June 09, 2004 - 1:15 PM

Hey God, Are You There? It's Me, Paul.

I dreamt that I met God, and He sent me to Purgatory.

I haven't been getting much restful sleep the past few days. Enough hours (between 6 and 8 per night), but the quality has been lacking with multiple unprovoked awakenings preventing me from having an uninterrupted night's sleep; and strange dreams, strong in the memory, leaving me exhausted (and surprisingly depressed) in the morning. Add to that, Thursday and Friday of last week, I served as substitute P.E. teacher for 6th and 7th graders, a task that left me physically and mentally withered from countless games of capture the flag and tag and volleyball in the 90 degree heat. I needed 2 hour naps each evening just to get up the energy to survive the night until I could go to bed.

Additionally, on Thursday night, I took my cousin Tony to Largo to catch Sam Phillips' final performance in L.A. before she heads out on the road. We were able to share a table with a father and son who both happened to be named Paul. It turned out that we had some shared musical tastes as well as appreciations for the works of Joss Whedon. When I got home, I fell quickly asleep, and it was there that I encountered God. I've woken myself up from dreams before, almost always because I've been so scared shitless of the nightmare that was happening that I needed to escape to the waking world; sometimes, I've been roused from a spectacular dream before I wanted to, which has left me wanting, unfulfilled, desperate to get back into that world (most often when I've had dreams of flying). But never had I snapped out of a dream with such a feeling of total sadness, loneliness, and unworthiness as I did that night.

I was in a room, a room just below the attic, with other people. I felt that I had been in that room before in previous dreams (although I'm not sure if that was just one of those "dream" rationalizations or if it really was a reoccurring setup of dreams past). The ceiling of the room had that rectangular grid layout with those large cardboard-like tiles that you can easily push up and slide over to look at the ventilation system above. In one of the corners, there were some metal cabinets that stopped a few feet short of the ceiling, so that if you climbed on top of them and kneeled, you had easy access to the tile. I knew that there was a secret in that corner. If you slid over the tile there and peeked through into the darkness, God and the afterlife awaited you. Poke your head up there, and you'd meet God; he'd look at you, decide if you were to go to Heaven, and off you'd go. My "previous dream" knowledge told me that I'd been too scared to peek into the abyss before (which is how I often am in real life...frozen by the fear of the unknown, mentally blocked from making a choice, of having to act, no matter the significance or insignificance of the decision. Presented with the need to make a choice, I will sit paralyzed because I don't want to bear the responsibility of making the choice, of having the consequences traced back to my decision...I don't want to choose incorrectly...so I'd rather just torture myself with no choice, playing out all the possible reults, making the situation escalate in my head into a monumental supernova before finally forcing myself to choose.).

This time, I was resolved to find out my fate. Sure, I carried my usual fears with me, but I felt that I'd been a good enough person, and led a good enough life, that God would let me into Heaven. So I climbed on top of the shelf, pushed up the corner of the ceiling, and raised my head into the darkness. Suddenly, everything was pitch black around me, and I felt my body lying down, supine, but not resting on anything. And God appeared before me, smiling. My upper body slowly raised up on its own accord from the waist, pulled towards him as he touched my head...he looked at me a moment, then gently pushed me back down, and I knew, even though he didn't say anything, i knew that I wasn't going to Heaven. Then I was alone, and for interminable seconds, I tried to lift my torso up again, but I had no control over my body. I could only feel the slow push on it, down to a reclining position, and the agonizing realization that I would not be lifted up. There was fear as I didn't know what my fate was to be...would I return to my former existence, or go to Hell?

And then I woke up in the dream, to a bare, grey and white place. It didn't seem like Hell. There was someone in the room, opening the blinds, someone I knew. It was a friend from school. She told me to come on, there were things to do. As she guided me around, I noted the classical structure of the halls, all marble and stone with giant columns that stretched up to infinity. Others were milling about, quietly, and there was no sense of urgency or fear, nor was there jubilation or hope. Mainly, I felt a calm resignation flowing through everyone.

Time slid by, how much I don't know, but enough for me to slip into the routines of life there. I traveled with people who became familiars, and I seemed to have a job (or at least, a sense of a job...I knew that there was something I did that was job-like, but I never was there when I was aware of what was going on...it was like I fast-forwarded through those parts in the dream). My friend helped me feel comfortable, and explained what was going on, what had happened. When I finally asked where this place was, it was she who told me that, in essence, it was Purgatory. We were all waiting. Waiting for what? No one was quite sure...maybe God would come by and see if we were ready for Heaven, or maybe we had to wait for the End of Days for the final judgement. Something in the back of my mind struck me as strange: this girl was buddhist...why was she here, and why was she the one explaining all this to me? But I didn't voice this concern.

Later, we were walking with a group, and I noticed a girl walking with others. We had talked before, and there was a budding friendship between us. She was a little large in the body, but cute in the face with a warm smile. My friend/guide noticed me looking at the girl, and she prodded me to go talk with her. A combination of the guide's thoughts, my own realizations, and a precognitive flash-forward through my future revealed that this was the girl that I should be with, the one whom I should love. In my loving her, I would be redeemed, and that would give me passage to Heaven. I looked at her again, and saw her in a new light.

And then I woke up.

I was distraught. Depressed. Shaken. To be rejected by God? I looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:40 AM. I had never been affected by a dream this much. It frightened me, but I wanted to write it all down (unfortunately, it took me a week to muster up the will power to do so, and in the waiting, much of the specifics which were so vivid in the first 24 hours after I had the dream were lost). The pall of sadness overwhelmed me and stayed with me through the day. At first, I thought the dream meant that, even though I've thought that I've been a good person, I could do so much more to be worthy of God's grace.

After some more thought and a few days of recovery, I tried to figure out the part about the girl in Purgatory. And I think now that that part was about how I've been resistant to actively pursuing a girlfriend, convincing myself that I don't have time or a compliant schedule to afford to have a girlfriend when really, for me, ultimate happiness (heaven) would be to have that someone to love.

Now Listening To : Hanneke Cassel- Some Melodious Sonnet
Random Thought : More godly musings in part 2, coming later tonight.

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