by LJ Frank

 

A vision in its most basic shape could be considered a visual expression of the mind. It is often abstract like an abstract painting or sculpture. When fully formed it has the ability to become real and yet transcend the real.

Visions have processes…some visions appear spontaneous though incubating in the brain for some time. Others appear as if part of a process that looks superficially purposeful or coincidental.

The first night: the vision I had was that of running ahead of shapeshifting men and animals through a lush jungle barely escaping as I could hear their breathing. I felt a hand or claw on my shoulder ripping my shirt but escaped  their grasp only to find myself standing at sea’s edge and wading out to a seaplane in which I piloted over the waves towards a distant horizon.

The second night: I dreamed I was walking along a seashore and after each step my muddied print vanished underneath a wave lapping the shore but then I found eventually that as soon as I took a step my footprints vanished even before the wave washed over them.

The third night: I had a vision whereby I found myself in a large temple on a  mountain side. Candles were burning on what appeared to be a nearby altar. I sat in a lotus position, looking out over a Zen garden meditating and felt as if I was levitating several feet above the floor. But I wasn’t, rather my mind’s eye was offering a hint.

The fourth night: my vision was that of driving across the country and I could see the entire country yet experienced an odd sensation – like I was attached to invisible strings. I visualized that my willing something into existence was an illusion and yet my brain posited the idea that what I was witnessing was a ruse and my desire to escape to freedom meant little as in the end my mortal coil would perish as all do.

The fifth night I rolled out of bed and took a few deep breaths and asked myself, what if I am wrong about all that I have experienced while seemingly alive…what if the events of my life all or in part point to the fact that for years, I suspected I was walking down a path other than the one I thought I originally selected. My internal scripted genetic wiring within the context of my environment along with chance and luck affected my decisions and that the road not taken existed and the question was would it overlap with the one taken as in a bleed through reality. And in that same vision. That same vision I walked on a bluff overlooking the sea, I acknowledged I was like a granule of sand in an infinite ocean of stardust am fated to be a passerby but why should I expect more. Earth was the human species heaven and hell.

The sixth night: my visioning acknowledged that the Earth is in reality one rock and water strewn island in a starry arm of a spiral galaxy that humans named the Milky Way. The vision was one of searching the cosmos, which is anything but heavenly, for each galaxy is like an island – countless, chaotic islands on an immense. infinite scale – and if there is but one planet of human species in each galaxy among millions if not billions of galaxies, that leaves countless human like species which we seek to communicate with. That search is a way to acknowledge our common existential plight but we know we will never physically meet. And perhaps that is where the deepest of meanings exist.  We are separated by so much space whether by chance or cosmological wiring, we are alone to contemplate our aloneness – while tugging at invisible strings.

The Seventh night: a vision that the distance in space and time may be a peculiar blessing or not for humans appear stranded from other human civilizations with distinct scientific, spiritual and metaphysical attributes.