A Dream Weavers Sleep Spindle

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. The rotation of the earth opened the doorway to the eternal enchanted land of an early spring's night dream. The gap channeled tones of the music universalis that promoted a state of balance, harmony and rhythm.

A sentimental Sarabande was playing. The African and Oriental origins of the tune were transformed by Arabic, Italian, then Spanish cultures. In the 16th century it was suppressed by the Inquisition, because the lively, lascivious dance with castanets, was considered disreputable. The French adapted the Sarabande to a slow stately and emotionally moving overture that was used in processional ceremonial dances. How and what is used to play the Sarabande, a 12 toned suite or partita in triple time, depends on the needs of the consumers of the culture.

Triple time provides a temporal window that unlocks memory traces that have been consolidated with sleep rhythms. The music enticed spirits from all that was before, and is to come, to join in the dance of life. The spirits spread their essence into the sky. Matter and energy permeated each other. The two equal but different parts combined to make a balanced whole. The yin and yang, right and left, matter and antimatter, forged a bond in the eternal that could not be broken.

In the sacred moment of connection, the void between the long red wavelengths that pass history through the root chakra closed as it merged with the short violet wavelengths of the crown chakra. The brain filled in the gap between spectral colours, by inventing a flush of royal purple light that cleared a superconducting pathway.

The dancers and listeners were transported to the pleasant, smooth-running movement of stillness. They were awakened, stimulated to be creative. They became jitterbug champions who could swing and jive with an instinctive knowledge of how shoulder shrugs and snapping fingers could express what they had learned and experienced. They danced on the slippery surface of what was possible. They kept moving. If they fell, the momentum made it easier to pick each the other up. It was the best dance ever. It transformed what is disagreeable into a dream from which Kat found it difficult to awaken.

The alarm sounded with today’s news on the radio. The broadcast was worse than yesterday. Global changes had brought sickness, poverty, war and depleted resources. The radiation levels were increasing, as were airborne particulates and water contamination. Plagues, drought, floods, famine, earthquakes, volcanoes and drug addictions formed the dreary reality of another day. Pain, loss and suffering were part of this time of great change.

Kat dressed to go to work. She had been trained as a professional. She did what she loved to do even when she did not want to do it. She had been working at the hospital since the outbreak began. After the war she was hired by the new government to mediate the effects of the accumulation of low- level toxins and stress that had changed the physiological and behavioural norms of all life.

The battle of nature against the world's bleeding heart liberals, heartless conservatives, benevolent and despotic dictators, had resulted in the formation of an international government that employed draconian measures. There were no models in place to escape the oppressed and oppressor model that dominates history. Human tendencies toward self-serving profit-based exploitation favored corruption and did little to ease suffering.

Kat was determined to work within the system to make change. Her challenge was to stay invisible and do what was acceptable according to government standards and right for her conscious. She avoided following trends, knowing what is considered an acceptable innovation today, could become outdated and corrupt tomorrow.

She was part of the New Wave. They believed in science. But Kat also heard the eloquent, faint echoes of ephemeral memories hidden deep within the recesses of the social mind. She had her concerns about laws that permitted intentionally manipulating brain chemistry to deal with global needs.

There was some merit in using drug infusions to moderate the effects of environmental toxicities that accumulated in food and water. The general population considered they were successfully functioning despite the explosions of information, technology, population, globalization, and stress, but the crime rates and aberrant behaviour indicated they were acting like overcrowded rats in a cage. Creating a sense of euphoria and dulling the senses could alter physiology and behaviour and ease suffering. However, what had been intended for sacred purposes was being used to imprison the mind for the purpose of exploitation deemed essential to maintain the economy.

Her job was to design and direct experimentation to establish protocols on how to optimize a balance of productivity without causing debilitating addictions. Drug cocktails were designed to suppress negative emotions and thought processes of the workers, as if they were bees in a hive. Studies naturally cloned and genetically identical bees reveal that methylation of sections of DNA irreversibly determine if the bee becomes a Queen or a worker. However, epigenetics influences the brain chemistry that controls the reversible movement of a worker from a nurse to a forager.

