On the last night in Pokhara, just before leaving for Kathmandu, I had a terrifying nightmare. I dreamed my own death. Only this was no ordinary nightmare. I call these kinds of dreams, with a very real quality to them 'premonition dreams', as they always manifest in reality the same exact sensation of the dream. I was blissfully walking to the airport, hand in hand with a man I care about. However when I asked that man for affection, he replied 'no'. I smiled and let it go, and proceeded to the airport. I was waiting for my flight, when several women with burqas started throwing strange metal objects on the ground that made strange noises, and then shooting around with machine guns. I realized those objects were bombs. I started running at the top of my lungs, completely terrified and desperate. I could feel my death arriving. I knew I could not escape the power of those bombs, but I ran as fast as I could, I ran and ran outside the ariport thinking "I can't die today!". I reached a guard and tried to explain to him what was happening, but he seemed careless. Then I woke up. I was shaking, sweating and crying desperately for about half an hour after walking up, just as though everything had happened for real. I threw up. What is interesting to note is that the previous days I had been re-booking a flight to go to Poland several times: it kept getting cancelled for weird reasons, almost as though my subconscious was trying to prevent me to get on it. This flight had a layover in Muscat, Oman, for 13 hours.
Knowing about the nature of the dream, naturally as soon as I got myself together my first reaction was to book another flight. I found one that same night: since it was early morning I had more than enough time to catch it. As I hopped on the bus to Kathmandu on my way to the airport, I felt calm again: my intuition was telling me that I was taking action to avoid the course of the dream. Only, the universe had a different plan for me. A land-slide and two accidents on the road stuck as completely for 8 hours, in a kilometers long column of trucks, buses and cars, unable to move or do anything at all. Desperate, I tried to convince passing motorcycles to take me on - finally I was able to hop on a fast car out of the jam that promised me to rush to the airport for a sum of money. Nevertheless we didn't make it: I missed the flight. I was terrified, I could not avoid my destiny. Having nothing left to do while on a taxi back to town I figured I'd try to get some money back for the missed flight, and miraculously the company reimbursed me entirely, no question asked. That's when I realized something was up: this was no coincidence, it was a set-up: I was not meant to take the flight tonight, I was meant to realize that I could not escape my destiny. So I surrendered to it. I dwelled into the fear and started asking myself where it came from. A conversation with my sister suggested it might have something to do with cultural shadows in Muslim cultures acting as a point of attraction to my own. But what shadow I didn't know. Then, as I kept meditating I suddenly had a realization. It became clear to me that I had immersed myself so much in Nepalese culture, and in particular in its frequency of stillness, that not only I had forsaken my dynamicity aspect, but also I had absorbed the shadow side of stillness: stuckness. That's why I attracted the bus experience. . Why did I immerse myself in that vibration? I remembered that as I came here I really needed stillness because I had been immersed in the opposite vibration, that of dynamicity, for too long, and thus I had began to experience the shadow aspect of dynamicity: escapism. I had escaped dynamicity to escape its shadow only to run into the shadow of stillness. And in both cases I ended up feeling powerless. In the stuckness case I was powerless to get to the aiport on time or to do things. In the dynamicity case I was powerless to exist without having to do something. How did that happen? Because in both cases I surrendered my own power to an external frequency - I used the external frequency in order to de-responsibilise myself. Powerlessness was also a main vibration of the dream: I mean, few things could make you feel more powerless than a bomb about to explode. So why have I been surrendering my power?
This winter, I was overwhelmed with some problems, and I moved to Taiwan where I got very involved with projects and with a good friend of mine. On one hand the distance made it easier to solve some problems, on the other hand I used the dynamicity of my friend and of being involved with many projects as a form of escapism in order to avoid some problems. What was I avoiding exactly? The previous year I had worked very hard: I had started my business, wrote a book, helped several people, got involved in sports professionally, and had done a lot of inner work. In spite of that, someone that mattered to me a lot was still disappointed by me, and gave up on me in a very drastic way. I made that mean that I'm not capable, that I cannot rely on my abilities and on my instinct. And yet before his disappointment I was quite confident in myself. Why? Again, because in reality I had unconsciously externalized my own power onto him. I was unconsciously relying on his approval and validation in order to approve and validate myself. This brought me to remember again the way he broke up with me, the second time. I reacted differently than the first. The first time I was in complete shock from what I saw when he showed his real side. The second time it wasn't exactly shock, because in a way I had already seen it, it was more of a sudden realization that my previous shock was correct. That sensation of shock was exactly the main sensation of the dream. So had I not processed the shock then? I have to admit that after the first break up, I did not want to believe what had really happened. In a way, I still illuded myself. Even after the second one I did not fully acknowledge what had really happened. Perhaps this is exactly what the dream was trying to show me. I still hadn't processed that shock, I was still in denial. So I decided to do so, and these are the thoughts that came out of me during the process (which took about 2 hours): "I think I still have not fully digested the fact that such individuals exist, and as a result I don't think I allowed myself to process the shock, and perhaps it's only by allowing myself to fully process it, to fully believe what he really did, that I can move on, rather than bypassing it and trying to think positively about it. I think I need to accept that I wanted to believe a fairy tale, accept that he was just a bad choice, that the wrong thing was him, not the universe, not me. To truly accept that he never did love me, even though it looked so much like it, it's not about him it's about me and I need to just let it go, to realize that there really never was anything there, to fully accept that he really did lie, that he really was just an actor, subconsciouly of course. He is a deeply deeply desperate and hungry person, who is completely blinded by his starvation. I feel sorry for him now, for how far he would lie to get just a bit of his starvation satisfied. It just goes on to show how desperate he is, how much of an actor he is. Also, by letting go of him completely I stop seeing the world as a place full of people like him. I see that it's not my fault that I fell for it, it's due to my shadows unfortunately, I didn't do anything wrong. And he was a mistake that I learned from, and I no longer need to run anywhere, the world is perfect as it is, right now and here, in fact it is a beautiful place to discover. Again I don't need to do anything to earn my existence, which is by the way the thought that makes me preoccupied about work. There is nothing I need to run after." So why was my dream a premonition dream, and what did it have to do with Muslim culture? Well, powerlessness and being shocked by cruelty are both very strong vibrations for women in Muslim culture. If I hadn't resolved this shadow before hopping on that plane, who knows what sort of things I might have attracted there with my own shadow. But after resolving it, I felt completely calm, and in fact, I felt that I needed to be on that plane. That meant that as I had resolved the shadow aspect of that journey, I was now ready to enjoy the light aspect, and I did!