Life
Experiences of Bill McDonald
From the Book
"A Spiritual Warrior's Journey"
Shared Dream or Reality Check?
When we first got married
and were living in Danville, California, a unique experience shook up my wife's
sense of reality and changed the chemistry between us forever.
It happened one hot summer night just after I had finished my
normal meditation time. I went upstairs to go to bed. My wife, however, stayed
downstairs to sleep on the sofa where the temperature was about 20 degrees
cooler than the upstairs. She was upset and worried about our son's health
problems, my job security, and life in general.
I lay down to sleep, but I kept thinking about her sleeping on the
sofa downstairs alone and worried. I kept drifting in and out of a sleep state,
which was not like any sleep I had ever had before. I seemed to be floating in
and out of my physical body. I felt light and at peace.
I looked around the room and noticed that the view was different. I
was now fully awake and very much aware of my surroundings, but somehow, I was
looking down at my body lying on the bed. I was actually floating in the air, or
at least that me that was not my body. I was now up against the ceiling, and I
realized that I was having another out-of-body experience. I saw a silver cord
between myself on the bed and my conscious self that was on the ceiling. We were
attached, but I could roam as freely as I wanted. I seemed to move toward
whatever I was thinking about.
I drifted downward toward the wall above the stairway and actually
drifted right through it. I continued to float down the stairs, hovered across
the front room, and sat down on one end of the sofa next to Carol.
She immediately sat up, and we just looked at each other for a short
while. I was sitting there in my out-of-body state and she was there in her
physical body. I must have looked a little transparent to her, but she was
seeing me. The sofa rose off the floor a couple of feet and floated freely
around the room. I think Carol realized that there was something not altogether
right about this picture. Her eyes widened.
"Don't worry. I will always be there for you, whenever you really
need me!" I said as I reached out to her.
Then, she panicked and became fearful of what she was witnessing.
The whole sense of the experience then began to vanish. It was as if someone had
sucked me into a large vacuum cleaner. I was dragged away and zapped right back
into my body on the bed. I landed like a ton of bricks. I felt as if I had
gained a million pounds in an instant. I opened my eyes and could remember every
detail of what had happened. I knew that this was no dream. It really did happen
to us.
I waited until breakfast to ask Carol if she remembered anything
from the night before. Normally, she never remembers her dreams, but this
morning she stated that she had a "nightmare." Before she could relate her
nightmare experience, I told her the story of what had actually happened that
night. She stared at me and listened in a total daze. My story of the night
before matched her so-called nightmare down to the last detail.
She was blown away at first, and did not want to think it was
possible. My knowing her nightmare made her realize that something had indeed
happened. She wanted to believe that perhaps it was just some kind of a shared
dream, that maybe all I had done was to pick up on her thoughts or the dream
itself. Over time, however, she came to accept at least the possibility that it
may have been much more than a shared dream. It was just too real. Whatever it
was, she understood that it was an experience that expanded our relationship in
ways that many couples never know in a lifetime.
The fact was that we did experience the same event. She tried with
her most logical mind to sell herself on the idea that it must have been a dream
that we both had together at the same time. Whatever happened is not really as
important as the feeling I had from the experience. I know that Carol was my
"dream lover," and in that state (whatever it was) I had let her know that I
would always be there for her. And I plan on keeping that promise! Nothing else
really matters!
#
Copyright 1998 - W. H. McDonald Jr.
Carol and Bill McDonald 1998
On the Napa Wine Train