Within humans, genetic variability alters the effects of epigenetic changes. Currently, she was studying a subpopulation that resisted suppression by the drugs. She had isolated individuals whose behaviours and intellectual abilities deviated from the standard. All medications had been removed and there was little detectable difference. The subgroup was perceived as being infested with killer mites. The government feared that this condition might spread and attain a critical mass that would threaten the current model. Fear is a powerful opponent.

As she did her rounds, Kat observed the patients. Most were young. They were at peace and exhibited unusual self confidence and composure. Kat was determined to show that the aberrations were not preventable nor harmful, and that they were an asset to optimize the current model. Kat feared that she was experiencing a similar neurological disorder born of the continual trauma in a world that was painful to experience. She knew the signs.

She was haunted by the ghosts of her past life. According to today’s standard, she would have scored well on global testing done at age 3,7, and 11 and would have been eligible to acquire a partnership licence by age 15. Her genetic and psychological testing would have permitted children. Back before the war, she had done her best to be a caring partner and parent. She had tried to guide her children in the same manner as had been used on her, specifically to let a child learn how to manage on their own. But she had wavered.

She doubted if there was any redemption from what she had done. She and many others of her generation had become helicopter parents, questioning a child's decisions and not letting them appreciate the consequences of their mistakes. She would suggest they purchase clothes a little too big, so that they might last a little longer as they grew. She checked over their schoolwork and suggested improvements. Little did she know that these small changes were enough to result in a loss of self-confidence.

Upon realizing her error, she considered indulging in the guilt of her ignorance, the cause of her pain. Ignorance could easily be called a sin, but it was impossible not to sin again. She concluded that ignorance, and a lack of foresight, leads to eternal damnation.

In this crazy world, the reality was that all she could do was her best. She could guide an individual to gain the skills to be able to lay down solid foundations and build their own life. Choices depend on a how an individual weights the pros and cons. Each individual has their own ideas on how to live.They had a greater vested interest in managing their own life. Their best guess was better than being dominated. Each generation is tested on their choices of how to show respect, responsibility and resilience, and is accountable for their own mistakes. She had not been given much guidance, and her children too much. Now, they were making their own choices, to be controlled and oblivious, or to face the struggle.

With a deep breath, Kat continued her rounds. It had taken three months without drugs to establish the baseline. She had gotten to know the patients and had established a marker that could be used to triage individuals for ‘reassignment or recycling.’ She was pushed to her limit. She needed to find a way to save them, but did not see how.

The day ended. As Kat left work, she heard a song in the silent hush of the mists. A gentle downpour filled the air below the mackerel scaled sky. She went home, had supper, showered and put on her pj’s then she prepared for her dream state. She emptied her mind and started relaxation breathing. She needed to tap into her internal guidance system that would perhaps lead her to a better way, to a bigger perspective.

She slid into meditation. She observed her thoughts and let them go. She accepted surrender. Within seconds, the power of the pendulum her brain chemistry synchronized with the movement of the iron in her blood. She could clearly see flashes of scenes from the collective consciousness of the machine elves, that make up the mys, yours, hims, hers, ours and theirs of the mind. Their energy was whipped into an electromagnetic broth and froth. Then presto, she was in the other world.

She felt the release from a prison of thought filled with darkness. She felt weakly perceived, embedded encrypted messages from the timeless invisible world pass through her. She was playing out her existence on the sphere of the planet, along with plants minerals and animals. Then she went to a higher emotional and mental level. She felt the wave of breath of a spirit flow between individuals, nature and time. She was a vessel, an excited superconductor that glowed with the power of the oldest gods. She connected to the Divine Essence of the great essential spirit, the Genius that powers the life force. It made her feel that she had been initiated into the fully living.

She was able to look through the eyes of others. She enjoyed being an observer of herself. She was part of the rare tribe of light-hearted fools, 'les Amis de Dieu', who are cared for by society. They were a breeding pedigree, a group of Harlequins called Merles. They are known as a Thrush, that sings a most beautiful energetic song with timbre, clicks trills and warbles that they have learned from the voices of the dead. Merles acts as a parrot standing on the shoulders of giants. Without consciousness of the latent spirit that originated when a single cell divided into multicellular organisms, they balance messages and communication within and between bacteria and fungus, to change the song of the dance of life.

Kat awoke and wrote down the dream. She wanted to rekindle the vital spark of this phoenix spirit that arises from the flames. She had seen through the sparkling eyes of Buddhist Nat spirits, Hindu devatas and the Greek Daimons, the angels and the twirling dervishes, nested one in the other, like Russian Matryoshka dolls. They all knew the dance.

