Deborah's Dream

Deborah Clarke author of 'Songs From The Secret Place - The Meeting of the Spirits' very kindly gave us the details of a dream she had which began the whole process of getting her debut novel written; which we are very proud to have published. Her dream is fascinating reading:

DREAM


When I was twenty-six I had a dream. It came at what was undoubtedly the darkest time of my life. In the previous months I had taken two drug overdoses in an attempt to end a life that I experienced as utterly unbearable. In fact it is only now, twenty-four years later, that I can fully appreciate just what kind of hell I was living in then. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was trying to live a life in complete denial of who I really am. So successfully had I been brainwashed and terrorised into submission by parents, teachers, doctors, preachers and every other servant of the machine, that I had absolutely no idea what else to do but withdraw from the world completely, disappear into a secret place where none of them could find me and pray that someone or something would come to show me the way out of my misery. Perhaps the most terrifying part of it all was knowing that no one had done this to me deliberately, none of the people who had caused me to retreat from the world had consciously and with malice of forethought, set out to make my life hell. In fact they were more frightened of the state I was in than I was and that’s why I knew it was utterly pointless to keep expecting them to know how to help me. My psychiatrist said, and I quote, “You are a classic Marilyn Monroe personality and you will always need a bottle of pills close by you.” This was the best they could offer me, these ‘experts’ these people who ‘knew’ and I realised that if I kept on listening to them it would be the death of me.
So it was that I withdrew and, for an entire year, I barely emerged from the rented rooms I lived in. I had no job, no money, no friends and no idea what I needed, but something deep down inside told me to start paying attention to my dreams. I have always been a vivid and lucid dreamer, both sleeping and waking. I frequently got told off for ‘day dreaming’ at school and so I trained myself to enter my inner world whilst giving all the outward impression of being completely present and attentive. Even so this was a hollow victory, all it did was prove what I already suspected, that no one could see me, no one at all. So long as I provided an acceptable façade that was all that mattered, this other me, this other world that I experienced communion with and the ‘me’ who lived there, all of this was completely invisible to them. This I knew by the age of seven, no wonder then that grew into a deeply troubled adult. Now I know that many of you reading this will be saying, ‘Yes, yes! That’s me, that’s how I felt too!’ But back then I didn’t know there were many others like me, back then I thought I was completely on my own.
But back to the dreams, I started writing them down everyday and very soon it was taking up most of my time. It seemed that now I was really paying attention there was this great sense of urgency, something desperately trying to get through. I became very excited by what I was doing but also scared, for there was this sense of pressure and limited time, this voice inside me saying, ‘You know you can’t sit on your backside doing this for ever, my girl. Sooner or later you’re going to have to go back out there and get a job.’ I didn’t realise it then but that was the voice of my grandmother, one of the many interfering ancestors I have subsequently had to kick into touch and put straight about a few things. They all sat there like a big black cloud over my head, telling me I was just plain idle, that I didn’t know I’d been born, that what I needed was something to really worry about but, while they did their best to try to guilt and shame me back into submission, I held my ground, I had given myself a year and so the race was on. Would I find what I was looking for or would time run out before I got there?
About six months in, the breakthrough happened. I knew it even as I was dreaming it. Even as I write these words I can still feel the power of it, the overwhelming relief and gratitude for the salvation that had finally come. So here it is, this is the dream that changed everything . . .
I was way, way up high, so high up I was above the clouds, clear blue sky above me, sea of clouds rolling away to the horizon below me and a long way off in the distance, rising out of the clouds, a tall golden spire. This spire was my destination, I didn’t know why, I just knew it was where I was going, and as my eyes rested upon it I gently swayed from side to side, rocked by the motion of all those beneath me, for I was right at the top of this pillar of people, each person sitting upon the other’s shoulders as we progressed, with painstaking slowness, towards this distant spire. As I sat there, I knew that this journey had been going on for a long, long, time, so long that I had no memory of anything else, but I was happy, I was serene. Up there, right at the top, I was in my element, nothing to disturb me, nothing to distract me from doing what I did best, my eyes fixed firmly on this vision that only I could see, so that I could relay directions down through the others to the world below.
And then one day the order of things changed. One day a message came up from below, passed up through this long, long chain of people, and in my mind a voice said, “The Walker wishes to meet you.”
I was surprised. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I thought about it for a moment then sent a message back. “What is this? I am the Dreamer. Tell the Walker I cannot go down there.”
For a while everything continued as it always had, desperately slowly, but one step at a time none the less. The vision was in sight, the day would come and that was all that concerned me.
But then it happened again; another message came up from below, the same as before. “The Walker wishes to meet you.”
