Following on from this morning’s dream. The dream suggested that whales are totemic to me. That I am protected in a pod.
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Here is the whale totem from “Animal Speak” by Ted Andrews.
ISBN 0-87542-028-1
Llewellyn Publications, St Paul, Minnesota, USA.
The Inuit {Inupriaq} had a special relationship with the bowhead whale…
For the first time in over three months, I slept through to 4:30 AM. I was very surprised when I checked the clock on going to the bathroom. Here is a sequence of dreams / snippets.
The dream starts with me walking in multiple magnolia-coloured corridors carrying A4 x-ray images of my hips and knees. I am going back and forth and talking with various elements of the medical profession. There is something in these films which they have never seen before, implied something inside me, unique.
I am now in an ultra-modern house high on a hillside overlooking a sound, an inlet, from the coast. The feeling is of a damp pacific northwest America, as per the early Twilight films. There is forest and rain, Vancouver or Seattle. There is water in the air. There is a huge floor to ceiling glass window looking out to the sound below, there are droplets on the glass. I am close almost pressed to the window. It is my invalid home, for recovery. Far below in the sound I can see whales swimming in a V formation. They are the same black and white non-orca whales from the dream before. My relationship is totemic. As they swim up the fjord inland there is one lead and two on each side of the V. I count thirteen whales in total. It is as if I am swimming behind the lead whale protected by the pod.
I am now at the waterside of the sound. Despite the northerly latitude I enter the water to swim. I can see my dive partner from Sharm El-Sheikh. She is young and attractive as she was then. She is dressed in a green bikini and somehow mostly above water. I swim towards her fully immersed in the cold water completely at home.
The scene changes and I am with my wife and Ashley. We are sitting on the front seat of a right-hand drive minibus. It is one of those continuous bench seats. It is getting towards night and dusky. Ashley is driving, she is in the middle, and I am on the left. In front of the steering wheel behind the dashboard there is a huge mess in front of Ashley, which contrasts to the space in front of us. Now dark we drive down a lane. It is deep in rural West Wales, not too far from the sea. The roads are windy. Ashley pulls up in front of a property and asks, “is this it?”
“Yes”.
He gets out and goes to open the door with a key. It unlocks but the door does not open. I get out and look at the very sophisticated modern locking mechanism. He does not know what is the other side of the door in this rather nondescript building, I do. I pull a key out of my right trousers pocket. It is at the end of a chain attached to one of the belt hooks. The key is golden and slightly shimmering. I go to the door and with ease undo the mortice. The door starts to open, and a radiant light spills out of the doorway, through the small gap between door and lintel. In contrast to Ashley neither the wife nor I are surprised.
The next part of the dream starts with a strong visual image of Catherine Middleton. She is a bit thin and wearing only a long T-shirt. She wants me to look at her body which I do. I can see her small breasts and the scar from her operation on her abdomen. She feels frail yet determined. In the dream she wants me to have sex with her, which I know is not sex but cooperation. She wants to talk with me about George in particular. Something is bothering her, and she can’t let it go. She needs an explanation different from those she has already had. I comment that I would be happy to try to help.
The setting now changes to the English West Country, Devon, Somerset or Cornwall. Inland, I am due to run a large course at a conference facility. It is due to start in the afternoon, and the preparations are ok. There are people handling the arrivals. I have a team assembled.
Driving the minibus from before I pull up in a layby by a series of beachy coves. I get out and put my belongings in a black plastic workman’s bucket with a handle and head down to the beach with the bucket. I put the bucket on the beach. I enter the water and swim like I used to be able. I swim along shore and in and out of the little coves. I note that there is a strong current running along the shore in the direction of where I started. I decide to part body-surf the current back. Others are doing this too. When I get back to the beach my bucket is gone. It has my ‘phone and documents in. Sat on the decking of a beachfront bar at an outside table is a couple of American men. They are being loud. I can see the bucket with them. I go up to them and say that I need the contents of the bucket. They joke a little, but I insist it is very important because I have a gig to do soon. I look in the bucket and find what I am looking for. It is a small ~1cm diameter bi-convex lens in what looks like a slightly leaden glass. I hold it up to my eye between my left index finger and thumb. “This I what I was looking for!” They look non-plussed. I need to hurry back for the course I am due to give.
