Dream - The drugstore outside the universe

In the summer or fall of 2006, I had a dream in which something strange happened near the end of it.

In the dream, I kept going to a small drugstore. Over time, it gradually changed into a much larger store, though it was still a drugstore. Also, very few people had been in it at first, but the store gradually accumulated more and more people as time went on. It wasn't just that the store itself got larger, though that of course helped.

At some point, I became aware that time was running short and the store was about to close. I think that announcements were being made, perhaps over loudspeakers. There may have been 5 or 10 minutes left. Although I had been going to the store alone, this time someone was with me. Unable to locate this person, I eventually went out the back of the store, still searching.

I found that the store existed in another dimension, or perhaps another reality. The store was on a square that looked like something generated by a computer, including having a grainy texture. A similar square was to the side and connected to it. The second square did not have a building, but it had rough terrain and steep, tall hills. It, too, looked computer generated, with dirt and grass being represented for the most part by grainy colors. There was also something to the back of the original square (the one with the store), but I'm not sure now what it was. The squares themselves seemed to have no thickness, like a computer generated terrain that consisted only of the surface, with nothing underneath it.

A formless grayness lay outside the squares and associated structures, a grayness which seemed to be without end but also without an up or down and where things like measurements had no meaning. I did not know exactly what would happen if I fell off the square areas into the grayness, but it seemed to be something very bad, and that I would, in some way, be lost. I seemed at this point concerned both with finding the person I was with and eluding some people who were after me or who were trying to stop me.

Eventually, I got back inside the store and had somewhere located the person, and we were trying to leave. I noticed that there were still quite a few people in the store, and I started trying to warn them to leave, too. I knew that when the store closed that anyone in it would be trapped in that dimension. A lot of people left, and we had to leave ourselves now. Time was almost up and there was no more time left to do anything else but leave.

As we rushed toward the doors (there were several doors at the front), someone rushed to try to block the exit. In his haste, though, he hit the door frame and was leaning against it at an angle. We rushed past him and out the door.

Once outside, we saw a broad aisle leading to some more doors that led to our reality. On each side of the aisle, the square on which the store stood extended forward to the dimensional barrier, but the area outside the aisle was dimly lit. In the dimly lit area, scattered figures were seen, figures who wanted to stop us and trap us there. We rushed past them and through the door into our reality.

After running a short distance, I looked back and saw someone go through the door at the last split second, practically leaping through. He fell on the ground as he came through, unable to keep to his feet. It gave us a little extra time to get away from him, and we got in a car and apparently escaped.

Dream - The brilliant light

I had a dream, probably in the summer or fall of 2004, about a large ball of light. The overhead light was on when I was sleeping, as it occasionally is, so that may have had an effect. However, the ball of light was not in the physical location of the overhead light, but was lower, perhaps centered at about five or six feet in the air and more toward the doorway.

In the dream, I was sleeping in my bed, as I was in real life, and the light hung there in the air, huge, blindingly brilliant but without hurting my eyes. The light was white, with perhaps a tinge of blue, and with rays like long needles stretching out everywhere. I felt the light going completely through me, and felt peace and love radiating from it.

Dream - Acquired by China

I had a dream, probably in late 2004 or early 2005, in which the United States had been taken over by China. We were mostly left alone. It was a little like a corporate takeover, where the acquired company mostly continues as it was. The parent company, though (China), did keep watch on things, and did ultimately control things.

In the dream, I was a soldier in a dark green uniform, standing with other soldiers beside me and behind me, in row on row, a vast array. We were standing there, like we were waiting.

At some point we had gotten word that China had decided that there were too many American soldiers, and had decided to execute a large portion of them. We continued to stand there, waiting for the decision as to who would die.

We were notified, then, that the portion I was in was chosen for death. I was hoping that there might be some sort of appeal, but there didn't seem to be a process for it. I continued to stand there, waiting.

Fears

What am I afraid of?

When I was young, there was a time when I was very afraid of the dark. Sometimes I could even seem to see things in it. The closet was a worry, too, in the dark, at least when it was left open.

