged, literally incensed, because he can't have me. And he's taking his horrible anger out on the handful of his followers present, beginning with the young man and woman who were in the truck with him. I somehow know they willingly gave themselves to him, and I watch now as they collapse onto their backs, and their master's fury shreds their white clothes into rags before he actually stomps on the young man. It's hard to describe what's happening, for the devil is a blur of murderous hatred, and yet I sense-glimpse a huge spiked boot impaling the young man and causing him an unbearable anguish he must endure because he's dead and in hell. But even more disturbing is how the young woman lifts her torn shirt up to expose her breasts as if welcoming the excruciating agony of her master's displeasure. I watch as the crushing- stabbing force slams down directly over her breasts, and then over her womb as she writhes in what she is, I sense, striving to transform into a searing ecstasy—that fine edge between pain and pleasure. But I know it's all in her head, that she's new to hell and trying to make the best of this torment. Then I see other fragments of people, of lost souls, one a mere strip of flesh stretched out like a skinned animal with sockets for eyes, nailed up in endless torment, and yet still laughing and joking with another horribly sentient scrap of flesh hanging nearby. Witnessing all this, for a moment I find myself questioning Christianity, because a religion that believes in this violent, bloody thing called Hell suddenly doesn't seem sane, and in that moment of doubt, the devil won a victory. But in the next instant it is gone as I return my full consciousness to the reality of damnation playing out before me. I know these souls chose to serve Satan, and that their evil, like their master's, is very real. A soul is free to choose even hell.

I have never feared the torments of hell, and I never watch horror movies or read such novels. My imagination is in no way inclined to make up what my soul witnessed in this dream, which surprised the hell out of me, pun intended, because it was so unexpected, so different from any other dream I had ever had before. I truly believe I experienced the Enemy's rage that he could not have my soul.

Dream of February 4, 2015—Trying to Help Souls in Purgatory

I'm standing outside a house with a young boy, and I instantly know I'm dreaming. The atmosphere is a sickly yellowish purple and utterly lifeless. The land is completely flat, and even though I feel like I'm in a suburban subdivision, there is only this small one-story house and nothing else for miles around, not even a single tree. And there is no sky either, only a purple fog not far above the ground. I cry, “This is Purgatory!” No words can describe the sickening terrifying blend of death and life in that place, the oppressive stillness of the “air” and the lack of movement and change of any kind. I repeat, “This is Purgatory! This is Purgatory!” which is the only way I can deal with the horrible oppressiveness of being here. I know I've come to help, but like someone sent to rescue a drowning person, I must also come up for air in order not to drown —it feels like my soul gasping for life every time I cry, “This is Purgatory!” The little boy is on his knees staring at the house, specifically at the address or name posted to the left of the closed front door. He is in great distress because he can't read what it says. Going to stand beside him, I try to see what he's looking at. For an instant, I glimpse my name MARIA which frightens me, but then I see only a white plaque framing something akin to a light switch. I keep staring at it, and distinctly make out a bas-relief of a stone cross standing to the right of a tombstone. “This is a grave,” I say. “This house is a gravestone!” I understand the family I was just visiting with (in the dream before this one) has no clue they are dead, and that they have been living one endless day for God only knows how long—the young woman in her bedroom, the mother in her living room, the boy in his room—all of them unaware they are no longer alive; their souls going through the same domestic motions and routines like mice running nowhere on a caged wheel. Turning away from the house-grave, I open my arms wide and, gazing earnestly up at the sky, cry out in despair and hope, “Mary! Mary! Have mercy on us sinners! Now, and at the hour of our death!” As I pray, the sky directly above us lightens to a soft blue, but beyond it nothing changes. And heading slowly toward us with the sinister drone of World War II bomber planes glide surreal vehicles shaped like childishly rounded black-and-white cartoon butterflies, evil distortions of everything spiritual a butterfly symbolizes. I comprehend then that unimaginably oppressive forces rule here, doing everything in their sinister power to keep souls imprisoned there. I become aware of other people now, many of them gathered in small groups and walking along the “street” as if being herded in that direction by the “planes.” I sense these souls are lost and wandering, staring straight ahead of them as if going somewhere, but there is no “where” to go to, just this dead purple emptiness. Noticing a tall young blonde teenager nearby when he says, “I don't want to just keep standing here!” I reply urgently, pitching my voice so that it carries to to the other zombie-like groups of young people, “Don't stay! Go! Fly! Find love!” I know their only hope is to search for the love they felt while they were alive, any love they received and experienced. Love is the only way out! I wake up. I went back to sleep hoping to re-enter the dream so I could continue trying to help those people. I'm back in a house, and a woman tells me to come with her because she has the key to the master's study. She opens the door, and I see his desk next to his bed, and I know this is just one of his offices. He is sitting up in bed, and his wife is sleeping beside him. Then his wife gets out of bed and demands a glass of water. I run to fetch it for her so impossibly fast, it triggers the suspicion I'm dreaming... I'm sitting with a few other people near the woman who brought us here. It feels like we're all her servants, at the beck and call of her slightest whim; her slaves. I study her where she is kneeling, sitting comfortably back on her heels completely naked, on the lower half of a solid copper-bronze altar. Before her is a raised relief—etched almost in two dimensions into the metal —of a long-bodied wild beast running out of a forest. I realize with a sickening sensation in my heart that this beautiful, self-centered, domineering woman is not only a pagan who imbues natural forces with god-like qualities, but that she actually worships the Beast. Her brief morning “prayer” concluded, she rises and announces, “I'm going back to bed until it's time to sleep again.” This makes no sense, but she's obviously proud of being so privileged she can do absolutely nothing all day every day. This strikes me as the same as being dead and not even knowing it... Still in that same house, rummaging through my purse, I become fully lucid as I think, “Oh God, I'm here again! I'm back in Purgatory!” It feels awful there, yet I'm also glad because I asked to come back. That doesn't mean, however, that I have to like it! I round up all the children and teenagers trapped in this demonic "house" and, standing with my back to the front door facing them, I address the oldest one, speaking sweetly but firmly, “Don't you think it's time you went out?” I'm desperately trying to get her and the others to leave this place, but she seems incapable of making the decision to do so. I focus on a younger girl, who I notice is wearing a blue jacket with the hood up, and say, “You want to go out, don't you? You younger kids are sometimes smarter than your older siblings, because you know what feels right, and you can see things older kids can't.” I'm hoping she will agree to go out and that the others will follow her... I have succeeded in getting the children out of their house-grave, and as the older girl stands near the front door with a soft wind blowing through her lanky brown hair, I ask her, “Doesn't it feel nice? When was the last time you were outside? Can you remember?” It is not going to be easy to bring her gently toward the realization that she, and all her companions, are dead. We're in that same "front lawn” from my first dream, and although it's still Purgatory, my former visit (during which I asked the Virgin Mary for help) seems to have made a difference because the atmosphere is not quite as oppressive, and this small section has been built up into a kind of ideal miniature town with a few yellow flashing signs that gives it the feel of an arcade. It doesn't really look functional, but it's better than the absolute nothingness of before. Then—far away on the horizon in the direction from which the evil “butterfly” planes had come—I discern flat bronze and muted-yellow colors composed of half-circles and other geometric shapes arranged in such a way as to vaguely evoke a sinister city of the future. And as I study this piece of what appears to be a vast mural, large “buses” of the same metallic hues begin flying over us. Afraid the buses intend to round up all the souls around me beginning to “wake up” to where they are, I run toward a group of children, but the buses simply pass over us and keep going, ascending slightly before swooping down and passing through some mysterious but solid-looking tunnel-portal that forms to let them through. They vanish, but my relief lasts only an instant because the air is darkening, and a black flying ship is heading our way that clearly intends to harvest as many souls as it can. Grabbing the hand of the little boy from my earlier dream, I sprint around to the back of the house while yelling to all the other children, “Hurry! Run! Follow me! This way!” But they don't seem to hear me, and I can't go back for them if I want to save the boy whose hand I'm holding, so I rise up into the air with him, and we begin flying away through a completely dark and starless night... We escape the “harvester” but now we're flying into another menacing place where the cold white sky is darkening as vertical black smoke-like columns begin forming within it. I think—Oh God, help me... Everything is God... I'm safe, always! At that moment, we cross some mysterious threshold into another dream space where the sun is shining. It's a huge relief but still not ideal, because below and all around me I hear the noise of men shouting and arguing and the sound of weapons firing. Looking down, I see a soldier run for cover as he's shot at, and I watch as he positions himself to shoot back. So sad, so pathetic, that there is still so much ignorance, hate and killing in the world! The boy and I keep moving, and I begin recognizing the trees around Valley Health Medical Center near my home. As we pass a splendid gauntlet of yellow-and-orange trees displaying all the glorious beauty of Autumn, we land in front of an intimately-sized entrance into the medical complex. I lead the child inside to the small front desk, where I tell a female attendant, “I found this little boy outside wandering in the woods.” Satisfied he is in good hands now, I head back outside and soon wake up.

