TheDreamstersUnion

(Saturday, September 21, 2013) The Dweller on the Threshold has been very present in my waking life in the last couple of weeks.

A few mornings after the King of the Vampires showed up in dreamtime I got a $129 traffic ticket for crossing the double white lines into the Sane (carpool) Lane. Even though there were two of us in my car.

That afternoon the big boss at work, Jane, gave me a brochure for the “Crossing Borders” studio tour in Duluth and Superior.

On Monday of this week I got a return call from an instructor I had contacted via email about her Qigong classes. I’d read a really good book that recommends supplementing Tai-Chi with Qigong. My Tai-Chi teacher doesn’t teach Qigong, so I found this woman on the internet, who started her own center in south Minneapolis in 1977.

She pretty much read me the riot act, in a cold burn sort of way. She informed me that her teacher told her to never take on a student that has another teacher. I got off the phone with her feeling completely poisoned and shamed. I decided to go to Mni Owe Sni (Coldwater Spring), the sacred springs near Minnehaha Falls to cleanse and purge, as my friend Jeanne says.

When I arrived during the noon hour, eagles circled overhead. I had never been to the site before, so I took a long walk through the prairie grasses and woods. There is one large spring that flows from a pond down to the river, and several smaller pools that do not produce streams. One of these pools was hidden behind a low hill, and I stumbled upon it just as I was getting ready to leave. As I drew nearer to the pool, I recalled a dream from a few months ago where all the senior members of my Tai-Chi center welcome me into the family. Perhaps it is something deeper than etiquette this angry woman was trying to impress upon me.

The shallow water of the tiny pond (more of a puddle, really) was encircled by flat rocks; two mourning doves were sitting on one of the rocks, but they flew up and away as I approached. I sat on their rock and removed my shoes, dipping my feet, hands and face into the clear, beautiful water.

I considered the significance of the doves on the rocks for several days. Two doves appear on the family crest of our Sheehan clan (my maternal bloodline includes Irish and Native American ancestors). An interpretation of mourning dove symbolism from the web: “the veil between spiritual and physical are at their thinnest.” Also, “the primary symbolism of the dove is that of patience and tenderness. Their voice along with the soft hue of their bodies, and the tender glow of their eyes – all lead to thoughts of softness, tenderness and symbols of love.”

Tuesday is Tai-Chi day and at the end of our class my teacher passed around an eagle feather he brought back from his 10-day solo canoe trip in the Quetico (the Canadian provincial reserve that mirrors the Boundary Waters Canoe Area). A new beginner’s class started at 7:30, following our usual 6:30 class. I saw that Eric Christopher, the past life regression hypnotherapist I visited this winter, was in the new class. That struck me as another expression of crossed borders.

Yesterday I was listening to the IASD conference DVD in my car. Research was being presented on “boundary thinness” and its effects on dreams and daydreams. People with “boundary thinness” are more creative and have higher emotional content in their dreams, whether sleeping or waking.

(Saturday, September 14, 2013)  Monday morning (dream group day) I awake from a dream that makes my heart race and makes me smile at the same time.

I am lying on top of one of the double beds in the main upstairs bedroom of my grandmother’s simple farmhouse. I hear a great commotion. A young man who is my physical match comes tearing through a large white door to my left. He slams it shut and throws himself against it in horror in an obvious attempt to keep out some terrible presence: the King of the Vampires.

But the King of the Vampires is powerful beyond imagining. He kicks the door down and brutally crushes the young man beneath it. The King stands on top of the heavy wooden door, pressing his immense weight onto the fragile body beneath him, the same way I’ve seen a hawk kill a finch. His stance is regal, proud and terrifying. I watch him fill his lungs with great gulps of air, each breath inflating him to an even greater size. I expect the King to reach under the door and finish off my double by strangling his puny neck, but he simply turns and walks away into the darkness.

After a few moments the injured young man crawls out from under the door, barely alive. He slinks along the floor and into a second double bed (located at my left) to recuperate from his injuries. I quietly allow him rest, but soon I point to the open doorway and state the obvious: “WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.”

I tell him we can escape through a bank of three windows in the attic. There is an attic ceiling hatch inside the closet at the foot of the bed where I am lying. I push the hatch door aside and pull myself up through the small, square opening. Once in the attic, I find myself beneath a thick black cloak that covers the entire room. I can smell the dust and age of the floorboards beneath me. I feel the rough heaviness of the cloth on my back and shoulders. In my plan, we crawl like rats under the cloak to get to the windows, crack one of them open, jump silently to the ground, and run like hell.

I watch as my partner’s fingers claw through the opening of the hatch. Only at this point do I wonder: is this a human being or a vampire? Suddenly his shoes appear at the top of the hatch. He’s hanging by his feet like a bat, and he’s wearing brown wing-tips.

Too late to do anything about it. He’s in the attic now, and the protective cloak has disappeared. We’re both standing in an ornately decorated room that is blazing with lights, with no drapes on any of the windows. There’s a flat-screen TV playing a movie in the middle of the room.

I look out the single window beneath the peak of the roof line. I see the Vampire King walking eastward, away from the house. He turns his head, sadly, making brief eye contact with me, but then continues on his journey.

Dawn is breaking. It is safe to leave the house and I let myself out through the bank of three windows under the eaves at the side of the house (impossibly, these windows also face east), shimmying down the outside wall. I am uncertain whether I, too, am a vampire. In my dream I find this an amusing irony.

Day notes:

I shared this dream at The Dreamsters Union meeting. I decided to wear my long black skirt and a black top in honor of the dream. I shared that the structure of the dream matches the devil card in the tarot: shadow lovers

On my afternoon walk a couple of days later, I found a dead bat in the middle of the trail.

Vampires, at least in the popular canon, are all about sexual desire.

Jungian essay on the vampire archetype (click link)

Vampires are eternal, the human soul is eternal. Vampires do not share the human amnesia about past incarnations.

This dream seems related to my waking dream bardo images. Vampire King as Dweller on the Threshold.

From Van Morrison, lyrics to Dweller on the Threshold:

I’m a dweller on the threshold
And I’m waiting at the door
And I’m standing in the darkness
I don’t want to wait no more

I have seen without perceiving
I have been another man
Let me pierce the realm of glamour
So I know just what I am

I’m a dweller on the threshold
And I’m waiting at the door
And I’m standing in the darkness
I don’t want to wait no more

Feel the Angel of the Presence
In the mighty crystal fire
Lift me up consume my darkness
Let me travel even higher

I’m a dweller on the threshold
As I cross the burning ground
Let me go down to the water
Watch the great illusion drown

I’m a dweller on the threshold
And I’m waiting at the door
And I’m standing in the darkness
I don’t want to wait no more

I’m gonna turn and face the music
The music of the spheres
Lift me up consume my darkness
When the midnight disappears

I will walk out of the darkness
And I’ll walk into the light
And I’ll sing the song of ages
And the dawn will end the night

(Saturday, September 14, 2013)  Tuesday morning I awoke with no sensation of residing in a physical body. Everything in my awareness was pure image. So I was only awareness, since I had no body at all.

The images were psychedelically vivid, composed of an infinite number of layers that morphed and flew through space at a dizzying speed. I thought, “This is what Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche describes as the bardo between life and death.” I was being shown why meditation practice is a vital preparation for leaving this life: a trained and focused mind is the only path through the terror, power and distraction of the images in the bardo.