An Experience With The Divine

          In my life I have had two experiences that completely changed my outlook on everything. Both of these two experiences started as dreams, and both (I am sure) would leave anyone who experienced them to either (in regards to the first experience) entertain the idea of destiny, or the notion of omniscience, and (in regards to the second experience) accept the reality of Jesus Christ as Lord of all.  It is the first of these two experiences that I wish to talk about in this post, and I will warn you that there is talk of drugs and sex, so if you have any issues with either of these topics being mentioned, please refrain from reading (although in accordance with human nature you probably won't be able to stop now).

           Everyone has dreams, OK, almost everyone dreams (I've heard people claim to never dream) and when I say dream, I mean dream as in images experienced during sleep, not hard to obtain goals or lofty ambitions. A lot of people I talk to tell me that upon waking up they often forget what they had dreamt, usually only managing to retain sparse images or, in the case of  nightmares: the most frightening ones. I'm no different. Sometimes I retain what I "saw", but for the most part it is gone only a few hours after having started my day. Then there are reoccurring dreams, which are just like regular dreams, except that they happen over and over again, The repetition makes it easier to recall the details, and even to recognise it as it is happening, that you had dreamt it previously. Maybe you have had reoccurring dreams in your life, maybe not, but I am sure you know someone who has. It is a reoccurring I had that this first experience is about.

           When I really think about it, I have some pretty vivid memories that reach back into the beginnings my childhood. I can remember when my sister was a baby (I would have been about three) and I would sneak out of my room and sit in the hallway so I could watch television because it was past my bedtime. I can remember kicking an oil drum in my backyard and the stink it expunged due to stagnant rainwater that had collected inside and I can even relive riding in the very first car my parents ever owned. Another memory I can recall from my childhood is this dream that I am about to share with you because, for as far back as I can remember, it has been there. Sometimes I dreamt it as often as a few times a month and sometimes only a few times a year, but I can always remember it being there. As it would turn out, my dream would go from being  something that I experienced as I slept, into something that I would experience in reality. My dream literally came true, and I wish I could take it back.

           The dream itself was very strange, appearing to not make any sense, more of a series of events lacking any kind of chronological sequence. It seemed to be skipping from one place and event to another and the reality of it all was very distorted which was terrifying. If you are having trouble understanding what I am talking about, here is an easier way to understand it: Have you ever watched a DVD that was scratched and it jumps from one scene to the next? So the movie, of course, would make no sense to you, just as my dream made no sense to me. No plot, no getting to know the characters, just a bunch of scenes that made no chronological sense just seeming to be aimlessly skipping around but it always ended the same, with me looking down at a face, and then I would wake up. Each time I had the dream it would seem a little clearer but I still couldn't make any sense of it and I had no idea who the person was that I was always looking down at. This happened up until I was eighteen. 

           I come from a broken home and had moved out when I was still in high school. By the time I was eighteen, I had left my small home town on the east coast and was living thousands of miles away in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I was hurting and didn't know how to cope with the painful memories, both recent and past, so I did what most do; I tried to drink and drug them away. One night I was drinking with a group of friends when a guy I knew asked me if I wanted to drop some acid. I had never done it before and didn't want to look like a wuss so I said, "sure!" He had four hits, he took two and I took two. Bad idea.

           I remember when the acid really started to kick in, we were in a field and it was pitch black. I got the impression I was invincible like some sort of super hero, and I turned my shirt into a cape and started running around this field in the middle of the night. I was yelling out, "I feel great! I feel so alive!" and my run turned into a full sprint which then turned into a *WHACK*! I ran, full tilt, into a picnic-table. It didn't hurt much when it happened (I was too high for pain) but the next day I was one huge bruise.

           That first 30-40 minutes of ecstasy I felt at first, however, changed dramatically all in one moment. I can remember looking at this steam coming off of this hotel where I was living, like it always had, but when you are on acid everything seems to grab your attention that much more. As I was looking at this steam I noticed it had stopped, and when I became aware of this I started looking around and I thought the cars on the road had stopped moving too(looking back now I think it was just parked cars). I started panicking, and started thinking the worst thing anyone could ever think when they are on a heavy dose of hallucinogenics: I started to think that I died. I kept saying to myself, "I can't believe I died tripping out on acid" and "How could I go out like this." I was distraught, having a horrible trip and to make matter worse, I was getting higher by the second.

           I can remember doing things like trying to climb shadows thinking they were stairs and running around in the woods. I tried to keep the guy who I took the acid with around me because I thought he was the only person left, like he was some kind of a guardian helping to usher me around in the next life. Yup, acid folks, stay away from it. But things started to get better once we got around some people, I was still tripping hard, but I wavered from the "I think I died" to the "maybe I'm not dead" entering myself into an unsure phase. This however is where things got even more messed up.

           When I finally became as high as I could get, reality it seemed, was skipping in time (sound familiar). It was as if I would close my eyes and be somewhere else. I don't mean that it was like I would close my eyes and I was in Hawaii and then close my eyes again and I was Siberia, rather, what was happening was that I was blacking out, yet I was still conscious, moving around and interacting with various groups of people. Each time I would emerge from one of these "blackouts" I would be confused how I got there and was becoming more scared. I had lost my "usher of the afterlife" (the guy who I took the acid with) and was on my own at this point. Around this time was when I went from thinking that I might be dead, to thinking I was dreaming. 

