I was reminded the other day of a lucid dream I had the morning of Mum’s funeral. Although I didn’t realise at the time, it was the precursor to what has become a surprising embracing of faith and Christianity in my life (more on that later!)
You know those half-awake, half-asleep dreams that visit you as you drift towards consciousness?
In it I saw Mum running with a crowd of young children through a field of wildflowers. Very peaceful but not especially significant if you’re a skeptic reading this. Mum was wheelchair bound and disabled by her neurological sarcoid for over 20 years. My brain had been processing some pretty heavy stuff in a short amount of time. Why wouldn’t it project a feel good bit of dopamine dreaming to ease the stress?
Until Tony woke, turning to me with the words, “I’ve just had the most beautiful dream of Veronica, running in a field with all these children.”
I couldn’t explain it, but the comfort I drew from what I believed was a message to both of us was profound. As were the lyrics in my head that would awake me playing at odd hours in the morning: “I have loved you for a thousand years, I will love you for a thousand more.”
Of course, when a loved one dies, you want comfort. You seek reassurance. But for us both to have the same dream? After Mum died, my yogic striving for non-attachment was at odds with the sorrow and grief. We are relational human beings, who only understand the depths and heights of our relationships because of what we feel. I couldn’t non-attach my way through grief.
I liked the idea of a ‘spiritual beyond’ where Mum ran free. It started me pondering the notions of heaven and God. But I needed to get to grips with my religious hangover (C of E school, old chap in a black dress at the front of the church, preaching about stuff that didn’t seem relevant to my 14 yo self). Plus, well, it’s not cool to be a Christian nowadays, is it? Far more trendy to be Buddhist, but there’s that non-attachment hiccup. Or I could really whack-out and look at Scientology.
So I did what all good seekers of truth do. One the eve of the anniversary of Mum’s death, I visited a psychic.
One Week In August 