Hello!
Ordinarily; I'd be just about the last person ever to post anything on the 'spiritual' section; but I just had the most amazing aikido-related dream and want to write it down while it's still fresh in my mind.
Usually; I'm not one to remember dreams; most are pretty average I guess; the thing that made this one stand out was its complete clarity; and its solidness, for lack of a better term - most dreams, at least mine, shift around from topic to topic like a drunk discussing politics. This one was solid; it stayed the same throughout its length.
Anyway: I'd just stepped out (in the dream) onto my front lawn for a little practice in the early morning. The air was chill and refreshing; the time; about 6 in the morning, just as the city is beginning to wake up. I was dressed in my normal aikido outfit; gi with blue belt; and began doing forward rolls on the grass which was wet with dew. (The dream was that detailed.) The rolls came easy; far easier than they do in real-life. So; I decided to extend them - starting with a faster walk; then a run - I drifted through the rolls effortlessly.
Then comes the 'dream effect' I guess you'd call it: I started the rolls with a little hop; and noticed I was coming back down at the same speed I went up - jump fast; come down fast. Jump slow; come down slow. I wound up doing rolls with leaping arcs 10 feet high. It was sort of like what happens scuba-diving; if you push off fast; the drag of the water will stop you dead; but if you push off slowly and smoothly; you can glide for meters over the reef. That's how it was going in the dream. I started testing the limits of this new-found freedom; jumping across the lawn; then across the street; then down the street. It was sort of a 'crouching tiger hidden dragon' thing; gliding from ground to rooftop; to treetop, to a swan-dive and roll-out on the pavement. I realized what town I was in; Welland, Ontario, where I spent my childhood. (Which in itself is odd; my childhood was
not a happy one; if there's one place I didn't feel like going back to; it was there.)
Throughout; the dream remained crystal-clear and solid; like I was actually there; I remained totally lucid, thinking with seemingly perfect clarity. I was amazed at my newfound power; I wondered at it but chose not to question it - I was certain that if I did so; it would go away. I drifted by the Safeway store I used to hide behind as a kid; over the train tracks, I could count the cars in the parking lot, (six; including a blue taxi waiting for a fare,) see the signs in the windows, (special on chicken legs, $1.99 a pound) everything as if it were real. I drifted by a woman walking her dog; walked along the top of the white picket fence that surrounds a b&b, through (and up, around and over) Woodlawn Cemetary; all places I haven't seen in twenty-two years. The places were
not the same as they were when I was a kid; they had changed as time will change things. The big house beside the cemetary, for instance, used to be blue with a wide rolling lawn and an immense beech tree. In the dream; it was white with hedges all around, the climbing wisteria that had dominated the house was gone; cut back to a smaller shrub. I made a big circut of the city; over rooftops and up and around walls; sometimes just jogging and hopping over the odd telephone wires. I came to rest back on my front lawn; made a last big leap into the sky, and woke up.
I woke up completely awake, refreshed and alert. It's the best sleep I've had in years. I bounced out of bed; walked out to my front room to open the windows. It's the same kind of morning: chill, dewey, alive. Most of my front room is a mini-dojo with mats over the floor, a weapons rack on the side and a small kamiza beside the TV. Just to keep the feeling from the dream going; as I was passing back over the mats I did a casual one-handed cartwheel before heading for the orange juice.
I had the fridge open before I realized what just happened; it had seemed so natural.
As God is my witness; I've never done a cartwheel before - a regular 2-handed one, let alone a one-handed one. I just don't have that kind of agility or, since the accident that left me permanently stiff from the waist down, the flexibility.
But I just did one less than an hour ago.
I guess I was still in that half-asleep awareness you get after a real good sleep even though I felt completely awake; because I just tried it again, damn near ripped my arm out of its socket and wound up face-first in the philodendron. Lol - rats; I guess it was only a dream after all.
Even still; something amazing happened and I wanted to tell you about it. I don't really know if it actually has anything to do with aikido; except for the fact that I was practicing it in the dream; its probably just a variant of the 'flying dream' everyone seems to have. But still; it felt absolutely real. I've never been one to think that dreams contain messages; but I'm going to think on this one a bit; it seems important somehow that I do.
Dave