Now I was disconcerted. Why was this happening again? I sent another message back. “Why this again? I am the Dreamer. I cannot be distracted from the vision. My role is here. This is where I must stay. Tell the Walker I cannot go down there.”
Again everything continued as it always had, but then, yet again, this same message came up from below, “The Walker wishes to meet you.”
Well now I was angry and upset, my equilibrium disturbed. Why was the Walker persisting with this? Why was he doing this to me? I had given him my answer. Why did he refuse to accept it? So I said, “Does the Walker not know who I am? I am the Dreamer and he can’t go anywhere without me. Tell him to stop this, I must not be disturbed.”
The message went down but very quickly the reply came back. “The Walker says he knows who you are and he knows that he can’t go anywhere without you, but he also points out, with the greatest respect, that you can go nowhere without him. He asks you think about this for he will not take one more step until he meets you.”
With that, the whole pillar of people stopped moving and I sat there, overwhelmed with despair. What the Walker said was right, I knew it, but why would he hold me to ransom like this? He knew who I was. He knew that I could not live in the world down below so why did he want to force me to go there? Why did he want to put me through this? I didn’t know, but I did know that it wasn’t just me I had to think about, there were all these others with me and I had to think of them too. If I did not find some way to get us moving again we would never get to our destination and that was unthinkable. They were depending on me and I could not let them down. So it was that with great reluctance I made my decision. “Tell the Walker I am coming to meet him,” I said, and with that, I began my descent. Curling over into a foetal position I handed myself into the arms of the person beneath me and very gently, one by one they began passing me down the column towards the world below. But even before I reached the clouds I was hurting, my body crying out against the increasing dissonance and disturbance growing all around me with each pair of hands I passed through. By the time I’d passed through the clouds I was in terrible pain, the vibration generated by the world below drilling into my very bones, but now I could see a great jungle below me, hot, steaming, seething with riotous colours and sounds, a primordial chaos of jarring discords and screaming feedback. I was in agony and I hadn’t even reached the ground yet, but as I passed through the canopy and got my first glimpse of the jungle floor I could see all these wild, tribal people dancing about the bottom of the column, shrieking and whooping, drums pounding, horns blaring, pipes wailing, so nerve shatteringly loud it made my teeth ache. And then there was the sickening stench, an atmosphere so dense and thick I felt like I was drowning. As I cried out with the pain and gasped for breath my vision was now only a distant dream, all of my resources refocused into fight to breathe, every ounce of my strength redirected into the sheer battle for survival.
At last I was passed onto the jungle floor and as I lay there, utterly helpless, the great column of people came down off each other’s shoulders to join me, focusing their minds to create an aura of calm about me to afford me as much protection from the chaos as they could. I was still in pain, but now I could stand up and look around and I thought, ‘Right, I am here. Where is he?’
In response to my thought, the heaving mass of humanity parted and a great big man emerged, big boned, heavily muscled, head and shoulders taller that the rest of us, guided into the clearing by two tribal people. Well I knew he was the Walker but I was horrified. He was ragged, filthy; his hair matted and caked with mud, his body and face covered in old scars and fresh, bleeding wounds. I could barely make out his features for the filth. He looked more like some abused animal than a man . . . and then he opened his eyes.
To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. I was blown away; completely disarmed. His eyes were blue, sky blue; the exact same colour of the sky that I lived in above the clouds. And they were filled with light, clear, boundless, pristine light . . . I stepped towards him and said, “I am the Dreamer. I am here.”
He reached out towards the sound of my voice, eyes vacantly searching . . . and that’s when I realised he was blind.
The revelation tore at my heart. He was blind . . .!
I collapsed to my knees in tears, overwhelmed with emotion. Now I knew, now I understood why he wanted to meet me. I was his eyes! What I could see clearly he had to take purely on faith and trust yet still, day after day he laboured to carry us, this great big man, right at the bottom of the pillar, the whole burden resting upon his shoulders as he fought his way, step by step, through this brutal, unrelenting chaos. I was shattered, shattered, my whole universe turned inside out. Only now did I realise just how much he loved me. Yes, he loved me! And he wanted to touch me. He could never see what I could see but he wanted to touch my living presence, to know that I was real, to know that the battle he fought every day was not in vain and that I was there for him the same way that he was there for me. How could I have even thought of refusing him this, how could I?
When I looked up again he was gone, but now the others were erecting a beautiful tent all around me, a private, sacred space to make my visit here more bearable. I was deeply touched. I knew they were creating something for me that they had never had themselves. It was cool and fragrant in there and insulated from the noise outside. I waited, knowing now what would happen. Come nightfall they would bring the Walker back to me and we would make love, this was what he wanted, this was what had to happen.