            This was the point where I began to live the dream I had so many times before, but I didn't realise it at this point in the night. What I have come to conclude, is that the periods of time that I was missing in reality were the periods of time that I dreamt about and the periods of time that were missing in my dream, were the periods of time that I was cognizant for in reality. It is a dangerous thing to think you are dreaming when in reality you are not, and by the grace of God I survived this night. I can remember walking down the hallway of my apartment building having an "Alice in Wonderland" kind of experience. The hallway appeared to be getting smaller, and larger and the doors were all different shapes and sizes. I can remember sitting on my bed and my roommate was rolling joints and I started seeing ashes on my bed. I tried to wipe them off but they kept reappearing. I also tried to start a fight with one of my room mate's friends because I was paranoid that he was smiling at me. I remember lots of things from the night, but what I remember the most was how my acid trip came to an end.

             I was thousands of miles from where I had grown up, but there was a girl from my home town there who I had once taken to the movies. After our date she didn't want more anything to do with me and rightly so. I wasn't popular or overly athletic and she was a beautiful girl who could do a lot better than me. But in this town where we were both living at now, I had been here for a while and was popular and girls did like me. I will never forget as we stood outside my apartment door and I said to her, "I know what you want and you know what I want." She smiled and said playfully asked, "what's that?" as she walked into my apartment. Now understand this, I was NOT good at talking to girls, I'm still not, nor would I ever of had the guts to say this to her, but I was as high as a kite on acid and I thought I was dreaming! This is the only reason why I said what I said, suddenly I was Don Juan. I think it is also important to note that I was also a virgin. 

              Now the whole night had been getting crazier and crazier, between the blackouts, thinking I had died, then to not being sure if I was dead or not, which lead to me thinking I was dreaming even though I still wasn't sure if I dead, I was a mess. After her and I went into my apartment I can remember it for the most part (I will spare you the details) but to make a long story, I wasn't a virgin any more. But it was during intercourse I looked down at her and when I looked down everything just clicked at once, and I realised who she was, and what I was experiencing and what I had experienced the entire night. I started to think (maybe out loud) "This is my dream! This is it!" I realised, this time, I wasn't dreaming and that I was in reality and with this I suddenly found myself snapped into a moment of clarity that I was alive and proud of it. Enthusiastically, and very  naked, I leaped to my feet and began to run around my apartment shouting,"I'm alive! I'm alive!" I woke up my room mate, yelling in his face as he was trying to sleep, "I'm alive!" There was a guy staying on our couch and I remember grabbing him by the face and yelling the same thing. He was so confused and probably a little scared having a 230 pound butt-naked dude, who was high as a kite on acid, screaming at him at four in the morning that he was alive. 

               The next morning I woke up and couldn't remember a thing, not one thing, until I asked the guy on my couch what had happened that he was a witness to. He was clearly upset (rightfully so) and started to tell me some of things I had done. I was embarrassed, but not nearly as embarrassed as when he said, "you should be apologising to that girl." In a flash everything that  I couldn't remember came back, and I don't think I had ever been more ashamed or disgusted with myself. I went down to see her and although we talked  I could only imagine the embarrassment she must of felt.  We hung out a few times after that, but once she left in the summer I only ever saw her once more and I was completely wasted at the time. I should of said I was sorry, but I was too young and too stupid to know what sorry was.  

                This has been a bit of confession time for me, and to be honest with you, it is the deepest I have ever reflected on this night and this experience. I had dreamt about this dozens of times before, from when I was a kid, until I was eighteen, having lived it only once and I never had this dream again. You might be saying to yourself that this some sort of detailed, drawn out, case of deja vu but I assure it was not. This was not some sense of having experienced it before, I DID experience it prior to this night, time and time again. I never recognised her as the person in my dream until it actually happened and now I can't get that image, her face, out of my head no matter how hard I try. Maybe you think it's some product of the brain and while I think my brain was obviously used to relay the message, the fact is I was in an altered state of mind. How could my brain put itself consistently in the future and under the effects of two hits of a strong hallucinogenic? It can't. Period. 

                 It was this experience that opened me up to the idea that there was some sort of plan, or that Something that knew every choice we were ever going to make and was showing me what I was going to do, long before I ever did it. I came to believe in destiny, even becoming a borderline determinist for a while. Through this experience I had come to believe that if this event in my life, which I experienced so many times previously came true, then that meant that all the people who were around me, their circumstances and choices also had to be true and had to happen. Because all their circumstances had to come true like mine had to, then why stop there? The whole world's choices and circumstances also had to happen. But as I thought about it I knew deep  in my heart that every choice I made up until then was of my own free will, even down to the very choice to take the acid. I can remember something in my heart screaming at me not to take it (my heart not my head) but in not wanting to look weak I did it anyway. I came to the conclusion that Whatever showed me what was going to happen in my life, wasn't the cause, It just knew.

                I wasn't searching for God at this point in my life, as a matter of fact I would tell people I didn't believe in Him. I wouldn't of called myself an atheist because I had no idea what an atheist was. I was, however lying, I felt there was a God, I just had a hate-on for Him because of the things that happened to me in my life. 

               This experience really set in motion a series of events that ended in me taking a knee for Jesus and admitting that He was my Lord and Master. It was a dream from my youth that became reality that started my eventual conversion to Christianity, and, strangely enough, it was another dream from my youth that became reality that would convince me that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be, my Lord and my Saviour, but I'll wait before I get into that story.

In Christ

P.L.