Dragons in the Clouds

November 27, 2021

Sometimes I feel a bit cheated that I haven’t had a near-death experience. Or a brief, self-aware fling with being out of body. That doesn’t seem too much to ask.

I wouldn’t turn down a smidge of alien contact, either. Not that I’d want to be a full-on contactee like Simon Parkes, or to have experienced—and later remembered—pretty horrific abductions à la Megan Rose.

No, I can’t say I’d want to dally with such extremes.

But lately it’s occurred to me that the only people who seem to have unshakable faith in the Great Beyond are those who have had some tangible experience with it. Like being abducted or contacted, or having an NDE. Some people have had more than one! 

And who knows, perhaps I have experienced such things. But without a conscious memory, any faith or wisdom I might have garnered is faint at best. I am left with nothing but human faith, which is sometimes pretty hard to dredge up.

*****

I don’t envy those experiencers. It’s entirely likely they don’t consider themselves lucky in life‘s lottery. Especially people like Megan Rose with a couple of terrifying abductions under her belt.

Even that has an upside, though. She has been in contact for years with her alien rescuers, led by an intrepid fleet commander. She says she has an implant that enables secure communication with him.

May I yearn for such a thing? Just a little?

*****

I do acknowledge some kind of perceptible connection with the inner and outer realms beyond the tangible. Filtering sluggishly through my physical senses, the stardust of Divine does manage to seep through to me.

There’s always that niggle of doubt, though. As a fictionist, imagination is my stock in trade, one I’ve practiced for decades. Maybe I’m just imagining that I am sensing or hearing or seeing things beyond my physical senses.

And as far as creating immediate physical reality out of the magical cloth of imagination, I haven’t mastered a bit of it. I can earnestly imagine I’m six feet tall and a warrior princess from a distant galaxy. 

When I open my eyes, though, I’m still well under six feet, and quite, quite earthbound. 

*****

At some point this becomes a circular exercise in futility. Either I trust that I’m aware of more than what appears possible on third-dimensional Earth, or I decide that there’s nothing beyond touchable 3D reality. I cave in to the empirical materialists.

I don’t think I can talk myself into door number two. Good heavens, how grim that sounds, colorless and unbearably dreary.

Perhaps what would be helpful is a combination of faith in myself and what I imagine I have experienced, and a certain level of faith in others who claim they’ve had alien contact, or visited the hereafter, or been separated from their bodies…and lived to tell the tale.

I’m reminded of one of the hypnotic suggestion phrases which states, Imagine, visualize, picture, or pretend…I can’t help but notice that “imagine” is the first directive in this version. Perhaps it’s a more valued doorway to the Beyond than I give it credit for.

*****

Much as I secretly long for a bona fide experience of the Unseen, I’ll stick with imagination being my favored pathway at this time. As Shanta Gabriel recently noted, “Your imagination is an influential tool of empowerment, and it can be used for ill or for the good in your life.” 

Imagination can be a best friend. I’ve long known that I’d rather be that schoolkid staring out the window and seeing dragons in the clouds than the one dutifully copying sums from the blackboard.

In my favored version of reality, dragons trump math every time.