Between Dreams

Story

Right up to the last moment before sleep arrives, even with your head resting warm and cozy on your pillow, you are here. You remain whole, complete, with all your joys and all your concerns. You remain you.

But eventually, you must surrender to the inevitable. Your breathing slows, your eyelids grow heavy, and an ever-thickening fog dims your awareness. You are fading, and a moment arrives when all sense of self quietly slips away.

Sleep.

You are gone, but where is “gone”? You breathe, your heart beats, yet you are unaware of these things. Where is the center of consciousness you identified with so strongly all day long? A switch has been flipped and for a time you no longer exist.

In the morning, you might remember dreams, but few make sense. They certainly never account for the total time you were asleep. Where did you go between your dreams? What did you do?

Perhaps sleep takes you somewhere so different from your normal state of consciousness that your mind has no capacity to grasp and retain the experience as a memory. Certainly few hints of that time remain imprinted on your brain.

Expanded consciousness, perhaps? Journeys through other realms? Or could it be time spent in deep healing and spiritual growth?

Upon wakening, except for those nights when disturbing dreams have dogged your slumber, there is often a vague sense that you’ve just returned from somewhere wonderful. Feelings often persist that you’ve done something truly worthwhile, and that what took place was important.

You’ve felt it, haven’t you? A certain wistfulness as you regain consciousness? It feels like a memory of a memory, a fading desire for something that you know was yours only moments before, something that has now slipped beyond your grasp.

Echoes, that’s what you felt, echoes of yet another journey between dreams.