I move on and am back in the van. I am calling to check something for the course. The call goes through to a public pay phone, US style attached to a telegraph pole outside of the modern pacific house from earlier. I can see the ‘phone ringing from where I am sat. The pay phone is quite fancy. Nobody answers. I try again and somebody answers the phone, but it is now not the pacific phone.
I am saying hello etc. There is no response. The phone start to crackle and a female voice asks me if I am who I am using my name and the prefix dr. I say yes. She says that she is Mrs. Andersen and is due on my course. She apologizes that she will not be able to make it. I ask why. She says that she is in the middle of Tibet. She is making a journey from East to West and that it is taking longer than expected. I say to her that it is fine and a very good explanation as to why she will not be attending. We both laugh a little. Life is strange.
The dream ends.
Here is this morning’s dream.
I am with Charlie whom I know to be an extrovert highly talkative nagal’s courier. We are in a courtyard with white stone walls some draped in rude pink bougainvillea. We are sat at a two seater small white bistro style table in the sun. He is talking animatedly and says that there are some people he would like me to meet. We are in a leafy rich suburb of Pretoria South Africa. He says again that are some people he would like me to meet, now.
The first is just around the corner. He leads me off to a small shopping / administrative area. There is a 1960s style polygon shaped building with a large, covered porch and outdoor seating. It is a community library and an outreach of the university. We enter and there are all sorts of posters in the vestibule advertising events. Behind the librarian’s desk is a medium height medium build white woman. She has an immaculate grey straight haired bob and is dressed in a well pressed blouse and trousers. There are small black butterflies as a motif on her white blouse. Around her neck on a lanyard are spectacles. Charlie introduces me and she speaks in a Germanic Dutch English accent. It is different from Afrikaans and highly educated. She says that she likes the East. I already know this, she is an Easterly Stalker who works at the university library most of the time. In her spare time, she is highly athletic and a free climber. She is lithe.
Charlie then leads me off South into a township near Cape Town. We go to a government run drop in centre / nursery. It is next to a pop-up health centre for adults with HIV. We go into the centre and I can immediately hear the booming tones of a large woman, who is telling someone off in a well humoured manner. She is laughing. As we approach, I can see a large buxom and overweight black woman with corn-row dreadlocks. She has a gold ring piercing in her left nostril and left ear. She is about six feet tall and, in all respects, larger than life. Around her are numerous toddlers and small children. It is chaotic yet somehow together. She hugs Charlie fiercely and squashes him to her bosom. When she sees me, she suddenly becomes coy and suspicious. She inspects me and breaks into a radiant ear to ear grin. There is no need for a hug because we can feel each other’s hearts. She is a Southerly Stalker.
Charlie then takes me to Western Cape to an isolated penitentiary inland from the coast. It is surrounded by razor wire and heavily guarded. We pull up to the guard house in our car. He stays in the car as only I am allowed in. The guards have been expecting me. They open the gate and let me in. I walk in unaccompanied. There are no more guards. I open the first gate and then a door. Inside in a dark room of considerable size there is an electric fence surrounding an enclosure. On it are danger high-voltage signs. I can see a man inside the enclosure. He is wearing a wide brimmed hat and a long dark brown bushwhacker’s coat. I can pass through the electric fence without any problems, with ease. I know that it does not constrain him either. We are at home in the darkness of the room. We stand brooding together in the darkness. He is a Man Behind the Scenes and I know him to be seventh ray. I can see his eyes but not his face in the darkness. We know each other very well, across lifetimes.
The dream ends.
Here is this morning’s dream.
