So I decided to start off my sleep session of the night by visualizing a red "A" symbol over my throat chakra...it immediately sent a surprising shock-wave or impact of sorts through my body, starting at my throat...so I thought that was probably more than enough and just allowed myself to drift off to sleep (while wearing my sandalwood mala).
My dream began with a view of an island near a greater archipelago...I was first on the mainland/archipelago, and was walking with my Aikido Sensei and his group of other martial arts masters. We were walking through a city by the water and were having a conversation as we approached a crosswalk and then crossed over. We reached the water and he directed my view over to an island not very far from the shore. On this part of the island I could see, I saw an oriental martial arts temple of sorts. I took this entire setting to be Okinawa, Japan, or some part of it or something similar. In the temple were gathered many many martial artists, most of them practitioners of Chinese Wudan arts it'd seem. The interior was dimly lit and was entirely made of wood. In the center was a depression where the training area was, and behind that in the center across from the entrance, a staircase leading down to a greater area where I noticed a large pool of water in the distance with candles and flowers floating on the surface. A demonstration was taking place in the center floor where far too many students were all walking around the periphery of the square tatami mat and performing a sort of kata or form requiring many steps and hand movements and lunges. The students seemed to have been of varying international origins. One of them made a mistake with a certain lunge step and their ankle twisted in a way where they lost their footing, and vocally announced that they "Gave up" and just let themselves sit there, where they were, obstructing the path of all the other students partaking in the demonstration. He then said something about "It's alright, I'll do it again later" as he continued to slump into his clumsy posture on the floor. At this I said, calmly and with disappointment, "Wow, you guys aren't really good" or "You really have a long way to go..." or something to that degree.
The demonstration ending, the master of the temple himself appeared and began an open training session for all in attendance if the so wished. Everyone who was interested, myself included, came off the sidelines and got onto the tatami ready for lessons. The master was a short, frail older oriental man of sorts, and wore some sort of white outfit that seemed to resemble a Tai Chi Sifu's attire more so than the karate gi of a Japanese martial artist. I believe he was versed in botch Tai Chi Chu'an and Aikido as he took me and started demonstrating movements I've learned from both arts, fluid arm transfers where he'd lock and capture mine and use the movements of his whole body and my arms to bereave me of balance and direct my entire body elsewhere in a turn. I thought this to be impressive and was glad to have the opportunity to learn something from this master; but a younger, middle-aged oriental man came over, dressed in what seemed to be a black karate gi, and began to judge and admonish the elder master saying those were the old ways and they were outdated, and that the new ways were the correct ways. He was very rude and stubborn, and the elder master, who turned out to be his father, stood quiet and was clearly disappointed with his son, but did not feel the need to defend himself or say anything at all. I found it strange that he did not silence his son and send him out, as would be normal in such a setting. Class continued instead, and around that time the son directed all of us down to the pool area in order to show us the "correct way".
At this I woke up briefly but was still too tired to stay fully awake, so I drifted off back to sleep.
I began dreaming and found myself thinking about two friends of mine, Collyn and Pablo. I first found myself in Pablo's mind's company (or rather, I was accompanying his mind); apparently he was in a car with his family and looking out to Gravesend Bay, seemingly driving away from the Verizanno Bridge (or maybe towards it, I remember the view more than the travel direction. He does live in Staten Island and that's how you'd get there from Brooklyn.) In his thoughts I saw color pencil drawings of the beach and beach-related scenery, so I took it that he was recently at the beach or was going to the beach on Coney Island or perhaps Far Rockaway. The dream shifted and I was now with my friend Collyn, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and she wanted some help with something. Apparently Pablo was to assist her with a skill of sorts, something mental and meditation oriented I believe, and she was having a hard time seeing eye to eye with him and gaining some middle grounds of communication. I said something like "Ah, that must be because you're opposite zodiac signs. I'm the same sign as him so I can mediate; I'll help". Apparently they meet in St. Cecilia's Church (in this scenario) so we walked across this lot that's behind the church and entered the mass. (In reality this is very unlike either Collyn or I since neither of us attend Catholic mass, ever, and Pablo actually since though he's a practicing Christian, he's not Catholic either...this parish has been a major center of my dreams over the years though, possibly due to the fact that I spent much much time there growing up.)
