I am not this pain

I am not this pain

It happened in a dream…

I was at a Dr.’s office preparing for some sort of big test. I don’t recall what the test was or what my symptoms leading to said test were either. But prior to the test they had to take blood an apparently a lot of it. Having my blood taken is generally a painful and sickening ordeal for me. It physically hurts as the blood leaves my body through the needle and down a tube. My blood pressure also drops significantly making me feel woozy and sick to my stomach.

So I’m at this Dr.’s office, with my friend’s baby and he’s sleeping in my arms. I’m doing my best to stay calm as I’m about to get pricked and I don’t want to frighten and wake the babe. I set him next to me wrapped up sound asleep and the process begins.

All the normal things begin happening… the pain, nausea, woozy. Time slows down… do they have enough? Geez, how much longer. Ugh, I feel so sick and it fucking hurts. It literally feels like they are draining the life force out of me.

All the sudden I have the thought, “I am not this pain.” Then, “If I am not this pain, what am I?” Woosh, the sensation that I feel from the pain to complete and utter stillness and silence. I’m surrounded in white light, it’s bright but doesn’t feel super bright to me. It’s almost opaque but I can still see the room and the sleeping babe next to me. I can see and I can hear but it feels as if I am just a witness to those senses. The sense of ‘me’ or ‘keli’ is gone, there is just a complete and utter stillness that doesn’t seem to have a boundary, it feels infinite.

I’m not sure how long that white light stillness experience lasted. At some point they were done taking the blood and I was back holding the baby waiting for his mom to come get him before my big test. Then, “Keli” came back into the dream lucidly and I said to myself, “holy shit, what the heck did I just experience? Did I just drop into a whole new level of stillness in my dream. Is that what I am?” Then I awoke.

I haven’t experienced something like this before but over the last couple of weeks, I have the awareness that in some of my dreams, I am doing the inquiry based meditation that I do during my waking hours. I’m noticing what I’m feeling in my body (sensation, emotions, thoughts), I’m seeing what feels calm or still in or around my body, and asking myself who or what is experiencing these things. I then hold all those pieces in my awareness. I recognize when I wake up that I’m excited I’m doing this work in my dreams. Touching into deep places in my sub-conscious and maybe even other planes or dimensions.

I’m so grateful for the process of awakening and undoing the false realities of what I am not.

Published by Keli Keach

Leave a Reply