I had a pretty cool dream in which I both got the chance to confront fear of death and then go on to a cathartic experience dealing with social angst.
I was visiting a friend in California when we started having an earthquake. (I've been through several in real life, this was one of those rollercoaster types) Slowly the scene started morphing as the earthquake caused more and more damage and the dwelling I was in seemed to drift along some sort of cold lava flow. Things were falling apart, the baby whose diaper I was in the midst of changing at the beginning of the earthquake was beginning to squall, and I was just starting to panic. I thought about waking up but instead starting doing deep breathing to relax myself. The sort of breathing you do to get through labor pains. I was able to stay with the dream as the earthquake continued devastating all around me. The panic was gone and I was able to experience the entire earthquake. The deep breathing was a wonderful technique for getting through a scary situation. At one point I remember thinking about getting under a table or a doorway and realized that as this was a dream, I didn't have to worry about getting killed. It was pretty cool.
But what really made my day was meeting someone I've had many conflicts with this year shortly after the earthquake. I started physically slapping this person, nice satisfying hard ringing slaps. And as he squirmed helplessly and threatened to call in the authorities, I laughed and continued slapping him, getting out a year's worth of built up aggression. I knew I could continue because it was MY dream and I was in control.
I woke up feeling revitalized and energized and happy.
Cool.