Ralph Martin writes in his book The Final Confrontation: "Parents letting children 'choose' their gender… elementary schools distributing condoms to students… violence… pornography… sexual perversion… drugs… Human beings in ever increasing numbers are being sucked into the deception of the culture. They are joining in a profound and foolish rebellion against the God- ordained order of nature and divinely-revealed laws of eternal life and everlasting death. In addition, the United Nations and governments of what used to be the 'Christian West' are becoming increasingly bold in forcing the Church to conform to their secular programs or face penalties and persecution. We are facing confrontations that show signs of only intensifying in the years ahead. The 'world' sees the Catholic Church as the main obstacle standing in the way of a 'brave new world' of liberation from the laws of God. How ironic that the oppression of atheistic communism that sought to do away with God and build its own 'brave new world,' collapsed under the weight of its unreality. Now the 'Christian West' is abandoning reverence for God and increasingly compelling Christians and the Church to be quiet about their views, labeling them as 'hate speech.' They are implementing unreal, foolish, doomed-to-failure laws that rewrite the laws of nature and God. Rather than lead people to a 'liberated happiness,' these laws are destined to lead people to a pitiful darkening of the mind, a weakening of the will, and slavery to sin... Sometimes, it seems as if the gates of hell have opened wide and the demons are flying out to wreak havoc wherever they can... If there is no repentance before death or before the final conflict, there will be the terrifying reality of Satan harvesting his own, those who have refused to open their hearts to the truth in order to be saved and have come under satanic deception and bondage through a culpable rejection of the truth in the depth of their hearts."xli

I came across this book shortly after having dreams in which I literally saw demonic "ships" intent on harvesting souls. Children are the victims of Godless parents, but in my dream, I spontaneously cried out to Mary, and she immediately responded. I have faith our Lady helps guide every innocent soul Home.