Sure enough, as the moon replaced the sun, the entrance to my tent parted and he stepped inside, but now he had been bathed and massaged with healing oils, the rags and filth were gone and he wore a simple white kilt. His battle scarred skin shone like gold over muscles and sinews honed by the relentless ordeal of carrying us all upon his great, broad shoulders, his long blond hair hung in a braid down his back and, as his light filled, sky blue eyes gazed upon me I knew that he could see me now, but only my outward appearance. He still could not see what I could see and nor would he ever be able to, but that didn’t matter. He knew who I was, I was the Dreamer and he had absolute faith and trust in me and because of that I loved him; I loved him with all my heart and soul.
I smiled and beckoned him to me. He came and lay down beside me and we made love, but there was no lust, no passion, no earth shaking orgasms; just a quiet, gentle merging together into complete and utter bliss. One body, one heart, one mind, one soul – total union.
We stayed like this all night then when the morning came we separated out again but now everything was different. Now there was a new energy, a new life, a renewed sense of purpose and every one was excited to get on with the journey. So it was that the great column reassembled, the Walker with his feet planted firmly on the ground and, one by one, the members of our company climbing back up on his shoulders, each taking their position in the column until, finally, it was my turn and they passed me all they way back up to the top to my place above the clouds. We started to move again, but now we could go so much faster than before, now I had a telepathic rapport with the Walker below and my directions passed to him in an instant, rather than laboriously going through everyone in between. The golden spire still gleamed in the distance but now it was getting closer and closer and, as we stormed along, we began to sing a happy triumphant song. “We’re going home, we’re going home! Yes, yes, yes, we’re going home!” And now I could see that the spire sat atop a great golden dome and, as we got closer still, we broke through the cloud to see a massive pyramid, as tall as a mountain, rising up from the jungle floor, a single, straight stairway sweeping right from its base, all the way up to the dizzying heights of the dome at its apex. A roar of triumphant cheering came up from below. We were nearly there, nearly there! And now we seemed to be flying, speeding effortlessly towards our goal and as we arrived we all tumbled down to ground level again and began racing up the steps to the dome. No matter that the stairway was a mile high; that was nothing to us after the eternity it had taken us to get there. We were up that pyramid in no time at all, streaming through the entrance of the dome and racing out across the floor, the roof of the dome above us, polished black stone beneath our feet, its surface inlaid with a silver circle, and within that circle, a jewelled map of the stars. We all knew our positions, where we should be in this scheme of things, and we arranged ourselves accordingly around the whole circumference of the circle. Finally everyone was ready and now an expectant hush descended, I looked across to the Walker who sat directly opposite me on the other side, all light filled, shining and golden. His scars were gone and he was smiling and as our eyes locked, something started to happen. Energy started to pulse around the circle, a perfectly synchronised clockwise and counter clockwise motion, slowly and gently at first, then gathering in speed and power until it became a persistent pounding throb. The floor of the chamber began to quake and now I realised that this vast building was a vessel, a ship, and the tremors we could feel were it’s moorings unlocking in the earth below . . . and now the pounding, throbbing energy was driving us up, lifting the whole edifice up off the ground below, speed gathering, momentum building, the mounting force driving through us, singing now, the rhythmic pulsing fused into single sound, the sound thrusting us heavenwards, lifting us up, singing us high until, suddenly, we exploded away from the atmosphere and out into the stars beyond. And now the whole edifice fell away, the pyramid, the dome, the circular floor all disappearing into the firmament to leave us hanging there, free, pure beings of light. But we were not alone, oh no, the firmament was buzzing with similar beings all whizzing here and there in dinky little vehicles, brightly coloured little cars and motorbikes with smiley faces, just like children’s toys. I laughed and laughed, I couldn’t believe it. They were travelling so lightly, having so much fun! No wrathful, judgemental, terrorist of a God lived out here. And without exception they were all thrilled to see us there. They didn’t care where we’d come from they were just really glad we’d finally made it. “Welcome to the Universe!” they cried, as they speeded by. “Come on in! Welcome home!”

I woke from this dream in tears, tears of joy at what I had touched, and tears of sadness that I couldn’t stay there. When I wrote it down I was all over the place, I didn’t know what the hell had hit me, but I knew it was what I’d been waiting for. Of course those of you who have read ‘Songs from the Secret Place – Book One’ will recognise some threads of that story here, but at that time I could never have imagined that one day I would write a book. By the age of seven I had experienced enough crushing disapproval, humiliation and, on occasion, severe punishment for ‘telling lies’ and ‘making up stories’ to convince me that I must never, ever voice what I knew to the outside world, and though I wrote that dream down, not long after I destroyed the papers for fear that someone else might read it. However the memory stayed with me and even though I didn’t understand it in any rational way, I knew it was a call for things to change and that if I was ever going to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with me than I had to start going about things in a completely different way. Two years later I had gone a long way towards turning things around, I’d ditched the psychiatrist and his pills, got a new job in a new town, made new friends and got my own flat. I was settled in, sorted and thinking, “Right, what happens now?” That’s when the visions started, but that’s another story . . .

Deborah Clarke – September 2006