In a dream I am walking
joyfully up the mountain. Something breaks and falls away, and all is light.
Nothing has changed, yet all is amazing, luminescent, free. Released at last, I
rise into the sky…This dream comes often. Sometimes I run, then lift up like a
kite, high above the earth, and always I sail transcendent for a time before
awaking. I choose to awake, for fear of falling, yet such dreams tell me that I
am a part of things, if only I would let go, and keep on going.
In recent dreams, I have
twice seen light so brilliant, so intense, that it “woke me up,” but the light
did not continue into wakefulness. Which was more real, the waking or the
dream?
-- Peter Matthiessen, Nine-Headed Dragon River