"A number of the living have visited with the dead. Saint Faustina was one of them...One time, Saint Faustina went to offer her assistance to the deceased directly—and they responded. She writes: Before All Souls' Day, I went to the cemetery at dusk. Although it was locked I managed to open the gate a bit and said, "If you need something, my dear little souls, I will be glad to help you to the extent that the rule permits me." I then heard these words, "Do the will of God. We are happy in the measure that we have fulfilled God's will." (Diary, 518) "Saint Faustina wants us to join her in devoting prayers and good works to aid the Holy Souls on their journey to God and life everlasting."xlii 13—God's Business

Carl Jung believed that in dreams each one of us participates directly in the collective unconscious or the objective psyche—a world of spiritual reality. "Jung's contention is that in dreams and visions we do have direct participation in nonphysical reality and that dreams demonstrate this fact if one will observe them carefully... In the fifth century of our era, Synesius of Cyrene, for one, had anticipated many of Jung's twentieth-century conclusions, and his views have been the basis of Eastern Orthodox interest in dreams ever since... With slight changes in terminology, it would appear that Jung and the Church Fathers are talking about the same reality."xliii

I do not use Jungian terms when thinking about my dreams. The realities God has revealed to us through His Word and His Church are the ones I consciously dwell on when reading and trying to understand my dreams. In God we live and have our being and we are nothing without Him. I never know who or what I might encounter in a dream, so in a lucid dream, I initially treat any dream figures I meet as I would real people in waking reality, with a respectful curiosity. Just as in waking life we might get a good feeling about someone and bad vibes from another, our soul's intuitive discernment in the dream space is key. As the dream unfolds, I behave accordingly. We can be taught and enriched by so called dream figures, but we can also be deceived. When we fall asleep, the poet within us emerges, and metaphors flower around us in sometimes crazy ways, but when viewed in the Light of Truth, sense and meaning emerges in the language of our soul, would we but take the time to try reading it when we wake up. The definition of metaphor: A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract. Armed with this knowledge, all we really need is to be interested in the messages we receive at night. Most of us have dreams that stand out, that disturb us, or fill us with hope, dreams that speak to us in magical hieroglyphs. These are worth taking the time to think about. The first step is to write the dream down. If you are artistically inclined, you might like to draw memorable images, objects and figures from your dream. We often don't have time in the morning, but whenever possible, it's important to capture the experience while it's fresh, in order to ponder it later. I personally record all my dreams. It's quick and easy, and because we can talk fast, we can include as many details as we remember. The Internet is a dream come true for working with our dreams. We can quickly find passages in Scripture, look up the meanings of words and phrases, pull up images of objects and locations, check breaking news, etc. What I don't recommend doing as a general rule is looking up the symbolic meaning of every dream image online, because the answers we receive can vary as dramatically as the world views of the authors. I strongly suggest investing in a reputable reference. My go-to source remains An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper. It contains nearly 1500 entries that begin with the overall meaning of each symbol before discussing how different cultures and religions have perceived it from prehistory to the present. Unfortunately, books that include only so-called Biblical dream symbols can be extremely restricted in their definitions. There is truth in the meanings provided, but too often they lack flexibility and depth. For example, in his book Biblical Dream Symbols Dictionary 2nd Edition Tyler Wolfe writes: "Abandoned Car-Symbolic of an unused ministry or a forsaken lifestyle. Ezek 34:8 NLT." Dream symbols are never so restricted, not to mention that the dreamer also contributes to the symbol's meaning through their unique makeup and life experience. I would personally add to Tyler's definition: Car: Our physical body/vehicle. Our soul is the "owner" and "driver." (When I can't find my car in a dream it means part of me senses I'm out of body. I've sometimes used this experience of searching for my car to become lucid.) Another example: Tyler defines an attorney as "Someone skilled in debate. LK.10:25" In my opinion, this is using Scripture like a straight jacket. In one of my dreams, a figure of authority served me with papers like an attorney, and I knew I was being promised spiritual riches as long as I began paying more attention to the laws of God than to the world's deceptively pleasurable lies and illusions. Tyler's definition is not wrong, it is simply one-dimensional. Attorneys defend us, prosecute criminals, protect legacies, etc. In my opinion, a Biblical dream symbols book would need to be combined with one like J.C. Cooper's which is much more comprehensive, and includes the Christian interpretation in its meticulously researched entries when applicable. But of course, the meaning of our personal dream images is not written in stone. Dreams reveal our innate creativity as children of God, and although symbol books can help, dreams also encourage us to think for ourselves. For example, based on my numerous experiences with the following dream symbol, I came up with what its means to me personally, and possibly to other dreamers: House: The circumstances of my life, its furnishings my thoughts and emotions, the scenery visible through its windows my views on life. (I have often seen unexpected and marvelous sights through dream windows, an indication of spiritual growth. For decades, I had a recurring dream of discovering my house was much larger than I realized. There was nothing quite like the thrilling joy of exploring more floors and rooms, so when I woke up in the morning, I almost felt imprisoned by the limited dimensions of my actual home. I now understand this meant there was so much I had yet to discover and learn, a process that ideally continues all through life.)

The poems of our memorable dreams are written especially for us, a haunting collaboration between our soul and God, and the key to their meanings are best revealed by the feelings they arouse in us, for example fear, hope, longing, curiosity; what thoughts they bring to mind; what questions they inspire, or force us to ask ourselves, and so on. The Holy Spirit will help us, especially if we ask for help in understanding them. Never underestimate the power of a heartfelt prayer. Christ said, "Ask and it will be given to you" Matthew 7:7. He said, "Ask."

I include the following section for anyone reading this book who is interested in learning how to lucid dream. Like a beloved dog, our brain can be taught to do something new, like "wake up" in a dream, it just takes time, discipline, and a relaxed, patient attitude.