She got up. It was the weekend. After breakfast she did what some consider work or tedious. It offered her a pleasurable escape. She and her friend Bob shared a hobby. It was their version of a book club. Over the years since the war, they chose to read, interpret and discuss a sonnet of Shakespeare, or passage from the Bible. She enjoyed letting her intuition explore possiblel interpretations.

She was grateful that she had access to books that had not yet been banned, they gave her the tools to understand her conditioning. She owned the original edition of the Complete Webster’s Dictionary, written by Noah, a lexicographer who could show how ambiguity and religion can be woven into the roots of most any word. The dictionary provided hints as to how the known origins of a word, led to the etymology, or true sense of the word. Kat recalled the movie, about how Daniel Webster, Noah’s cousin, used words to successfully argue with the devil.

She valued Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, written by another scholar. Strong indexed words used throughout the Bible, so that they could be used as a study tool. He described the meaning and significance as it was appreciated in the context of the time the book was written. The word, ‘concord’, means ‘of one mind’. It is derived from ‘con’ meaning together and ‘cord’ meaning heart. Being united in one heart helps people who are struggling with reality to find community. Humans need community.

As ‘a community leader,’ Kat appreciated the value and dangers of giving people information on a need-to-know basis. It reduces confusion about of how pieces can be assembled and interpreted, making it easier to establish a single point of view. But it depends on ignorance. Ignorance is not always because of suppression of information. It can be a result of the inability to understand the complexity of information.

Kat realized humans blindly reframe a story based on what they can piece together with incomplete, unknown factors. It can lead to myth and superstition. Myths take on a life of their own. Children are told myths that portray Jesus as a son of a simple carpenter. The story is akin to the son of the woodworker Geppetto. who carved Pinocchio. When Pinocchio stuck his nose into sins of omission, pretense, irony and disguise, his nose grew longer. Bible stories and Shakespearean sonnets capture timeless truths of humanity yet are cleverly ambiguous enough to be translated and sway social movements to and from altruism, hysteria, laziness or victimization. Ancient sources, written, to create a community, can be translated to support a political agenda.

Kat enjoyed being immersed in the hypnotic dance of the vague, a word derived from the French word wave. Interest in the classics had decreased when the Internet created the new Oracle. It was possible 'to Google' a topic and have access to a forum full of information that could perpetuate ignorance or lead to mental growth. When falsehoods are repeated often enough, they are often considered truth. Credible information was slowly removed from public access and replaced with what had once called propaganda. It was referred to as reconditioning material that argued a fatalistic ending if alternate information was permitted.

Kat knew there is no avoiding ignorance but enjoyed using her own understanding to discern not only what was said, but what was not said. The long-term repercussion of ignorance often leads various psycho- physical issues that result when the conscious and subconscious cannot find a way to keep the principles in place. She had Faith in principles of a divine force and depended on the ability of the mind to perceive a path to a goal. She would do what was needed with what was available. By becoming immersed into an exegesis, that examines the words in the context of the times, she might understand and critically interpret her thoughts.

She opened her passage. She went into a focussed meditative state. As she read, the breath of a timeless spirit flowed from individuals who had passed on this tale through the ages. Then she felt the formation of a sleep spindle.

A sleep spindle is a discrete event, that alters activity in the grey matter so that elements are grouped on an infra-slow time scale. Burst-like signals on the electric surface of the brain correlate with neuronal oscillations in the thalamus. Sleep spindles emerge on different synchronous or asynchronous timescales. The thalamus shapes the way the cortex controls the plastic cognitive abilities, learning and attention.

When activated, the sleep spindle releases diverse memories that block intuition so the blind gain sight. The words delivered long and short-term memories to her brain Memories are consolidated with sight and sound. They came crashing like waves. Kat assumed the role of the three-in-one Fates, who weave, measure and cut the message from the fibres of memories.

Sleep spindles offer the potential of greater resilience. They can create a brain net, that joins with others and increases performance on cognitive tasks. Dream spindles fertilize hypotheses that connect to a larger scale, in the continuous stream of time. They allow interareal communication, the exchange of information, ideas and feelings between two or more people without contact, and create inspired thoughts. They are a marker of intelligence, but also are associated with disorders such as dementia and schizophrenia.