We enter the mass and it seems like Collyn is thoroughly versed in the ways of the mass and picks up the little soft paperback gospel book and starts reading it with the priest and everyone else. I look for the booklet and pick up the wrong one and can't follow with the readings; she hands me the right book as she noticed me searching in the wooden pew-pocket for the correct one. I don't see Pablo anywhere, so I continue along with the reading and notice strange pictures in the book. Apparently the Church was now supporting a new type of scenario in mass that entailed reading comic stories with bible-lessons in them, with intertwined comical gay and manga themes. There was a disclaimer to those in drag not to get too enthusiastic as to not disturb the elder more traditional attendees at mass. I found this strange and began to fall asleep, and entered the image of a landscape within the booklet.
I found myself entering this realm with Collyn at my side, a multi-floor condo apartment of sorts that was half outdoors half indoors, in a reality merging sort of way. To my back, where I entered, was a landscape, that merged into the corridors and rooms of the apartment, in which there were staircases to the rest of it. It seemed like this was the home or base of a team of sorts, of which my old highschool music teacher Mr. P was in charge (or someone with a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh vibe with his appearance; though he was fond of "The Tao of Pooh"). The denizens of this place all seemed to be visionary artists of sorts, a group of them working on fantastic illustrations for a large book in one room, a book that someone was reading with the illustrations manifesting on them in the other living room area. The book was large and seemed to be made of glass or some other transparent material, as the illustrations manifested themselves with the turn of a page and the progress of the reader and the artist. The illustrations drawn were of a beautiful fantastic reddish-orange desert landscape with a style of art that resembled Android Jones mixed with Martina Hoffman; I say this because the central figure of the image was some sort of female angelic being of sorts that resembles Martina's style of fantastic figure rendering.
Aside from the artist factor, it also seemed that all of the denizens of this place were mystic shape shifters or some form of inhuman astral beings. Everyone kept semi shape shifting into beautiful anthropomorphic beings, usually with a blue-skin theme with purple stripes or swirls appearing on their skin here and there, and other features such as fin-wings or whorling spiralic head-growths; they would take the shape necessary for the surreal landscape they wanted to explore. I actually noticed this first, before the illustration, and thought it was really cool and was glad to be there. Just outside the illustration room I saw a desk with some sweets in a jar. I asked if I could have one or two, but the working illustrator laughed and said Mr. P would be very upset if anyone touched those. Sure enough he appeared and was saying something like "get away from my desk" in a sort of hurried manner. "Ok guys, time to get to work, start going out to your destinations".
At this, Collyn, who had already began shape shifting into a semi blue dream entity, one other denizen of this realm and I flew/warped out to a beautiful landscape; a tree filled hill side with blue-purple mountains in the distance, and some fenced basketball courts as well. It seemed to be a place of nature with the welcomed harmonious presence of humans, (though we saw no one else there but ourselves).
We started exploring the area at our leisure, and with some flashbacks to the Gravesend Bay view I had seen earlier, I began flying around semi shape shifting into a blue astral dream being myself, skimming the grass and touching down here and there to kick myself up and navigating through the branches of low-hanging trees, for fun. The other denizen who joined us seemed to be a younger guy being of sorts, and, while laughing, tossed me a basketball while flying around too. I spun around and evaded it as a reflex but noticed he wanted to play with it, so I found another, though more deflated, ball within a basketball court and brought it back to him. We just kept flying around past the trees to a more purely grassy hill side, enjoying ourselves in this surreal, colorful, beautiful dreamscape. I suppose Pablo was to be somewhere deep in that realm, but he never appeared beyond the visions of his view and thoughts. We were all having fun anyway so none of that seemed to matter anymore.