Six Exercises to Induce a Lucid Dream

1. Every now and then during the day, look around and ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?” The answer is always, “Yes, this is a dream.” The first time I did this exercise, I had a lucid dream that very night. I found myself out in the courtyard of my home and, as I had been doing all day, I asked myself if I was dreaming, and realized that I really was. The effectiveness of this exercise wears off (in my opinion because it gets boring to keep doing this every day) but it is a potentially good way to "jump start" lucidity.

2. Think about what you would like to do in the dream space if you become lucid. Set an intent and incubate a lucid dream. Feeling strongly about something works much better (for me at least) than fun but superficial desires such as visiting a far away place or flying to the moon and beyond. It is my personal experience that setting an emotionally meaningful intent can trigger lucidity.

3. Whenever you wake up late at night, after at least five hours of sleep, stay awake a minimum of fifteen minutes (it helps to get out of bed) and mentally tell yourself that every night you will more clearly remember more and more of your dreams. Then, even if it's too dark to see, raise your hands before your face and tell yourself that you will have a lucid dream, that you will realize you’re dreaming in the midst of a dream. As you fall asleep, keep this affirmation in mind. (At this point, you can also perform exercise number 4.) Hopefully, eventually, your intent will bear fruit and you’ll “wake up in your dream”. The first few times, becoming aware of my hands in a dream triggered lucidity, and even when I become lucid in other ways, occasionally raising my hands before me and reminding myself that I’m dreaming helps me maintain my lucidity. When you first start becoming lucid in a dream, it's important to control your excitement. Also don't focus on any one object for too long but keep looking around and moving gently forward. You might also quickly and lightly touch your upper body, which helps root you in the dream.

4. Lying in bed at night with your eyes closed, take a few slow breaths beginning deep down in your belly and moving up to the base of your throat, then exhale slowly. I do this approximately three times after at least four hours of sleep. Relaxed, focus on the darkness swirling with faint lights behind your closed eyelids. Anchor your inner vision, focusing only on any particular shapes that appear directly before you. At the same time, in a relaxed and pleasant fashion, be aware of your physical body lying on the bed gradually falling asleep even as your mind remains awake. Do this for a little while, enjoying the mysterious contrast between your sleepy motionless body and your tireless, always excited and ready for an adventure, awareness. You may find yourself riding hynagogic imageryxliv, observing distinct and detailed scenes rising out of the darkness and vanishing again. It is sometimes possible to ride hypnagogia directly into a lucid dream (called a WILD—Wake Induced Lucid Dream) but more often than not you’ll simply fall asleep. A dream initiated lucid dream (DILD) is by far the most common.

5. Whenever waking up from a dream, lucid or not, keep your eyes closed and don’t move for several minutes as you gently remember your dreams, giving them time to “download” into your waking brain. The more you practice remembering your dreams, without letting any miscellaneous thoughts intrude, the better your dream recall will become. When you have remembered all you can, get up and write down or record your dreams, at least a few notes you can expand upon later. In order to train your memory, at the beginning of your practice you should record every dream. With time, you will intuitively know which dreams it’s important you keep a record of.

6. I realize this particular technique isn’t an option for everyone, but (after I had already been lucid dreaming for a few years) I set aside a space and a bed all to myself for lucid dreaming. My brain chemistry reacted like a dog promised a walk outside: “Oh, we’re in this room tonight! That means we're going to lucid dream!” Every night I slept in that space by myself (twice a week) I had at least one lucid dream. I always entered the space thinking, It will be wonderful if I have a lucid dream or two tonight, but if I don’t, that’s okay too, my soul knows best. But I also know it’s entirely possible I will become lucid, because I want to, and because I can.

“Everything, dreaming and all, has got a soul in it, or else it’s worth nothing, and we don’t care a bit about it… If I were only a dream, you would not have been able to love me so.” – George MacDonald

From the very beginning, I encountered a Presence in my lucid dreams that was not myself, and Who gently seduced me, in a most loving fashion, away from all my self delusions, and brought me to the truth of a loving Creator. To quote directly from the Story of Joseph in Genesis, "Interpreting dreams is God's business." Modern man has made psychotherapy a kind of religion, but living life by any philosophy divorced from God is like denying the sun's existence while living cooped up inside the house of your self, with only the electricity of your finite intellect for illumination and company. We should never underestimate, and should value above all else, the subtle power and joy of God always in relationship with us, and that includes in our dreams, whether or not we take a conscious part in them by becoming lucid. From the time I stopped attempting to will myself through the dream space and began treating it as an all-powerful and loving Person, to Whom I addressed my lucid intents as hopeful requests, I began being richly rewarded. After lucid dreaming for over eight years, I know it is sometimes possible—with varying degrees of success—to change, or creatively modify, a dream scene; to “fast travel” or “teleport” to other dream scenes; and to receive answers to my questions. But the dream space has a will of its own. On this point, I think most lucid dreamers can agree, but they remain divided into three radically different camps:

Those who (like me) believe a Supreme Being created our minds and everything else. Those who believe consciousness rather than matter is fundamental and are open to the concept of the dream space being autonomous, at least in certain respects. Those who believe thinking and feeling are confined to our physical brain, and so necessarily deny the dream’s autonomy, regarding it as merely a part of their own personality.

