24 June 2008 Tuesday

https://ferrydust.com/journal/1924/god-nightmare

Nightmares of big scary evil things are bad enough but a nightmare in which God is evil and standing before me…. Unspeakably horrifying..

Lots of mini-nightmares, the kind I get when I’m just in the early attempts of sleep, but I’m really, really tired, so that it’s a struggle for me to wake and break out of them. But I do, and I shift around and usually eventually am free of them and do not remember their contents.

The last nightmare had elephants.. it wasn’t a nightmare yet.. I was wary, because elephants can be dangerous.. but it was going fine. Huge elephant.. carried me from an immediately preceeding dream, I think. I’m sure these were Asian elephants. I was standing on a platform that put me at their head/higher level.. I think we were in a barn-like structure..must have been huge.. so I stood on a loft..? Elephant’s trunk reached up by me, I wrapped my arm over/around its trunk gently, tentatively.. felt its skin very clearly.. Not peaceful nor reassuring eyes whatsoever, widely open eyes.. but they weren’t threatening me… Some elephants were carrying things, (one carried a baby elephant across the top surface of his trunk?) possibly over their huge tusks, but the tusks were implied; I did not see them.

And then a man standing.. in a suit, I think.. I think it was brown.. He was… not white..not black.. I would say light brown/mixed-African/Mediterranean/middle-eastern with Western features?maybe tightly curly, very short dark hair. Actually, I would have said he was slightly bronze colored (not shiny, though). Looked like a regular, clean, “respectable”, serene man, with a blank but not unintelligent expression, perfectly comfortable and confident posture minus any arrogance or even imposition. And I don’t know if I knew he was God before or after he spoke to me.. (and I am capitalizing that because that’s what he was for that moment..) He said one or two phrases… both of which were not heard clearly by me, even though I’m sure he spoke perfectly and did not mumble or speak under his breath. But I had been about to leave (to where? I don’t know. But definitely had no plans to stay there).. And maybe my distance from him explains why I didn’t hear him so clearly.. He said something.. and I heard, and gave some indication of acknowledgment (head nodding? saying “yes..”?) and then decided I wasn’t certain I had heard correctly, so asked, “what?” for him to repeat what he had said and I took a step closer to him (?) to listen. I had possibly heard something to the effect of, “Stay awhile, and I can hug you.” But I wasn’t sure about that last bit, and when he repeated it clearly, it was exactly what I had been concerned that I had nearly heard the first time, “Stay awhile, and I can judge you.”

He didn’t say it loudly, or with any strangeness in his voice or any change in his blank expression.
But on account of who he was..
and it was not said with peace, calmness, kindness. It was very dark. And I scrambled to wake immediately.

I was not alarmed the moment he said it, but rather the moment I interpreted it. And at no point did I feel an abandonment or scorn from him, but I do remember the surprise and confusion and consideration of abandonment or scorn.

No particular reason I can think of that would have inspired these dreamings. ..though in retrospective I have been considering self-responsibility and consciousness and self-judgment more closely lately. But I’m not convinced it was specifically inspired. In any case…

I struggled for a while with just being there, with that memory.. Tackling regular nightmare-figures is challenging enough, but one does not trump God. There can be no greater figure; can there be a greater nightmare figure?

I was really upset.

But I was given the best advice possible — to remember myself / if I encounter him in my dreams again, remind him who I am. Reminding myself immediately calmed me, and I went nearly immediately into peaceful sleep.

In retrospect, it probably would have been useful to have asked him what the heck he was thinking when he made the platypus. But you weren’t there. You wouldn’t have asked him anything. I’m sorry I asked him to repeat himself!

I still have chills thinking about it a little.. It was really upsetting. But now I remember I’m safe.