There is a white rabbit ahead of you. It’s luminous silver eyes shimmering in the rays of golden sunlight as it watches you back. You feel intrinsically drawn towards it, and as you step forwards, it turns away and hops into the mist and is lost within the ephemeral cloud. You know you have to follow it. The pulling sensation in your gut is as strong as a magnet reaching for its counterpart, the unrelenting force only easing it as you let it guide your steps.
Motes of light sparkle within the cloud – dazzling and disorientating as they dance around you. Slowly your vision adjusts. You watch as the infinite particles of light drift through the all-encompassing white and slowly mark out a path. There is a single impression of a paw print in the soft earth which offers you reassurance that you’re headed the right way and you continue deeper into the mist.
Magpies chatter in the distance. Their raucous calls shattering the silent world like gunfire and you falter, tumbling over a tuft of grass.
*
12/12/22
It was the sensation of falling that brought my back. It was like I’d just crashed into my bed from free-fall. Every night I’ve been trying to find the rabbit. I’ve been listening to guided meditations, subliminals for lucid dreaming, shamanic drumming, and whatever else I can find on YouTube to try and get myself into a trance. And each time I do, each time that I get close to the rabbit, the magpies come. I find myself returned to my body as though my astral body was flung at high velocity back to the physical world.
I’ve been looking back through all the dreams I’ve written down over the last few years. They’re trying to tell me something. Or else why would they haunt me every night? Why would they tease me with fleeting glimpses of the same world? When did this begin? Throughout all of the dreams there is one consistent presence: a silver-haired girl who’s a little younger than me.
The first time I encountered her in my dreams, she had walked straight up to me until we were almost nose to nose. It was so intense. So real. I was more awake and more alive in that moment than any other time. In the short instant our eyes met, I knew she was a soul that had entered my dreamworld – or I into hers – and I knew I was in love with her. Every night since then I’ve been searching for her. Hoping for the next dream or to find a trace of her in my waking world.
The rabbit only shows up if I have entered the dream-state through meditation. It’s been patiently trying to guide me through this other world for two years. But I need to go further. I need to go deeper into that other world.
*
With your eyes covered by a blindfold and the noise counselling headphones on, you’ve created a state of sensory deprivation. You turn on a piece of music and let it wash over you, discovering new ways to feel music when there is only sound. The bass drum creating a steady, reassuring heartbeat. You find your breath is mimicking the voice of the piano as it starts – when and how deeply to breath in and back out. It’s difficult at first, but easier as the cello begins: sweeping you deeper into the song and out further away from your body. The softly plucked notes of the harp create droplets of light that begin to fill the world and dance around you.
All that you are is your breath: falling and rising likes the waves of the ocean. The constant heartbeat at the depths of the song keeps you from becoming lost, the cello carrying you higher with each peak then rolling you over and letting you soar back into the trough of light that catches you and carries you back up again. Higher and higher as the piece of music intensifies, as though it is as urgent as you are to reach the secrets of this world. As the final breath of song fades away, it leaves you standing at the bottom of a tower where your rabbit is waiting for you several steps ahead. It puffs up its cheeks with a wink and waggles its ears at you before bounding upwards. You rush after it making sure to keep count of each step.
The stairs spiral up the tower: 21 steps for a full rotation. Windows open to the ocean white light you had just stepped out from. As you ascend one rotation higher of the tower, the windows show a vista of verdant green hills that were at the same level as you, as though you were still at ground level. Another 21 steps higher and the world is changed again. This time it’s a library that reaches out as far as you can see. The rabbit is still leading you higher.
You remember your physical body as you climb. Your fingertips tingle as you wriggle them slightly into the soft cotton bedding while keeping your inner eye focussed intently on the rabbit. You feel an intense spinning sensation in your head and take several measured breaths to steady your focus. Your body is fine. You return all of your senses to the dream-state. Another rotation of the tower has brought you to an underground platform, and this time there is a door allowing you to leave the tower.
There’s no sign of the rabbit anywhere, and curiously, you step out to the busy platform. There are shadowy, disembodied forms of people moving all around you – the etheric bodies of other dreamers. You ignore them. Your gaze is drawn towards a woman a little older than yourself with silver hair. You catch her eye for just a moment before the crowd of dreamers interrupt your view. Your heart is pounding furiously as you search through the shades for any sight of where she had gone.
‘Not yet,’ you hear a voice from behind you. The rabbit is at the door to the tower.
Not yet…but you’ve finally found her again.
*
08/01/23
My head is still spinning like crazy and my heart is pounding furiously like it wants to beat itself right out of my chest. For a moment, my soul had entirely left my body. It was like I was flying. Soaring. How it probably feels for a bird of prey that’s drifted to the top of a thermal before giving itself to gravity and plummeting downwards until being recaptured by the thermal.