Oddly enough, I don't seem to recall being afraid of the dark when I was very young. The memories I have of this are from later childhood.

I don't have a fear of clowns, though I know they can be somewhat disturbing at times. I recently wrote about a problem that developed with a Clarabell Clown doll that I had (Clarabell was a character on the Howdy Doody TV show).

I don't have a fear of cloth in my mouth. Indeed, I seem to remember chewing my shirt and chewing the sheet on my bed. They both tasted pretty good.

I used to be afraid of bugs, spiders and praying mantises in particular. I'm still wary of some spiders, but this is only common sense. I don't like bugs touching me, though. Or me touching them.

I used to be afraid of change. I wanted things to always be the same. Some of that is still with me.

I used to be afraid of meeting new people and doing new things. This faded fairly quickly, of necessity, but an aversion remains. In other words, I am more reluctant than afraid, though something of the fear still exists. I can be difficult to know on a personal basis.

I have gone through times when I did a lot of checking locks and things. To some extent it seems to go in cycles, perhaps influenced to some extent by events.

I used to be afraid of heights. It was a fear of falling, of somehow being almost pulled off the edge by the distance. It called out to me in some way, and reached out for me. I had to resist that call, and was afraid to go too close to the edge, or of being in a position where there was an edge.

Somewhere in childhood I developed a fear of failing, of somehow, and maybe in spite of all appearances, not being good enough. Some of that remains, though it is somewhat muted now with time and experience. Still, there is a concern that I could have made or could make a difference. Depending on what I do or don't do, things could go a different way.

I used to be afraid of the Biblical End-of the-World, and of somehow not being Saved. With time, though, I came to a less-than-traditional view of such things. Though I still consider myself a Christian, I do not subscribe to a fundamentalist viewpoint, and many Christians would, in fact, probably disown me.

I used to be afraid of growing up. I could see the future ahead of me, the years stretching away, and it would never be as good as it was before. I also knew that the best times had, in fact, already passed, as my life before I entered school contained the best times I would ever know.

I developed a tendency to worry about the future to the extent that the present could not be sufficiently enjoyed. I used to look forward to getting out for school for the summer. Then I started worrying earlier and earlier in the summer break about returning to school when it was over. Eventually, I started worrying about returning to school before the break even started.


Time changes things. I am over 50 years old, and some of the worries are more distant, now. I'm not afraid of the dark anymore. Too much has happened over the years. The dark can contain dangers, but it seems less important in the face of what has already happened. Changes and new things can also hold dangers, but I am less afraid of them, though I do retain, at times, a suspicion of them and even an aversion to them.

But things are not as bad as they were, or as they could be.

Finding the elephants

I remember reading a news story long ago, in which a train derailed. Evidently the train had been carrying circus animals or some such thing, because some elephants escaped.

Some of them wandered over to a nearby old folks home and broke inside.

One resident opened the door to a room and saw an elephant inside. The resident shut the door again.

Later, another resident, an old lady, was telling newspeople that "we get elephants all the time."

It reminds me a little of the UFO situation, and different people's reactions to it.

Perhaps we, too, would find the elephants if we didn't keep shutting the door.

The Clarabell Clown doll

I used to have a Clarabell Clown doll (Clarabell was a character on the Howdy Doody TV show). It was a stuffed doll with a thin plastic face. I used to take the doll to bed with me.

One night, I was looking at the doll, and its eyes bothered me. I knew it was just a doll, and not alive, but it felt like its eyes were somehow looking at me.

I looked at it for a long time. I couldn't go to sleep like this, with the doll beside me looking at me with its eyes. However, if I threw the doll away from the bed, I knew that its thin plastic face would probably be dented, and it would never be the same after that. I didn't want to get out of bed to take it somewhere, either. Probably because my mother had put me in bed, and by getting out of bed I would be undoing that.

Finally, I did throw the doll away from the bed. It hit the wall where the wall met the floor, and I knew that its face was probably damaged. I could get to sleep now, though.

In the morning, my mother, looking very disturbed, showed me the doll and told me that she didn't know what had happened, but she had found it over by the wall and somehow its face had gotten dented. I told her, briefly, what had happened, and she said, looking upset, "But this is your favorite doll, you sleep with this every night! We can't fix it!"

