Last night, in the deep middle of the night, I woke myself up… crying out in the dark…a thing that was once a very common occurrence in my life.
I am sure that most of you know by now that I was sexually assaulted as a child, lived with an indifferent father, a very violent mother, and sisters who left home as rapidly as their teenage legs could carry them. I tell you these circumstances of my life once more, not to cause you concern about me or my welfare, or even the child I once was…all of that, and more, has been through the alchemy of forgiveness and has been revealed for the gold it now is. But rather to express one of the results of those experiences, decades of episodic sleep disturbances.
From childhood on, I had what could only be described as night terrors. Nightmares of such intensity and demonic nature that I once, while still in high school, went in secret to a clergyman and asked him to perform an exorcism, as the only sense I could make of such horrific nightmares, was that I must surely be possessed. He was not of the Catholic faith, nor was I…and he didn’t quite know what to do with my request. (I remember quite clearly the mild shock on his kindly face.) But none-the-less, he prayed for me, held my hands, and did his best…
Now from the deeper ground of an increasingly silent mind I have come to see that we are all “possessed”, to one degree or another, and that the truly lucky are the ones whose conditioned mind can not be lived with any longer, and thus they set out to free themselves of this universally common mind, with a passion and fervor that is reserved for those that know they are attempting to save themselves.
In time the horror of my nightmares faded, and only occasionally did the demons chase me through my nighttimes seeking revenge and fury upon me. I remember one nightmare in particular, it occurred well into the time frame in which I had freed myself from the terrible depression that threatened my life, but well before I uncovered the Silence that rests beneath all minds.
The faceless demon was chasing me and closing in on me, the familiar fear and terror were crowding my chest and hampering my breathing, my need to escape was escalating like pressure in a steam valve sending the indicator needle into the red zone and beyond. As always before…I needed to be rescued more than anything… more than air, more than food and water, more than life itself. For no reason I can define or even understand, I suddenly stopped in my panicked flight to nowhere, turned and looked him full in the face. I don’t remember it being audible or even spoken, but “STOP”…I said to him, and my command was clear…you cannot have me. Just like a child’s toy someone has forgotten to wind, he collapsed and disappeared without so much as a puff of wind to describe his passing. Even in the dream I remember being surprised beyond recognition, stopped cold myself, by the shear drama of having the will to confront him and more that he left without conflict or debate. I believe this is called lucid dreaming, something I have never experienced before or since, as I knew in the moment that I turned to deny him that I was in a nightmare and needn’t be.
So I have some experience with night terrors, although it has been a good long while since one darkened my door. Until last night…
There is very little I have personally experienced that is more uncomfortable than trying to cry out in the midst of a nightmare, (and I have broken two bones and lived through some very difficult times). I think it must have something to do with the relaxation of the body, the difficulty of getting muscles to respond to a mind that is somehow not really available. It feels like pushing through dangerously breaking waves, your muscles do not respond, as they should, your voice is therefore unfamiliar and guttural. I sounded to my ear as though I were breaking in two, my larynx and throat not at my command… my voice rose from the depths seeking expression, and finding little ability.
In the dream, a man, (a real downgrade from the demons of the past), wearing a black leather facemask, had strapped me to a table in preparation for assaulting and torturing me…and I knew it was going to be bad.
Struggling and helpless I cried out over and over, and awoke to hearing myself crying in desperate and guttural sounds, the name of my eldest sister.
She left home when I was four years of age, she has often told me of how incapable my mother was of caring for me, and how she counts me as her first child rearing experience in an unbroken pattern that has lasted now for nearly five decades, (having partially raised her sister, her daughters, her grand daughters and now her great grand children).
I have never had any interest at all in dream interpretation, just as I have no interest in any form of lighter than air spiritual experience. No interest in angels, or visions, or crystals, or harmonics, or prophecies…no my spirituality is the blue collar variety, a work-a-day get it done, sort of moment by moment experience of uncovering and discovering freedom. So I have no interpretation to offer of the man, his impending deeds, or my sister’s name upon my lips as I awoke.
I am sure all manner of interpretations could, and most likely will, spring to your mind as you read this. But I am not writing it to discover what it “means”, as I am very clear that the first three lessons of the Course in Miracles is a bedrock form of truth.
Those lessons are: Lesson One: Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place…or in this dream) means anything.
Lesson Two: I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place…or in this dream), all the meaning that is has for me.
Lesson Three: I do not understand anything I see in this room, (on this street, from this window, in this place…or in this dream). (Italics mine).
