Visions of a refugee (Series of Dreams)

I saw it as clear as day. The curtain rose and the landscape was barren. The trees were all bereft of leaves. It was the middle of August and in that twilight between awokeness and sleep this desolate vision appeared real. It was like I was in a movie theatre, and this was the opening scene. I must admit it stayed with me awhile, attempting to fathom what level of reality this vision presented. Was it a portent? Was it a symbol of death? Or could it merely have been a preview of the coming winter, destined to arrive in a few months time?

I’ve been in this space of consciousness a few weeks prior. In that occurrence, I saw my veins and arteries in my chest turn dark. It was like an X-ray in a sense. I felt the presence of a woman in the room, I also heard my son opening the front door. He was coming up the stairs to my bedroom, calling my name to see if I was ok. I had the awareness of all this along with the sensation of not being able to talk, to get out the words “ yes I’m fine.” I awoke, my son was not there, nor was the amorphous woman.

MLK had a dream. It was more sanguine and universal than mine. “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

Gandhi had a dream of an ideal. He dreamt of a liberated India, a nation where Hindus and Muslims can live together with mutual respect and harmony, where all people irrespective of caste, creed, gender, etc. will peacefully co-exist together. In Gandhi’s mind the Lord was manifest in all religions and that through nonviolence, cooperative economics and a simple lifestyle humankind will be able to live a purposeful peaceful life.

John Lennon envisioned a similar world in his classic song, Imagine. “Imagine all the people, living life in peace.”

All three of these revered figures were murdered by violence, hated by many in the days of their activism. They are memorialized and revered today but their dreams are as far away as ever. Perhaps their visions were just the hallucinations of an utopian dream not attainable in this world so dominated by greed, nationalism, jingoism, and other destructive impulses; all of which are ironically done in the name of some righteous claims of superiority. With the Amazon burning, species becoming extinct at an alarming rate, xenophobia and racial animus on the rise, economic disparities at unsustainable levels, humans have an existential need to figure this out. Ideological or religious fanaticism certainly won’t.

There are personal dreams that manifest from another dimension or subconscious. It may be literal, it maybe allegorical or inscrutable. If you have the ability of recall there is a potential lesson that may be learned. Then there are dreams of Truth meant for a world vision of hope.  Accessible to all, meditating upon them evokes a pleasant state of being and joy. It is an inspiration and an invitation for universal transcendence. As long as these dreams exist there is hope no matter the vicissitudes of the faintness and brightness of the eternal light.