The flavour of this dream in entirely UK and specifically England. I am in a small featureless room with D whom I used to know. He is taciturn and concerned. There is a heavy leaden vibe. I know that in the last few days he has received an advanced cancer diagnosis and he has yet come to terms with it. It is in a sense tearing him up and bringing up inner conflicts long avoided. We are in his parents’ house. I leave the room and go for a loud and long “dad piss” in the toilet next door. On the way out I bump into D’s long dead father. He tells me that D is in in denial and would like to express himself but is having trouble pissing, metaphorically speaking.
I go back into the room and already I can see that a part of D is in the in-between and that his time before passing over is not all that long. I say to him in the dream that I am not surprised to see him there given what has occurred in dreaming recently. I know that his Soul is being subjugated by his stubborn personality. There is a part of him which seeks to speak to me and it is not his personality. The inner conflict is making him grey and dank. There is nothing I can do. I know that post death I will get a visit. By then it will be late.
The scene changes to some kind of work’s social event. I am talking with two early middle aged English women, who are expensively dressed. One has a grey bob and the other has longer dyed orange hair. They are both “crystal feeler” new age types and speak posh and clipped. There is some kind of new age book launch going on. The woman with the longer hair asks me if I can “see”. I say to her that I certainly could in the past but that I have not done this for a long time because it tends to freak out any person being seen. They are both excited.
The grey bob asks me if I could “see” her. I warn her that if I Iook she may not like what I see and that she might not like the experience. Intrigued she asks me to go ahead. I stand close to her around one foot away and look into her eyes and more diffusely with unfocused eyes. I see first her form and then her thoughts. Beyond that I can see her Soul. I say to her that she finds me attractive. She comments that such a comment is no big deal nor seeing. I can tell that she is sexually aroused and defiant, refusing to believe that she is being seen. I ask her if she would like a tissue to wipe the moisture from her vulva which I know she has emitted. She turns bright red and moves away aware that she has been fully transparent to me. I know that it is this sensation of transparency which makes people anxious and antagonistic.
The scene changes and we are upstairs in a plush London hotel not too far away from Covent Garden. There is some kind of training or healing event going on with facilitators and a finger buffet. The guests are all very well-heeled except me. There are a few Richmond type women who have “beautiful” homes. There is one woman in peach who is talking to the facilitator stood up in plenary. She says that she is fearful because she has just had a cancer diagnosis and does not know what to do with the rest of her life. I walk over to her and hug her in my arms. She starts to cry.
Later an older woman is talking to the facilitator. She too has a recent diagnosis. I hug her also. She is the mother of the younger woman. In contrast she has accepted her fate and is worried that her daughter is not being real. She asks me how come I am calm. I explain that in our house we have a lot of experience of cancer diagnoses. She asks me if I can help her daughter.
The next to speak is David Bowie. He is taller than in “real” life and dressed in an immaculate pastel blue suit with bleach dyed blond hair. He looks as he did forty plus year ago. He too is diagnosed and I similarly hug him. He towers over me. We both know he is dead. It is our shared joke. I suggest that we all go to a nightclub to dance. Everyone thinks this is a good idea.
Bowie and I are in a bright red low long American style convertible with white walled tyres. He is driving the right hand drive car. The cream leather upholstery is immaculate. He does a handbrake turn into a parking spot on a cobbled square. We get out and head toward the night club. Outside on the pavement are many Bowie statutes representing his various on-stage incarnations. He is very laconic and holds back.
The others all go into the night club. I then marshal them back out onto the square where Bowie is doing a medley of his hits. We start to conga with Bowie at the head and the daughter from before behind him. Behind her the mother and then me. The bouncers from the night club join in. The sense is of a warm summer dawn around 5 AM.
The dream ends.
Here is this morning’s dream and it is unlike any other I have had.
The dream starts in the green arboreal where I live in far Western Europe. I am getting ready and those around me are making arrangements for my departure. I am going to see, to find out. I move instantaneous South through the air to the/a city on the equator in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I pass over the once golden walls and into the square in front of the palace precinct. The shiny gold has tarnished and lost lustre. There is water very slowly seeping through the paving and grass grows a little between the stones.