I think I probably just repeated some of what I had already said at that point. In my mind, I understood what she was saying, but it couldn't be helped.

It was very sad, but it had to be done.

Dream - The girl on the mountain

I don't have anything that I can identify as a past life memory, but an odd dream that happened long ago had some strange features.

I was probably about five years old when I had the dream. My brother was in the dream with me. I am older than he is, but less than a year and a half so. In the dream, we were the same ages as in real life at the time.

In the dream, my brother and I were in the Old West riding in a wagon pulled by horses. We were sitting in front with the reins. We were going around and around a mountain, like in the song, "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes." I believe the song was actually being sung in the dream, as background music. I think at first we were slowly spiraling up the mountain on a dirt path, but eventually we were just going around the mountain in a circle, part way up. At this point, anyway, the going was not difficult at all, with the surrounding area being fairly flat for most of the trip.

Each time we went around the mountain, we passed the farm of a family that lived there. There were always a few people outside, and one of them was a daughter about our age. All of the people were dressed in Old-West, frontier style clothes, with the women, including the daughter, wearing long dresses and bonnets.

The daughter had eyes that were open very wide and staring, and we were supposed to stay away from her, because she was crazy. She was scary to look at and I didn't want to look at her.

One time, when we were going around the mountain, I looked for my brother and he was gone. He must have gotten off or fallen off somewhere.

When I got to the farm again, he was talking to the little girl.

It was so awful and scary that I forced myself awake.


An odd thing happened a few years later. We had moved to Arizona and were visiting a wax museum. In one of the scenes, I saw the little girl.

In the scene, which takes place in a small log cabin, a man is on his knees getting scalped by an Indian. In the corner, a little girl watches, a horrified
expression on her face, her eyes wide open and staring.

I'm not sure what to make of this, other than that the dream seems to predict the seeing of the wax figure. But I don't know why it would do that, and it seems that some deeper meaning should be associated with it.

Is this really necessary?

One time in grade school, we were being taught how to spell words and "necessary" ended up being talked about quite a bit. The teacher said that if anyone missed it on the spelling test then that person would have to write it on the board fifty times (I think it was fifty).

Well, somehow I got confused and missed it. I was the only one. So I had to go up to the board and start writing "necessary" over and over again. After a while, the teacher told me that I could stop. I kept arguing with her that I wasn't finished yet, that I didn't have it written down enough times. She insisted, though, so I went back to my seat.

She was really a pretty nice teacher.

Reality - I think, but am I?

I think.

And I think that I am.

But am I really?

Or am I just in the mirror, looking back?

Or am I a character in someones else's dream?

Or am I in a play, believing that the play's the thing?

And if the play's not the thing, then what is?


Robert Heinlein wrote a story, once, in which a man invented a machine that could measure the span of a person's life. When viewed in the context of time, people did not appear as they normally do, but appeared as long, worm-like things that began at their birth and ended at their death.

What do we appear as when viewed from other dimensions? If we have a current existence that extends past the reality that we know, does all that we are or were or will be form just a projection from a greater entity? A lobe that extends into what we view as reality?

If so, which is the reality? Is it what we normally perceive, or does it include all that underlies it? How is reality defined? If reality is what is real, is the underlying reality real in that sense? Or would it be not real, but still exist?

Murmuring voices

Many years ago, probably in 1997, I had been going for a long time with very little sleep. Finally, I took a short nap. When I woke up, I heard what sounded like a huge crowd of people talking to each other. I couldn't understand what was being said, though. It was just a lot of murmuring sounds, with some voices momentarily becoming louder and then falling back into the background murmuring. No matter how loud a voice became, though, I could never make out any words. I walked around, but the sound followed me whereever I went. I was vaguely disturbed by it, but also amused. I felt that it was some side effect of my exhaustion, although I have been exhausted many times before and since. Perhaps, instead, the exhaustion allowed a breakdown of barriers and some kind of psychic manifestation occurred. Who knows? I finally started doing something, and at some point the sounds went away.