Kat awakened from being an unconscious sleepwalker. In what might be considered a period of interim prayer, she accepted what is, was and could be to consciously identify what might be defined as good in an ambiguous situation.

The next day, Kat called her friend and colleague Bob. They did the love dove’s dance, in which male and female contribute, accepting they were equals, but different. They both carried the same mass, but one ton of bricks has less volume than a ton of feathers. Sharing their interpretations let them attempt to clarify misperceptions, rectify negative associations and judgements and reduce ignorance. They looked past the power of conditioning and early programming and with self-acceptance, began to overcome some of the psychological obstacles that cause pain.

Self- acceptance delivered the realization of what comes to mind when people are said to share joy and gladness. Aristotle said happiness is hidden beneath a veil of matter. She felt the weight of the shroud lift as she tapped into a sixth sense that released a primordial state of inner wellbeing. It brought relief and was a source of transcendental happiness.

As she expressed her ideas, she heard the spirit of the inert, but not forgotten dead sing a song in her heart. Her limbic system and thinking brain were drawn to do the dragon dance. Her innate survival behaviour let telepathic flying angels born of ideals, and demons that haunted her daily existence of shattered ideals, dance in her conscious and unconscious. They gave her a clue as to how to move pass stored negative memories that left an emotional imprint of fear and imprisonment.

The next day Kat awoke refreshed. She was ready to do her best to make her life, and that of others, have meaning. As Kat attended her patients, she let the dream and physical world merge. She felt present. As she walked down the corridors of the hospital, she became a nomadic pilgrim. She looked through new eyes as a tourist.

She saw the sun burn through the clouds. It became a full round eye in the sky. As Kat journeyed to visit her patients, she could see a bubble of light form around them. Each patient was an obelisk, a source of fascination and a reminder of past glories of a different state power. They were a ray of light that took an infinity of human effort to build. Each was engraved with their own Rosetta stone, that held clues as to how to crack the mysterious codes of hieroglyphic images needed to renew creation. She was ready to understand these patients and translate their message.

She heard a trumpet playing a song. She became alert, anticipating what was to come. She was being summoned to the inner court. She did not know if the signal was foretelling joy or destruction. She felt time slow down.

She dealt with the confusion of what she saw without exaggeration or any overly visible change in appearance or actions, or sense of superiority.Knowledge of the emotion and quality of the composer influences the authenticity of interpretation. Behaviours are influenced by how previous events affect the psychological climate.

She saw a gentleman was watching football. It was a carnivalesque scene, where scantily clad females dancing in a manner representing fertility rites, incited crowds. The teams fought for the tribal totem of an egg like sphere within a rectangular enclosure.

Another patient was rocking on a chair and knitting. The clicking of the needles set up the backbeat of the rhythm of the song in her heart. Knitting reflects a need for a stable productive life. With effort, ideas are transformed, to a material product. The connection formed by looping and knotting a continuous stitch, that wraps from back to the front or front to the back, can weave complex patterns. A knit creation joins the inner world that holds emotions including calm or frustration, isolation or connection, relentless pain and whimsical joy, to the outer world.

As she continued her rounds, the song in her heart grew louder. It became audible as she heard her next patent singing it. She sat with this patient and took his hand. The gentleman squeezed hers in return. They formed a connection that avoided all or none, black or white definitions. It was calming. They were transported to another world with a force that let them escape the closed repeating loop of being imprisoned in the present. He assumed the manner of a French chanteur in a smoky French brasserie of days gone by and sang “What a beautiful world” by Louis Armstrong then, “Que serais-je sans toi,” 'What would I be without you' by Jean Ferrat.

Kat realized that each of them was living the same dream. They shared the tragedy of longing and pain from feeling cursed by wanting a life that is forbidden by circumstance. Given there was no resolution for a happy ending, therefore no way to move forward, they dealt with suffering that overwhelms the senses, will and rational thought, by retreating into a world of their own creation. It was a way to gain control and create the dream of a good life that they now shared. They found themselves on the same path, and hitting the target, with the skill of an archer who can direct an arrow in the wind.

Kat breathed. She regained her professional composure and said, “Please, I want to help you stay alive.” The patient’s eyes cleared as he looked into hers and she heard his reply.