The city is sinking under the weight of corruption and decadence. Soon it will sink further into the sea. The weight of the corruption is vast, and its duration has been long. It has taken a marked turn for the worse in recent years. I can barely recognise the place I once knew well and held in esteem.
I move to a quiet bench in a park. There are a few residual trees there. I sit down and am joined by three impeccably clean mice all of whom are in rude health and vivacious. They chatter with me and climb into my jacket pockets. One in each of the outer lower pockets on my grey flannel suit jacket. The last into the inner pocket on the left-hand side of my coat in the soft dark lining.
We leave the city and arrive in the ocean. I am stood on the ocean. Around us is a pod of whales of many different kinds. I catch the dorsal fin of a large black and white whale who is not an Orca but of a different large species. He dives into the water and pulls me along the surface at great speed. On all sides the pod follows us. We are heading to the city at the Artic Circle. It is the outpost of the civilisation.
We arrive outside the city and the whale drops us off at the dock. It is clear to see that whatever glory has now substantially faded. The mice now pop their heads out of the pockets looking out from therein. The one from my inner pocket moves to the outer handkerchief pocket on the left-hand side to see better. We pass through the stone city gates and note here too there is a problem with rising water. There is a stench of cloying decay and opulence faded. Here too is corruption.
We go over to a small walled courtyard. In the corner I can see a dead animal. It is a very large rat. I lift its head with a pencil. I can see a small scruffy bedraggled mouse eating the rat’s head. Both I and the mice I am carrying are totally and utterly shocked that one of their kind has fallen so low that it is eating the brains of a rat.
The dream ends.
Following the “Tibet” line of inquiry yesterday I looked for various films about finding tulku reincarnations. We have seen, Little Buddha, Kundun about the Dalai Lama and Tulku by Gesar Mukpo. Each of which had tremendous, guttural, impact on me. I found “Living Buddha” by Clemens Kuby about the search for and enthronement of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa head of the Kagyu lineage inter alia. Here is the trailer.
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In this film the 16th leaves clues as to where to find his reincarnation which is supported by a dream of the Dalai Lama. A party is sent to search and after a ~ ten day trek into deepest darkest Eastern Tibet the son of nomadic famer living in fairly primitive conditions embedded deep in nature is located. The lives of that young man and his family are changed forever. The life trajectory of nomadic existence is replaced by a high lama throne, a famous black hat and being thrust onto the stage of global geo-politics.
In principle, the long Karmapa lineage is of quasi-divine reincarnate awakened beings capable of non-human feats such as wide ranging clairvoyance bordering on a mundane omniscience. They return for the benefit of all sentient beings. Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, prophesises that there will be 21 such incarnations. These beings are held in very high esteem in Tibet, among the diaspora and with followers of Tibetan variety Buddhism.
This film is documentary evidence of how a life trajectory can alter radically and suddenly when viewed from the mundane familial life. It also suggests that the intended trajectory did not in fact change, it simply worked out “as planned”. It was just a matter of time.
Over a decade ago I had a number of dreams suggesting that I would meet the 17th one day.
Our current life trajectory is looking like, maybe, a move back to Wales. It includes the purchase of a disabled enabled bungalow in sensible proximity to a major, preferably university, hospital and with a low price tag. I found a bungalow on Right Move yesterday which apart from distance to hospital looked good. Such a place does therefore exist.
Unless something weird is happening whereby this blog is monitored in some way and thereby has a wider audience. What I write here has a very small readership and is a tiny little ripple in a corner of the vast internet. It is therefore unknown and unheard of. Only the wife, the cat(s) and I have experienced its entirety.
Subsequent and during the film last night, I had strong visual images of the 17th and a few of Akong Rinpoche. It is pretty weird and I had not had any weed, nor had a mushroom omelette.
In “Little Buddha” they are searching for the reincarnation of Lama Dorje. One of the crew has a dream of him in jeans standing near to an architect designed house under construction
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They, the Buddhists, start to stalk the family and impinge on their lives. The maths teacher mother is greeted by the mathematical astrologer at the school fence.