These three lessons have come so alive for me that I am no longer even interested in interpreting my life, or my dreams, as I most assuredly do not know or clearly understand anything, save that a silent mind is the respite for the weary.
No, I wanted to chronicle last night’s night terror…only because of the effects it has had upon me today, in light of its visitation. And because those effects are an addition to the essay that was produced yesterday entitled The Chains of Suffering, this one will be part two.
For a very long time now, I have been living and growing into an increasingly silent mind. The first instance was years ago, and took years more to experience the second opening. It wasn’t until I lost my job and became, for all intents and purposes, housebound that the experience of Silence began to stabilize. Certainly not every day, and perhaps not even every week could I restore the quiet that was such a profound blessing, but it became my focus and my interest and my discovery and my joy.
Very recently as my system has been “shocked”, (a state of being that my Teacher expressed as necessary before any growth or evolution can occur), by the unwitting loss of a job I hoped would restart my income stream, and the request of my sister to sell my home, I have been experiencing Silence more frequently and for longer periods of “time”.
Last nights terror, resolved itself today, in a very affecting shift in my capacity to stop thinking and rest in Being.
It feels like the difference between being a guest and being a resident. Let me “get out in front” of you, by saying that I do not mean that this deeper level is now a permanent fixture. I know beyond doubt that only change is constant, but paradoxically, I also now know, that Silence is never changing.
Imagine that you have been trudging through a wild and stormy night, all around you a blizzard blows. It is so cold that your blood threatens to freeze right inside your veins. The wind drives the icy crystals sideways into your face, clogging your vision and making it painful to breathe. You have been walking against this driving wind for so long now, that rescue is no longer even a hope…but rather just a memory who once had, long ago, like a child who hopes to capture a fairy one day. In this exhausted and haunted experience of soon to be icy death, comes a sudden, unbidden, deeply surprising, and certain knowledge, that your imminent demise is a figment of your own imagination… That in Reality, you are warm and cared for and loved and cradled, that the One has been awaiting your discovery of this most wonderful fact, patiently watching as you struggle against the rising tide of blinding and freezing snow banks, turning this way and that in your sightlessness and illusions. The One cannot save you, cannot reach out and pluck you from the abyss because that abyss is not real, and cannot therefore be expelled by some effort or miracle from outside of you.
My Teacher was fond of saying that “nothing can come to you, it must always come from Of course, in my ignorance and confusion, I thought he meant that the outer circumstances I so desired and steadfastly demanded, of the creative Universe, could somehow be commanded by me into being, if I could just figure out what he was saying. The right formula of prayers and behaviors and attitudes would somehow get me what I wanted… and felt I must have… as surely as the lost and lonely, barely surviving explorer, who is only perceptually trapped in a driving and dangerous blizzard. you”.
We are all just like that…safe and warm and loved and valued…and lost to that knowledge as surely as the cold we believe will kill us.
When I awoke in the dark last night, with my sister’s name upon my lips, some part of me let go…some deep “believing” aspect of my mind dropped away like a barnacle scrapped from the bottom of my soul…and today Silence envelopes me ever more constantly like a warming embrace.
Silence is just that…silent. There are no voices at all, not just the ending of the voice you think of as yourself, but language as a whole. Gone are instructions, advice, help, direction, guidance, knowings, counsel, information, opinion, directives, lessons, or commands…just empty Silence.
But somehow that silence is more alive than anything I have ever experienced, more valuable than anything I have ever hoped or prayed for, more important than anything I have ever understood, more useful than anything else could possibly be. I have not been really afraid for a long time now, but Silence dismisses fears and anxieties like the morning sun dismisses coastal fog.
The recognition that I must have yearned for my sister’s presence when she left me, at four years of age, with my angry mother, my absent father, and my deeply disturbed uncle…must have reverbed in my mind the whole length of my life, and my unconscious dream state washed me free of the last remaining hope of rescue from the life that is mine to lead. Thus Silence is now more spacious and available, than it was just yesterday.
I would gather it up like daisies from the field, growing wild with abandon…for you, if I could. I would shout it from the rooftops and claim it for you too, if I could. I would pray and search and sacrifice, if it would help…if I could.
But Silence is an inside job, and only you can uncover it. Only you can restore it. Only you can bask in the warmth it brings.
May your soul’s Emptiness one day surround you, love you, restore you, be experienced by you, fully recognized by you and welcome you safely home…
1/29/11
Adayre R. Miller
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