Our religious beliefs (or lack thereof) notwithstanding, the fact is that we cannot do whatever we please in a lucid dream, or completely control it, no matter how lucid we feel/think ourselves to be, or how experienced we are with employing various methods, old and new, for achieving our intents. Our lucid dreaming minds are akin to children in kindergarten, and the dream space is the Teacher from whom, for example, we might demand a chocolate ice cream cone. If judging the time and situation appropriate, the Teacher may metaphorically smile upon us, and seem to obey our command, but in reality, it is the Teacher—actively engaged in a relationship with us—who makes the decision to gratify our desires, or not, and usually in ways we might never have imagined. My first lucid dreams were full of childish fun as I flew over the earth before diving down into magnificently detailed landscapes and cities while feeling joyfully invulnerable. But as I grew more experienced and knowledgeable, I began to understand that the Holy Spirit works with us 24/7 and determines how best to interact with us, awake and asleep, in order to help us grow closer to God. There are laws in the dream space that appear to be limits to us but that are actually there for our protection, laws which can mysteriously evolve in response to how we grow as persons and, by extension, dreamers. 14—Called to Contemplation

"We can do nothing better than abandon ourselves to God."xlv

Saint Theresa of Avila called the Christian mystical practice of Contemplation the Prayer of Quiet. This chapter is in no way intended to explain what this form of prayer is, much less serve as a guide to practicing it. If you feel you are called to learn more about it, I wholeheartedly recommend The Cloud of Unknowing, With the Book of Privy Counsel by Anonymous, A New Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. Also essential, in my opinion, is Practicing the Presence of God and the Spiritual Maxims by Brother Lawrence. Both books together have proved the ideal combination for me. In fact, it was when these two works came into my life (in that mysterious way books do that makes them feel like gifts from the Holy Spirit) that I finally understood what Saint Theresa was talking about, and was able to more fully comprehend some recent dreams.

Lucid Dream of December 1, 2016—The White General

I find myself walking down a dark sidewalk at night, past a large house on my left, around which grow tall and dense but neatly landscaped bushes and trees. I notice this because abruptly heading straight toward me is a group of people angrily protesting something. Instantly, I know I can't let them see me, so I turn left, and enter the grounds of the house. I become semi-lucid as I glance over my shoulder and realize my dog, Arthur (who has been following me around in dreams half the night!) has lain down at the base of a narrow tree, apparently exhausted. I call to him, urging him to get up, because I detect what looks like a shortcut to our house that brings back memories of childhood. Arthur gets to his feet reluctantly, and moving closer to him, I pick him up while the angry group passes by on the sidewalk without noticing me, thank God! I still want to get away from them, but when I turn around, instead of darkly merging lawns there is a steep overgrown hill. What? Oh... Okay... Pleased to be lucid, I say in my mind Thank you for the hill as I look around me. It remains night, but abruptly I'm no longer in a residential neighborhood. I'm standing in a large flat open space, and the ground feels solid. I look down and see not grass but a smooth white surface. My impression of having been transported to some sort of official base is reinforced by the chalk-white man now standing directly in front of me. His skin and his hair, and his short-sleeved official looking shirt, are all entirely white. I can see him clearly, which makes the fact that he's as white as a ghost rather odd. I'm aware of a handful of other figures milling around wearing similar "uniforms." Stepping even closer to him, I ask, “Who are you?” and in response, he extends one of his hands toward my heart. Is he telling me he's inside my heart? I can't be sure. It makes sense, but I don't know. I then ask him, “May I touch you?” feeling it might help root me in the dream. Then sensing from his expression and everything else about him that he won't object, I reach out and touch his left check with the fingertips of my right hand. He feels like a real person. I ask him more questions, and even ask him to help me not wake up. He has the aura of a “General” yet he appears relaxed and his smile is friendly, so that I feel I can ask him as many questions as I want to. As I talk to him, I jump up and down and glance around me, feeling the need to keep moving in order not to wake up. But since it appears to be a one-sided conversation, I eventually turn away from him. As I walk along the edge of a low wall, it crosses my mind to ask him if it really helps to pray in a dream. But that's a stupid question, because I know that of course it helps. Following me, the "General" informs me, “What you need is a bolt of lightning.” In that same moment, a woman walks briskly past me as she says, "You're empty now, and only that bolt of lightning can refill you." I don't exactly understand, but I feel they might both be referring to God, and to being filled by Divine grace. Yet there's nothing I myself can do to make that happen, is there? I also sense it's probably a good thing I'm an empty vessel now, because this puts me in the position to be filled up from above. Looking around me, I cry out, “Oh my God! What happened to the hill?” For some reason, I feel dismayed by the sight of a vast open space which only ends far far away in a chain of tall and gently undulating mountains hundreds of miles below us. The stunningly distant peaks are a hazy blend of pale dark-blues, grays and off-white hues. I don't feel the dream is stable enough for me to fly such a great distance, so I'm essentially grounded here in this place located above even the highest mountains as all the world below is obscured by a dark cloud. And I don't see any stars in the sky, which feels very close, almost as if we're at the very edge of the atmosphere. Moving quickly counterclockwise around the perimeter of the place, I jump up onto a smooth edge of “concrete” which forms a lip around a circular black "hatch" at my feet, just big enough for one person, and around which the "base" containing this "ship" is built. It appears to be inactive, but I sense it is invisibly initiating something almost unimaginably powerful and life changing... I wake. Dream Notes: In my dream, I had been wondering if praying in a dream was effective when the White General told me what I needed was a lightning bolt. John Piper writes, “Prayer is the splicing of our limp wire to the lightning bolt of heaven. I had never heard of John Piper, and did not realize —until after my dream prompted the search—how often Jesus' appearance, and that of His angels, is compared to lightning. For example:

Luke 9:28-29—About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Matthew 28:3—His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. Luke 24:4—While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

Not only were the clothes of the “General” in my dream white as snow, so was his skin and his hair. I think of Christians as akin to soldiers spiritually fighting for the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, which may be why I got the impression of being on a military base. A vessel must be empty to be filled, but such emptiness is an openness, a receptivity that is in keeping with its nature as a vessel that invites filling—the fulfillment of what it was created for. As often happens, it is only years later that I can understand this dream. I believe it was letting me know that I would be called to Contemplation. My dream body was literally in contemplative space—the Cloud of Unknowing above me and the Cloud of Forgetting below me:

