2009 – 2010

my daughter and i were living with my parents, and i slept on the sofa in the living room. one night, at some point after i fell asleep as normal, i found myself suspended in an empty, dark space surrounded by 3 faceless humanoid forms that (and this is the best i can describe it) shone darkly.
they are equidistant from one another, suspended in this dark space around me about four arm lengths away from me. they are each casting or spinning webs or bands of a dark static-y material around me, binding my arms to my sides, my legs together. there were muffled, indistinct sounds. there was a faint ozone smell.
i feel these entities are malicious and attacking me, trying to…trap? me, to control me and i know without a doubt that if they do, i am lost. not dead, but lost and without hope. i am physically unable to fight back, and it occurs to me to start praying.
i am not a christian, so i begin reciting aloud the 42nd chapter of the tao te ching:
from tao came one
from one came two
from two came three
from three came ten thousand things…

(side note: as a self-spun taoist, i see that passage as describing the fundamental unity everything is rooted in and springs from; what the judeo-christian paradigm refers to as god with a capital g.)

it is at that point that i wake up ever so slightly in the air over the sofa ( like i had fallen onto it from a decent height and rebounded off it and woke up as i reached the apex and start back down) and land. i am not groggy. i am now wide awake. and the experience had no dream-like qualities (besides perhaps the muffled sound). the images and…feelings were as real as everyday life. i talked to my parents about it when they woke up later that morning. being christians, they asked if i prayed to jesus for help and i told them no, and repeated the lines i had spoken. they seemed more than a little disappointed in and dubious of my choice of supplication.

Submitted by Christopher B, Liminal Cartographer