It’s the furthest I’ve made it while in a trance too. For the duration that I was on the platform, I was somehow physically there existing in another place and time. I saw the girl I’ve been looking for all this time too – only she was older than me. It was like… seeing the future within the past?
I’m sure I’ve found her online profile too. Or rather, her presence online was shown to me by some weird mechanisms of the universe. The piece of music I used just now to meditate was one she had shared. It looks so much like she’s having the mirrored experience to me. Is she really the one I keep dreaming about?
Yet… in our separate realities, she and I are each working on a story. Superficially, they are as different as tomatoes and potatoes…but from the bits of work she has been sharing online, there are crossovers with my work. Specifically of one character trying to find another through dreams. We’ve each been working on this since before our worlds collided. Are we somehow writing ourselves to each other?
I keeping thinking about messaging her and trying to get to know her. I wonder if we really have a shared experience?
Whoever she is, I’m hooked on her stories.
*
You are the one I wish I could meet soon
Praying for a miracle to help us
Trusting that destiny will surprise us
A wonder of life to unite us now
Longing for the day we can meet again
Searching for you everywhere I go
Finally we would great each other here
Our eyes meeting in that fated moment
Our breath becomes one and our hearts entwined
We succeeded as we found each other
For I am you, and you are me
One mind, one heart, always
*
14/02/23
She uploaded a poem on her profile. She was completely silent and inactive for a month before this and I was strangely worried about her.
The last month has been beyond surreal for me too. I haven’t been able to meditate or dream. But I can’t help feeling deeply connected with this stranger. In the separation from the dream world, I was reading my journals again. There are so many incidents that happened that I just put down to being over stressed or hyped up from work. Things that were irrational, so I tried to make sense of them.
How do I explain it?
It’s like the opposite of when I’ve been meditating and astral projecting. Falling from astral projection has the unsettling feeling of having crashed down from an incredible height before hitting the bed. But these other events? They’ve happened when I’m awake and it’s like my soul was being tugged in one direction or another then pulled into a different reality and I suddenly catch a glimpse of a different world. Her world – I’m sure of it. I wrote down the occasions where her social media updates had validated those moments.
“One mind, one heart … Searching for you everywhere you go.” Not for the first time I read her words and it’s like I’m reading my own story. Is it possible we are connected somehow? We’re both going to be in the same city soon.
I wonder if there is a way that we could be in the same place at the same time by chance… If our eyes met, if she was looking for me like I’m looking for her…we’d both know it…right?
*
You made it back to the tower. You’re tired. Head spinning and soul flitting between worlds as you keep your eyes on the tail of the rabbit. Thunder is rumbling outside with barely a lull between the firmamental growls. The outside is ominously dark from the velvety black clouds circling around the tower.
Haunting cries and howls pierce through the resonant voice of clouds being torn in half. Grating laughter fills the brief moments of hushed storm. You can still see the demons lurking outside the tower as they climb the exterior alongside your ascent.
The pain across your chest pushes you forwards. The air is close. Heavy. Your head spinning faster and you stumble up the last step of the tower, staggering through the door in a flash of blinding light. As you vision steadies, you see yourself standing at the opposite side of the tower landing looking as confused and startled as you feel.
You know it’s you, yet you can’t help staring at this other you with the rabbit guide as though viewing a stranger. The endless thunder has been silenced and the demons that had chased you through this world had been banished though lightning flickers continuously. The strobing illumination is disorientating as you step forwards once more, reaching out your hand to the other you, noticing the magpie hopping ahead of you.
As your hands reaches out touch the other you, your mind spirals sickeningly, your vision goes black for a heartbeat, and ss you blink and regain site, you see the girl with the silver hair standing in front of you, your hand still held in hers and she smiles.
The magpie lets out its raucous chattering as the world flickers away. You glimpse the silver-haired woman in a museum exhibition. The white rabbit you’ve been following all this time is by her side and watching you, its luminous blue eyes prevailing through the flashes of white light.
*
21/02/23
I arrived in the city yesterday. Since the last dream encounter, I’ve been trying to find out where the museum might be. I have to know what all of this is…even if in the end I take nothing more than a story away. If I do see the silver-haired woman, I will speak to her.
There are a couple of magpies that are staying by my side as I type this into my phone. I wish I could understand their chattering. I’m almost at the museum. There is an ethereal version of the rabbit hopping ahead of me. It keeps looking back to see if I’m still there.
Inside now.
And she’s there. She’s exactly where I had seen her in the dream with the rabbit looking back at me expectantly-