"Nobody's mind is powerful enough to grasp Who God is. We can only know Him by experiencing His love... To the cloud of unknowing between you and God, add the cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and creation... Look up joyfully, and say to your Lord out loud, 'I offer myself to you, Lord, for you are my essence.' Then rest your mind...Your naked blind being is your God and your goal."xlvi

I now see how the "ship" around which the "base" was built is this form of prayer, and how it helps heal and transform us. Dream of April 18, 2018

My old computer died yesterday and I spent the afternoon reconnecting everything to my laptop. And in the midst of this trauma, one of those intense back and forth email sessions with Sean challenging me about the nature of God and life after death! I slept well and deeply and was lucid at least once for a long time, during which I led people— specifically a young woman who stuck close to me—out of the confines of the place we were in. This involved lots of windows we had to get through, and I showed her how, since this was a dream, they weren't solid barriers, but that we could pass through them as if they were only air. Perhaps because she was with me, the windows resisted more than they should have, but I simply removed them and we kept moving. The final dream of the night is the gem: I'm driving on a broad highway, following not too far behind Sean, but not too closely. I know he's not aware of me driving along behind him. We're heading in the same direction, or so I hope; I can't be completely sure. Then, as a soft golden light manifests inside his car, I hear Him declare, “There's Jesus! That's Jesus!” He has spotted Jesus somewhere on the street to our left. I look in that direction, and there is the Lord! He's a young man in the prime of life, with short and straight dark-brown hair, and he's dressed in white clothes that evoke an ancient tunic but are also a cleanly cut white shirt and pants. I know He is deliberately showing himself to Sean as He keeps his eyes fixed on my friend's car as it passes Him and, veering gently to the right, drives away. Extending his right arm toward me, Jesus steps off the sidewalk onto the street just as I stretch one arm longingly out toward him. As we reach for each other, His expression mirrors my own love and longing. But for some reason, I think I can't get out of the car here. These moments of seeing Him, of expressing our desire to be together, seem wonderful enough. Before I lose sight of Jesus, I clearly see Him take a position in the center of a busy intersection. He's looking down at something in his hands made of intersecting rows of fine golden-brown lines forming a grid pattern. He is focused on these "strings" while swiftly touch- strumming them, and as people walk all around Him without seeing Him, I feel I know what He's doing—He is “programming” circumstances, events, experiences, etc. in order to bring as many souls as possible with Him into the Kingdom of God. I distinctly feel the love and determination He is constantly exercising and dedicated to—bringing as many souls as possible into His saving embrace. Dream Notes: As I drove toward Him, Jesus reached out to me from a bend in the road even as I reached out to Him. But I didn't stop, instead I just kept driving after Sean. I took it for granted that I couldn't stop the car and get out to be with my Lord. But in my heart I know now that He wasn't merely waving at me—He was hailing me, urging me to stop thinking about Sean, and dream sharing, and to put Him, God, above everything, and everyone else. For there is a way I can be with Him before my soul "gets out" of its physical vehicle. At the end of my dream, I saw Jesus holding an instrument in His hands He was silently and intently "playing." I looked up images online, and essentially recognized a miniature version of an ancient zither, which made me think of what a voice said to me in a dream years ago, "Her soul is a song on the wind." I believe this "instrument" my Lord showed me is a form of prayer, and that He is calling me to it. Yesterday, I came upon this paragraph in the book I'm reading by Saint Hildegard:

"Heaven's my home, and God's love is my desire. I will seek to yearn for my Creator above all things. My greatest wish is to do what You ask me, God. Give me wings of determination and kindness, so I can soar above the stars of heaven, doing Your good will. You and Your holiness are all I need. Make me Your zither of love!"xlvii

Lucid Dream of June 8, 2018

Sitting below the space where I was just dreaming—at the back of the entrance hall of a building with a white staircase to my left—I decide to try and re-enter the dream. Fully lucid, I run up the steps and into the room, but the people I was with are all gone, replaced by figures in bright-red hooded robes. I remember fleeing from them earlier in the night, and race out of there. But as I'm jumping down into the lobby from the white balcony, the robe I'm wearing—which also seems to be red now—gets caught on something. I make the effort to pull myself free and, landing naked on my feet, run outside. It's night out, and I promptly launch myself up into the starry sky. It is a stunningly beautiful sky brimming with large white stars all evenly distributed. There are no clusters of stars, and the individual circles of silvery-white light shine in a universe that is not completely black but slightly bronze in hue. The peaceful yet vibrantly living splendor of this dream sky is just WOW! I'm ascending with my arms raised over my head, yet I also notice that I use my legs once or twice as if I'm swimming up. Directly above me and slightly to my right, I feel and see a movement in this splendorous sky I perceive as a flock of geese passing overhead. I didn't see them right away because they are also bright silvery-gold circles—a flying constellation! I never knew geese could fly so high! I recall how the ancient Egyptians referred to pharaoh's children as the "eggs of the Goose" the "Great Cackler" who laid the egg of Creation—a metaphor for God, Who alone existed before everything He created. I don't actually need to act like Superman to fly, so I lower my arms and, simply willing myself higher, I discern other smaller constellation-flocks. The sky is just so absolutely glorious! It feels more alive than any other starry night sky I have ever seen. There is no sound, and yet the silence itself feels alive; is inseparable from the awe-inspiring quality of the universe. Attempting to rise up to the level of the birds in this mysteriously dynamic dream firmament, I sense that no matter how high I fly, I will always be seeing this same sky, for even though I'm dreaming, I'm still confined to my physical body.

