The details have ceased to exist, except in that dusky, veiled place that lies between sleep and wakefulness. It’s a place largely inaccessible by the sane and balanced psyche. The horrific climax of my nightmare, of course I recall. Therein lies the horror of night-terrors, I suppose. Spikes. Sharp, gleaming, hot metal spikes that glide through the raw flesh of my larnyx, like a dull and ragged blade glides through a tough, grisely carcass. The pain of the spikes surged through me like a large electric shock, as soon as I would awake. I could never figure out where these spikes came from, or who wielded them against me. Just … some dark, brooding figure, who lurks anonymously in my Self … in my psyche. A larger-that-life figure ~ larger than light, larger than love, larger than goodness and light.
In a flash of terror, I opened my eyes. For a moment, I felt a sharp, jagged edge tear across my throat. And … do I even have to mention how that scared the SH!T out of me? Has terror ever paralysed your brain and your heart simultaneously? This sort of sensation of fright puts one in a kind ofsuspended animation. Time falls away. Reality falls away … if only for just a moment. One finds oneself in the cavernous, white and abyssmal space known as Nothing. Nothing ~ that tiny room of the universe where creatures and their comforts await creation.
In my deepest frights, terrors and anxieties, I find myself thrust in that white room. Invariably I find the answer to what’s troubling me … in the Nothing room. Cavernous solitude has a way of underscoring that knowledge which we already possess, and the fear which prevents us from using that knowledge. Then, its up to each of us to build a bridge across the slurry of fear which prevents us from moving forward. The psyche, indeed, has a strange way of speaking to us. Growing hurts … feels uncomfortable … and irritating. Growing instills in its host an insatiable hunger for light and warmth and energy. Like an itch than just cannot be satiated. Incidentally, when growing new skin, one feels itchy when the new skin begins to form its own matrix.
Pain exists to alert us to noxious stimuli or harm. Even emotional and psychological pain. And so, within each night terror, a message hides. A lesson. Lessons exist everywhere we look ~ even in our dreams. But, that’s the caveat ~ we must LOOK and we must SEE. Both. While remembering that the eye cannot see some of the most valuable things ~ only the heart can see.
1. Is sanity a construct to help the 'healthy' feel normal?
3. Mental illness sometimes feels like a womb from which one can ever leave.
4. Does mental illness make others so uncomfortable because it places them in the position of having to prove their own sanity?