GARY AND THE MYSTICS

My husband Gary is taking me to a house, saying only that he wants me to meet the people there. It turns out to be some sort of spiritual gathering, perhaps a sect. Even getting there feels mysterious. I have no idea we’ve arrived, thinking we are still en route. At a door I ask Gary where we are. The door opens. With surprise: “Oh. This is it.”

An older man with a great craggy head welcomes me. I believe he is a Central or South American Indian, black-haired with a bit of steel gray. All of the many people have an exotic aura in visage and clothing—deep or bright colors in mixed solids and patterns. I meet an African-American older woman, clearly a matriarch, though perhaps only 60. Is she a singer? A younger, slender, latte-colored man completes the welcoming trio. I can tell music is involved in this gathering, whatever it is.

The group is much interested in me. I sense I’m being looked over and courted. The group is dispersed in the large living room in preparation for some performance or reading or ritual. Gary goes to sit elsewhere and tells me that I may hear him playing his guitar. The host—strong-featured and a beautiful bronze brown—has been cooking and offers me a plate with a barbecued meat and other foods that look appetizing but that I’m not sure how to eat. I don’t want to start until others do, out of politeness and to see how they pick up food! As he sets down the plate, a bit of meat falls off the plate, so I do eat that. I am very hungry.

The man moves away, and just then the music starts. I am torn. The man warmly encouraged me to enjoy the meal, but I feel it would be rude when the program, if one, has begun.

The music sweeps away the dilemma. It is incredible, ethereal, altogether unknown. The sound of each unfamiliar instrument is distinct and yet each like wind. The music is visual too: vertical ribbons or streams of sound hang and sway in the air. Synesthesia.The overpowering effect focuses my senses, rivets attention. This music is in me, internal, and also revelatory. I know harmonies, a world, a state entirely new. (How can a dream make sensual the impossible unknown?)

Now much of the very long dream is blurry, lost. Whatever the lacuna, I decide to be the acolyte they clearly want. I put on a white flowing garment. Skepticism remains, though, and my decision is faltering. I ask Gary, “Are you doing X? Are you staying?” The lost X was something sacrificial, at least metaphorically. Or total commitment. He is, but I cannot. This is too much. I express respectful regret and say I must leave. I do.

Somehow, though, I have a change of mind, or they—the man, woman, and some others—come to me. I am with them yet remember no journey, and the physical place is not the living room. I sense we’re underground, in a chamber of specific use.

Again I am in white but now having my period. I must go through tests or initiations. First is yoga’s Tree pose, a test made difficult because of the slightly elevated contraption where I am to stand. It too is gleaming white, like a shallow archway on a garden path, but solid, smooth, and modern, not latticed. Plastic? Not stone or wood. Standing in it, I can touch the sides with a reach. The floor moves, teeters on a center fulcrum: an elegant, unstable see-saw.

I start the balance on my left leg, my strong side, lifting my right foot to the standing leg, and raising both arms overhead. After a rocky, rocking start—swaying out of the perpendicular—I find the balance and stay, coming out of it with a high developé. They are impressed. I am showing off. The right side is much harder. I sway extremely and have to touch the sides to get myself upright. Finally I do, though I do not balance as long. I say, “The left is my good side.”

I’m being measured, I know. They do not say this, but I have a sense of a chosen one that they desire. I’m pulling away again, though. I need urgently to go to the bathroom, a bowel movement, which can be such a dark mess with blood. They do not want to stop, but I protest strongly—tell the woman directly. Already I have faint blood smears on the back of the white gown. I do go to the toilet.

Still cooperating, I am given sandals with multicolored cloth or leather strips for ties, each perhaps 1/2-inch wide. There are too many. They are too wide. I try to put on a sandal but am increasingly frustrated and finally fed up. I say sharply to the group–the trio especially–that the sandals are emblematic of their excessiveness, their over-the-top theatricality. I begin shouting, “It’s all a myth!” I am leaving. I am greatly upset. The old man urges me to stay. The younger man takes him aside, saying, “You heard what she said. ‘It’s all a myth.’” I know what he means: She doesn’t believe; she can’t be persuaded; she’s finished. 2015

I wake knowing this for a numinous, important dream. I am grateful for it and at a loss too. Since then I have worked with it. Others have. I do keep insights—as well as the vestige of the music of the spheres—yet the dream as a whole is still elusive. Something is missing, most likely in me—as the dream may be saying. I cannot forget and have not abandoned it.