"Silence is so powerful a language that it reaches the throne of the living God. Silence is His language, though secret, yet living and powerful."—Saint Maria Faustina

"In your will, you'll feel a simple reaching out to God... Make your home in this darkness, stay there as long as you can, crying out to him over and over again because you love Him. It's the closest you can get to God here on earth, by waiting in this cloud."xlviii Afterword—"He and I"

"I have come to see that my only happiness is to live as though there were none but He and I in the world."xlix

I believe the following dream I had years ago is a very special example of how it can sometimes take years for the spiritual meaning and significance of a lucid dream to reveal itself. Recently, I came across the book He and I by Gabrielle Bossis. I had never heard of this book or the author. Or so I thought. Then I began reading, and how Jesus spoke to Gabrielle felt so familiar to my soul—in the sense of absolutely right and true—I was compelled to find out more about the woman who had written down the Lord's intimate communications with her. Her name kept ringing a bell inside me, until I remembered an early lucid dream the significance of which remained a mystery.

Excerpt from my Lucid Dream of March 8, 2013—Gabrielle 1873

Almost on the ground now, I resign myself to finding a door to use my key on, hoping it will lead directly to the beach, where my lucid dreaming friend James and I are trying to meet. But I'm not happy with that. I do the usual thing of trying to find a way through the buildings by climbing through a window, and looking for an exit in the direction I want to go, but I have no patience for this anymore. Exasperated, I head back outside, sensing gravity has become more realistic and that just flying away isn't really an option for some reason. I perch on the thick, braided dark-green "rope" of a traffic signal and walk across it like a tightrope. I'm holding on to James' key, which begins mysteriously molting, shedding two smaller keys as it grows at least three times larger. This seems odd but also somehow promising. The dark-green rope leads me into the thick white branches of a tree. The city feels different around me, more quaint and residential. The tree is a barrier to my desire to move on to my destination, yet its intricate, complexly curving and ascending limbs provide an irresistible obstacle coarse. I make my way up it, and am intrigued when I perceive a white door looming just above me to the right. The door is framed by the roots of a tree so vast, I can only see a tiny section of it all around me. Some roots have grown around this door, clutching it rather like a cut gem is held in a ring's setting. It looks as if I won't be able to open this door even if I can manage to unlock it, but I'm compelled to investigate. The keyhole proves much too small for James' big key, so I simply produce a golden key chain, from which hang a small variety of keys. I study the assortment, honing in on a slender golden key with a delicate smooth round head. I slip-thrust it into the lock, working it in, and turn it to the right. So gratifying when I feel the movement and hear the deep “click” that means I've succeeded. I push open the door and look inside. Below me, as though I'm viewing the room from an open upstairs foyer, I see two small gas lamps, delicate antiques, their glass tops gently beveled and a soft white, very distinct. They are part of a similarly elegant but subdued decor, clearly a woman's house or apartment. The modest living area opens onto a kitchen, in which I can just make out a woman's figure to the far left apparently working over the stove. As she turns and walks into the living area, she says, “Come in, dear.” She is an older woman with white hair wearing a simply cut long white dress, and she is really there. She feels very nice and welcoming, and I distinctly sense something important is going on here. Seriously intrigued, I ask, “Who are you?” and she replies, “Gabrielle, 1873." I become aware of another woman in the room—who is also dressed entirely in white—when she comes to stand beside the older woman close to a black fireplace mantle, and they both smile up at me. I ask, "And who are you?" She doesn't respond, so I address the white-haired woman again, "You did say 1873?" She confirms she did while gently turning in her hands a rectangular object that appears to be part of an antique clock. Looking at the younger woman again, I say, "And I assume you are also Gabrielle?" She simply smiles up at me without replying, and I slowly wake up.

I used a delicate golden key to open the white door into Gabrielle's apartment, located in a massive white tree that seemed to join heaven and earth—the Living Vine to which Jesus compared himself. I did not know it at the time, but lucid dreaming was leading me on a path in keeping with Christian mystical tradition, so that I ended up fully embracing the Catholic faith I was born to. After I began reading He and I and re-read my dream of Gabrielle, I went online to learn more about Gabrielle Bossis. I came across a few forums where other Christians were asking about her and her book, wondering if her personal revelations had been approved by the Church, and if it was "safe" to read He and I. I learned the Imprimatur for her book was given by his Excellency Jean-Marie Fortier, Archbishop, Sherbrooke, Quebec. From Wikipedia: "An imprimatur (from Latin, "let it be printed") is an official declaration from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church that a literary or similar work is free from error in matters of Roman Catholic doctrine, and hence acceptable reading for faithful Roman Catholics." I was glad to hear it, but not surprised. At first, nothing I read about Gabrielle seemed to relate to my dream except her name, until I found out she had been born in 1874, which means she was likely conceived in 1873. This provided another tenuous link to my dream. But it was not until I saw a picture of the inside of her home, and a photo of her as a very young woman, that I began to think my dream had, indeed, foretold my discovery of He and I, and how deeply it would resonate with me. In a photograph of her home, I saw sitting on a table a clock nearly identical to the clock I had seen the older Gabrielle of my dream holding in her hands where she stood beside a black fireplace mantle, which was also in the photo. The feel, style and decoration of her home matched the one from my dream. And another photo—of Gabrielle as a very young woman dressed entirely in white—also seems to have been glimpsed beforehand by my dreaming soul.

Excerpt from Mystics of the Catholic Church: "On very rare occasions in her early life, Gabrielle had been surprised by a Mysterious Voice, which she heard and felt with awe, and sometimes anxious questionings, which she perceived to be the Voice of Christ. It was only at the age of 62, however, that this touching dialogue with the "Inner Voice" began in earnest, continuing (at least in her notes) until two weeks before her death on June 9, 1950."