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The higher lama looking for his teacher then tips up in Seattle with entourage and takes the boy back to Bhutan for assessing. Along the way they encounter two more emanations of the reincarnated teacher making three.
Three Vajras – Speech, Body and Mind.
Our house is architect designed.
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We are currently waiting for our large pond to be filled with pink lotus flowers and our house is characterised by emptiness.
We have no idea if any Tibetans geezers are having dreams or visions about us/me.
If one day a Tibetan monk seeker / stalker tipped up, our lives could change and radically so. The trajectory, viewed from one angle would be knocked for six.
The odds of this happening are probably better than for a EuroMillions win which would also alter life trajectory, but perhaps not so substantially.
If I had to switch jeans / combat trousers for robes, that could freak people who may have met me, out.
The family joke is I was aiming for Bhutan but saw the flag of Wales with the dragon and reincarnated in Cardiff by accident…
Cymru am byth…
I have found that if you start looking into things Tibetan that complexity soon arrives.
Today I came upon ma ’das sprul sku for the first time.
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Abstract: A ma ’das sprul sku is a non-hereditary reincarnate lama (sprul sku) who assumes his or her predecessor’s status, but who takes birth before his or her predecessor’s death. This paper presents ten oral histories of ma ’das sprul skus and examines what they and their narrators reveal about the logic of transference in establishing the personhood of a ma ’das sprul sku, how ma ’das sprul sku personhood may challenge conventional understandings of sprul sku personhood and temporality, ma ’das sprul sku and their creators as reflective agents, and what the dearth of ma ’das sprul sku hagiographies may imply.
Marcia Calkowski in The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.
https://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#!jiats=/07/calkowski/b1/
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The notion that a being can have a second incarnation whilst still alive, kind of messes with the idea that one needs to leave the meat before getting some more. She mentions the idea of mandé trülku.
Taken to the limit that could mean that an emanation, similar to that which gave rise to the Dalai Lama, could already be incarnate whilst he lives.
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Literary Sources for Tulku Lines
Successive systems of reincarnation or tulku (sprul sku) are fascinating sources for the study of the social history of Tibet. The tulku, predicated on Buddhist metaphysics of rebirth, is a phenomena in which a person is recognized as embodying a previous person, in their own current body. This is technically referred to in Tibetan as one who is “recognized as having returned to existence” (yang srid ngos ‘dzin or sprul sku ngos ‘dzin).
There are hundreds of multigenerational tulku lines in Tibet. By looking at when such tulku lines were declared, within which contexts, patterns of interpersonal relations, institutional alliances, and regional practices emerge. We are given new visions of these trans-generational social networks and the weblike worlds in which tulkus function.
From The Buddhist Digital Resource Center.
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This suggests that there are so many tulkus that some could be considered common or garden as opposed to the big three.
The naming and interweave is not easily tractable. If I was to start with my recent Tibetan dream, trying to find out who I might have been, there are many pitfalls.
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This dream, if taken literally, suggests that I was being escorted out of Tibet in and around the early sixties / late fifties. Clearly that is a big if. It suggests an importance sufficient to warrant an escort and a rank above common or garden
I could search for a person, lama or tulku, who died in and around that time but the list of tulku lines is not easily searchable by date. The dream suggests that I was not going to make it.
https://legacy.tbrc.org/?locale=en#!persons/tulkus
But I may have made it. Which might make me a co-incarnation of a living person. We share an emanatory source. That co-incarnation could have passed on since and could in principle have been born biologically before me, say ~1940s in order to be old enough to march to freedom.
The feeling from the dream was that I was a youth / young man. Which puts a window ~1935 – 1945. My hands in the dream were soft inconsistent with extended heavy manual labour.
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My eight Tibetan Houses Dream
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Points at Southeastern Tibet / Shigatse/ Shigatze which might geo-locate an incarnation but does not take me much closer to a named individual in the twentieth century.
My Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream suggests that I might recognise a magically inscribed cabinet. It suggests that I might recognise Tibetan martial arts weapons.
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“The carpet on the floor of the hall has been rolled back to reveal a parquet dance floor of some considerable sheen. Amongst the entourage I can hear gossiping. “It cannot be him; he is too coarse thickset and muscular.”
I hear this and whip off my shirt to reveal my muscular bare chest. I say that I will cooperate with whatever it is they must do. Take a look if you must. I am now wearing saffron yellow trousers, training pants, that are “elasticated” at the ankles. I start to do a forward splits on the floor to warm up. I say that given I am nearly sixty I am surprised that being that old I can still do that.
One of the woman in the entourage says to me that I am much older than that both in this lifetime and stretching way back. I am nearly 73 she says. I do the mental calculation that I must have been “born” in the early 1950s. She says, “we tried to wake you five years ago”. You have been “asleep” and we have been waiting.”
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So, the dreams suggest an inconsistency of age or timing.
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The monastery airport dream points at Leh in Ladakh.
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There are a number of dreams with Kālacakra or wheel of time mandala.
In another dream “Tibetan soil dream” I am given my piece of Tibet.
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There are other dreams with H.H. Karmapa and H.H. Dalai lama in.
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If dreams are “evidence” then there is quite a bit suggesting some Tibetan connection. If I were a Tibetan having these dreams then the Tibetans would take them more seriously. A hairy arsed sixty-year old Welsh ex-academic spendthrift is not as attractive as perhaps a younger person linked to the sangha.
It is difficult to explain these dreams cropping up from a Freudian or Jungian perspective.
There is circumstantial evidence. It is pretty unlikely that any conscious imaginations / research makes its way fully into dreams. I did not make any of them up. They were recorded as is the morning after.
I have not tried to visualise this putative life as that is more likely to be prone to prejudice / confirmation bias.
It is possible that having looked at this theme there may be more passive dreams on the way….
This morning’s dream points {again} to some kind of Tibetan incarnation, perhaps some lama-dude. I have long held this possibility at arm’s length because I have had no waking memory of such a thing. The dream indicates a time stamp roughly of 1960 when things were bad in Tibet and a number of lamas left. We hear about the ones who made it. We don’t hear about the ones who did not.
They may have been vulture food.
I did once go to a dzong in London and had an “empowerment” by Tulku Akong Rinpoche. A lama who along with Chögyam Trungpa escaped from Tibet during the Chinese excess.
I have often wondered why no waking recall. The only answer I came up with is that life as a monk is so very boring that there is little to remember, no outstanding dramatic events. Tedium, day after day routine.
If the dream points at a very recent incarnation, then that hints at something like a tulku incarnation, where one life follows quickly.
That does not really impinge on the current health problems and search for a nanna-flat. In a sense it is little more than a phenomenological possibility when viewed from life circumstance. I do not see nor feel that there is much / anything left for me to do.
I have hypothesised that there have been many failures, way more than “successes”. We only hear of the latter because it is they who have ongoing wider significance. In a way quiet failure fertilizes the ground for success.
I am at something of an impasse on the health front and cannot currently see any further steps. There is nothing urgent and I can tolerate the pain and lack of sleep. We need to move house before even thinking about any operation. It is not a complicated equation, for now.
I am currently where I am not seeing medical intervention as something positive and healing. It seems like a necessary thing and to be endured even. It does not fill me with hope for an easier existence.
Do I have to? Well maybe it is sensible.
Who knows what if any dreams will follow tonight…
Prompted by this morning’s dream I found this one in the vaults, so to speak.
Dream Diary 1-11
I am outside with Charlie. He and I are loading bricks into the trunk / boot of a car. The bricks have curly writing on them, it is not Sanskrit or Tibetan. They are golden and more like large ingots of gold.
