The Fourth Factor

There is a woman—some dark entity had reached out for her, badly frightening her. She has shut herself away somewhere to get away from it, but it can still reach her. I can hear her screaming there—but I’m on my way to help her.

The first thing I have to do is get out of a sort of wooden elevator running down the center of the building. I seem to have entered this way, going down, but none of the doors are opening. Somehow, I can see perfectly fine into the space beyond the shaft, but the walls are definitely there, and the doors are not only solid but quite heavy. I’m alone here in the elevator, but in communication with someone else—someone I know to be my mother, although she isn’t my actual, waking life mother. She seems to be playing some kind of guiding or teaching role.

Above my head, everything just fades into darkness, like the heights of a cavern. Apparently, it doesn’t occur to most people who come here to look up for a while, and so this comes as a bit of a shock to them, but I can remember having been through this series of events before, and so this place holds no surprises for me. Besides that, I have access to a deeper understanding of the space I’m in: it’s defined by solfege, as if the intervals and their syllables are acting as some kind of abstract structural parameters, and they are also structuring what I am able to do in it and do to it.

Once I finally manage to get out, I find myself in what seems to be an iteration of my old house in M---. This version looks twisted, hollowed out, dark—actually, there doesn’t seem to be a source of light anywhere, which would explain why, even though I feel vividly present here, it has an odd visual quality to it, and the only non-black color I can see here is blue. I’m using night vision. The blue is brightest in the fog hovering throughout the house, moving as though stirred by currents of air. When this fog is concentrated, it indicates the presence of a ghost—or perhaps it simply is the ghost.

This whole place gives off a decidedly creepy vibe—a palpable sense of decay and malevolence. But the fact that I already know where all the dangers are takes the edge off the creepiness, as does the fact that this seems to be a case where there is no outcome but success. I already know things are going to turn out fine, and so I don’t let the place bother me too much.

Now the person who is my mother is physically here with me, a couple rooms away—although, either because the walls are in ruins or because I can see through these ones too, she’s still visible from where I’m looking around the living room. Nothing much seems to be happening at the moment. I’m just keeping an eye on the blue fog. There are some mirrors there in the room: I use them to check my form as I practice jumping from side to side, moving between stances I might need to use later.

(7.9.18)

I’m driving in an unfamiliar town, where I’m going to attend an event of some kind. I have the impression it has something to do with Kyabje Düd’jom Rinpoche? At first, I’m trying to find a parking spot near a junction, but all the spots there seem to belong to the nearby buildings, so I turn the car around and head towards the waterfront, closer to where the event will actually be held. It’s a long, straight street with small, gray paving stones and narrow, wooden houses painted light colors on either side. At one end of it, I can see boats, their masts blocking the view further out—to the harbor itself, presumably.

I look around for house no. 11, which is where the event will take place, so I can park nearby. The address plates are large and clearly display the numbers, rather like the Prague address plates do. The plates seem to be in the right general order, and so I don’t have trouble finding it—but there do seem to be both odd and even numbers on a single side. I’m not sure whether it was this that clued me into the fact that I was dreaming, but it definitely happened right around then.

This is a dream: what will I do? Checking out no. 11 still seems like a pretty good idea, but first, I decide to take a look around the area. I walk along the street, towards the harbor—but as I walk, it seems to change from a street to an underground tunnel, and when I reach the end, I’m not by the open sea, but looking into a square room full of water. It seems completely closed off and is made of some yellow-red stone, mossy where it's close to the waterline. The water is packed with boats—not big ones like I saw before, but little ones, more on the order of rowboats.

There’s something a little ominous about this place; it’s impossible to imagine what purpose it could possibly be serving. If this were a Zelda game, I’d fully expect the door to slam behind me and some giant monster to rise up out of the water and attack. I wait. The water seems to be rippling in a rather odd way. After a little while, a couple of larger waves swell up, rolling beneath the layer of boats. But they just die down again, and the water becomes perfectly still. I watch for a little while longer, but it looks as if that’s all that’s going to happen, and so I head back towards the house—now, an entrance partway along the tunnel. I open the door and step in.

An Asian woman greets me: it seems I’ve been expected, although there doesn’t seem to be any kind of a gathering here as I thought. The woman also seems to be expecting me to have a female friend along. I consider telling her that I’m here alone, but actually, there’s no reason I can’t invite someone else. I tell the woman I’ll send them a text message and they should be here shortly.

I pull my iPhone out of my pocket. But somehow, all the people I can think to invite are male. An idea occurs to me: I start spelling out A-N-I-M-A using the numbers which correspond to those letters. The phone is a bit shifty, as such devices often are in dreams, but not enough to impede me. But partway through, I remember that I’m not supposed to have an anima, being female and all. So I make it end U-S instead and send the ‘coded’ message off. Well, I guess I’ll see what happens. I put the phone back in my pocket and we sit down at the table in the next room to eat.

The table is a large one, but there are only three places set—hers, mine and the empty one. We have some kind of fish dish, which tastes good. Not much in the way of conversation is happening, and so I’m mostly focusing on remaining aware, making sure I don’t forget this is a dream. It’s an interesting feeling, being here in this place, which feels so real and yet so unreal. I could get up and do something else, but I want to see where this is going.

But at some point, I wake up—due to some environmental noise, possibly. But it’s only a short time before I fall asleep again, and find myself back in the house, in an upstairs bedroom this time.

Through a window, I see branch falls onto the roof of a neighboring building—a large, blocky structure. The roof looks like it’s in bad shape, with large chunks of tile missing—this place must have got hit by the storm too, I figure.

I’m eating a cup of yogurt there. It’s chalky and bland. Probably low-fat. Why am I eating this awful stuff? This is a dream, I don’t have to eat it. I place the cup on a dresser or some similar piece of furniture. Downstairs, I hear the door of the house opening, voices in conversation—somebody has arrived. Maybe it’s the person I invited in the earlier part of the dream. I’ll go down and check. But right now I’m wearing a nightgown, so I ought to put something else on first.

I step over to the full-length mirror, which is standing near the door, and look at my reflection. I’m wearing a plain nightgown, like a short dress with spaghetti straps. Oddly, I don’t seem to look quite like myself—my face is different, though not completely different, and my eyes seem to be the usual color. I step back. It’s been a while since I’ve done this—and actually, I’ve never done exactly what I’m about to try, but it doesn’t seem like it should be too hard. I’ll create myself something more appropriate to wear. I extend my hands, palms upward, feeling energy gathering.

But it doesn’t feel right—there’s some kind of a resistance there. As I notice that, I also see something standing behind me in the mirror—a furious-looking panda bear approaching me. I turn around, looking into the room—but it's empty. There's nothing there. I look back at the mirror: furious panda. Well, this is a little creepy. But because it’s a panda, being furious just makes it look ridiculous rather than menacing. I step backwards into the room with one hand behind me, feeling for the spot where the panda ought to be based on its reflection—but I wake up before I can get to it.

6.3.18