This seemed to explain why I had seen an old woman and a very young woman standing side- by-side in my dream, and yet mysteriously known they were the same person. I cannot, and have no desire, to prove Gabrielle Bossis truly was the Gabrielle from my lucid dream. But having learned that dreams, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can indeed offer us glimpses of the future—as well as reveal and unfold for us the deepest secrets of our hearts to help us overcome obstacles in our journey to God—I feel free to embrace the thought that I was blessed with this dream as Divine encouragement to trust and treasure Gabrielle's personal revelations. I soon learned that Gabrielle Bossis was born on February 26, 1874 which confirms that she was indeed conceived in 1873. Having now read the entire book (which I will continue sipping for the rest of my life!) I can truly appreciate why my soul had this dream. From "He and I" by Gabrielle Bossis. In all these excerpts, it is Jesus speaking:

"Your measure will be to love Me beyond measure. I'll pay you with love. Portion off your day in order to be more sure of offering it to Me. Offer Me this visit, that letter, this piece of work. See more of Me and less of you. Rise above these little earthly cares until you think of Me alone."

"Desire ... Desire ... To desire is to increase your capacity to receive ... Let Me come in and take over everything. Give yourself to Me. Don’t let anything in you hinder Me from working through you. I act through those who put their entire selves at My disposal ..."

"I want to heal you of your weak faith, of your life lived apart from Me rather than in Me, of your shortsighted and rare view of My actual Presence. Think, 'My great friend. My beloved is not absent. I cannot see Him or touch Him, but He is there with His extravagance of love.' And then you will take My love and offer it to Me as though it were your own. Do you want this? Tonight ... Right away ... Ceaselessly?”

"You'll need great courage to become holy. Never lose sight of the goal: holiness; that means to be always in readiness for Me, to belong to Me utterly. It's so very simple; believe Me. Would I ever ask anything that was too difficult for you? Just live in My love—holy, one moment at a time. Drive out all worries, all idle dreaming. Don't complicate things. Give me your soul simply ... Don't fail to supernaturalize everything, night and day. It is My life that is living in you now, not yours. Adore. Give thanks. And when I ask you to be simple, I mean above all in your relations with Me. Don't get the idea that I need any special words or gestures; just be yourself. Who is closer to you than God?”

“No, it's not an illusion. You're not in error, only in the shadow-land. Just feeling your way by faith. I planned it this way. So throw yourself into My arms. Say that you believe, that you hope, that you love, and commit your entire being to Me.” End Notes i The Complete Works of Tertullian (33 Books With Active Table of Contents) Kindle Edition ii C. S. Lewis, from his book Miracles iii Morton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams iv Ibid. v Ibid. vi Louis M. Savary, Patricia H. Berne, Strephon Kaplan Williams, Dreams and Spiritual Growth – A Judeo-Christian Way of Dreamwork vii From the Foreword by J. David Franks, Ph.D in A Catholic Guide to Depression by Aaron Kheriaty and Fr. John Cihak viii Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence by Sondra Barrett ix Ibid. x Ibid. xi Ibid. xii From the Foreword by J. David Franks, Ph.D in A Catholic Guide to Depression by Aaron Kheriaty and Fr. John Cihak xiii Morton T. Kelsey God – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xiv How to Read Egyptian by Mark Collier, Bill Manley xv https://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/hawthorn/ xvi The Masterpieces of the Breton Ballads, Fleay, The Library of the University of California Los Angeles - Google Books xvii Morton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xviii Fifty Shades of Hell—Book 2 in Lucid Dreams & Spiritual Warfare by Maria Isabel Pita xix Thomas Ryan, American Magazine.org xx Excerpts from Theology of the Body in Simple Language by Pope John Paul II xxi November 2015 Paris Attacks—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks xxiihttp://lucidfriendfinder.com/dreamshares/2015/05/22/in-memory-of-germanwings-flight-9525/ xxiiiWake Induced Lucid Dream xxiv GNN—Genome News Network xxv Morton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xxvi Angelus, Oct. 2, 2011 xxvii https://www.minerals.net/ xxviii A fellow lucid dreamer who is one of the people I believe my soul has consciously interacted with in dreams. xxix Morton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xxx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juana_Rosa_Pita xxxi Morton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xxxii https://www.catholic.com/tract/purgatory xxxiii https://www.usaid.gov/ xxxiv For more on this subject, see Dreams & Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World by Tom Doyle. xxxv Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader (Butcher, Carmen Acevedo) xxxvi Ibid. xxxvii Ibid. xxxviii https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/joan-of-arc-relieves-orleans xxxix https://www.amazon.com/Lucid-Dreams-Spiritual-Warfare-Book/dp/B07877BVLP/ xl Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader (Butcher, Carmen Acevedo) xli Ralph Martin, The Final Confrontation xlii https://www.thedivinemercy.org/news/Saint-Faustina-and-the-Suffering-Souls-5564 xliiiMorton T. Kelsey – God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams xliv Hypnagogia, also referred to as "hypnagogic hallucinations", is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. xlv From Practicing the Presence of God and the Spiritual Maxims (Brother Lawrence) xlvi From The Cloud of Unknowing With the Book of Privy Counsel by Anonymous, a New Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher xlvii Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader (Butcher, Carmen Acevedo) xlviii From The Cloud of Unknowing With the Book of Privy Counsel by Anonymous, a New Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher xlix From Practicing the Presence of God and the Spiritual Maxims (Brother Lawrence)