He and I are now on a long journey across the mountains on a plateau which is in Tibet. With us is a smiling lama who is our guide, guard and escort. He is showing us the way. The landscape is very sparse and rocky with scree falls. I look at the lama’s physique and it is very similar to mine only that he is shorter and obviously Tibetan. I say that I didn’t know that they built Tibetans like that…
As we continue on our journey. Charlie and I are now wearing saffron and magenta monk’s robes. This journey is to be extensive. As we move forward Charlie is often out in front exploring the different routes. At one stage we need to pick up speed. The Tibetan monk picks up his companion, also a monk, and carries him piggy-back. I do the same with Charlie. I am not sure that I can walk and climb at this altitude like this. After a few steps I realise that I can and easily so.
A little later the trail becomes tortuous and Charlie is way ahead up the hill. He comes down back to me via a slippery and windy route. I find a more direct route. This is a part of a long journey together.
Back now in London, we are at a Tibetan Dzong as guests of honour. Sat waiting are Charlie , the wife and I. We are offered some western food. I turn to her and say that she had better tuck in before they come out with the yak’s butter….
Dream ends
Here is this morning’s dream
The dream starts in an airy metropolitan indoor market. The roofs are high and glass. There is a hubbub and the mood is light. There are many trendy food pop-ups. The area is opulent. I am outside a Tibetan food pop-up stall with some upper middle class English people. They are going on about how wonderful the stall is and that it is good to support the exiles, the diaspora. We order some food and sit at a “pub” table. It comprises a semi-leavened bread a bit smaller than a naan, some sausages tied with string and a spicey vegetable side relish with dark green overtones. The sausage is served on a wooden board with a very sharp wooden handled knife to share amongst us. They, in their safe luxury, do not understand hardship.
The scene changes to a harsh barren mountainous landscape. It is cold and we are navigating the sides of a valley. From time to time scree has fallen which makes the path difficult to navigate. We are fleeing, escaping. I am wearing a heavy fleece lined animal skin jacket and pointy hat with ear flaps. My skin is darker and dry. I am Tibetan. I feel windblown and hungry. There are around twenty of us in the caravan which is mostly on foot with some donkey like animals carrying supplies. We have been traveling for days. We cannot light a fire until night fall, because the smoke will be seen. I am armed with a pistol in a holster on my waist. Others in the party are more heavily armed with old-style rifles.
A couple of men who have gone ahead join us. They have found a spot to camp for the night. We round a bend into a flattish area in the valley wall next to a small stream. The men start to make camp, it is heavy work. As has become the custom they set me down on a rock and give me a bag of flour and some bowls. There are some other powders. Before it gets dark, I start making several batches of dough. They joke my soft hands make the best bread. I set the dough aside covered with cloths.
I prepare some wood for a fire and as soon as it is dark, set it alight. When it is hot enough, I get out a wok-like pan and start to cook the breads having greased the pan first. The smell is great and I make batch after batch. The other men are similarly dressed but have a military bearing. They are protecting me. We all gather round and someone gets out some relish which he adds to a bowl. He then gives each of us a length of string-tied sausage which we cut with our own knives, kept in a hip scabbard. There is water to drink from the steam. All of us a weary. There is a sense in the dream that I will die soon and not make it.
The scene changes to black and white. It is a newsreel of early 1960s London. With buses at Picadilly circus and people in suits. It talks of fashion and life in the city.
Next, I am sat with my sister. We are very young less than three years old. We are in my nan’s house in the Rhondda valley. I can hear a vast rumbling from the mountainside. Instinctively I know that it is the coal tip sliding down the mountain. I grab my sister and we go to sit crouched outside close against the wall by the back door. The landslide continues and the house is knocked down but by the door frame remains intact. Coal waste pours past us and we get covered in dust. The slide stops and the coal starts to burn glowing red in the heat. I know that we must sit tight and that it will be fine. I can lift us both up out of the area to fly to a nearby grassy part. In the dream I hear the words Aberfan and sense that it has not yet happened.
I know beyond doubt that this dream is about reincarnation.
The dream ends
Notes
I was born in Cardiff in 1964. My sister was born March 1966.
The Aberfan disaster (Welsh: Trychineb Aberfan) was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses.
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