I don't post here much but I enjoy lurking. I thought I'd share an experience I had recently. This may be long. Quick background: 4th gen Witness. Huge family. First to leave. Misssionaries, Bethelites, yadda yadda. My wife and I left the borg 6 years ago, doing the fade, though most everybody shuns us. Anyway, I've been doing alot of exploration since then in the realms of spirituality. So I stumbled upon a spritual practice that actually works and have had many spiritual or mystical experiences since. This one was unique.
So when I'm 14 I meet this girl at school. It's the typical first love thing but we were friends. There is something different about this girl though. I was fascinated by her. She seemed very focused and serious, though she seemed to carry a pain with her, like it sat right behind her eyes. Anyway, I loved that pain for some reason and I loved her. My parents were absolutely psycho about girlfriends and of course she was worldly so I never told her I loved her. I was terrified of the consequences. She talked about college and talked about deep things like poetry and philosophy. I was only 14 at this point but it struck a nerve with me. I realize now that it was at this moment that I wanted to be something else than what was laid out for me by my parents. I wanted something more. She sort of represented freedom to me. Anyway, I was in love with her until I was 17. I watched her from a distance and actually I became quite cruel to her so that I didn't have to be around her. It hurt to much. She never knew I dug her. So eventually, I graduated High School and proceeded to pioneer for 6 years. I forgot about her for years. I met a beautiful witness girl at 17 and ended up marrying her later on. She is an incredible person who left the borg with me. However, there was always this wound in my heart of never having the courage to tell this girl what I thought of her. I believe I never was able to be truly intimate to my wife because of this.
So about 3 years ago I get this really powerful dream in which an angel takes me to some place that appears to be heaven or something similar. The angel takes me to this girl and commands me in a powerful voice, "Tell her you love her!" I am afraid but I am awestruck by this angel and so I tell this girl how I felt about her. She is radiant and beautiful. Then together we go to my parents and what appears to be my ancestors standing behind them. The angel says, "Tell them that you love this girl." Now I'm really terrified but I do it. Then together, this girl and I fly around the Universe like Superman and Lois Lane. Pure bliss.... Then I wake up. I stare at the wall for an hour and try to figure out what happened. This dream was so powerful, there are no words to describe it. This dream repeats itself every few months but not as powerful. So I go on with my life.
Meanwhile, my marriage is starting to fall apart. My wife is the sweetest person on the planet. We are good friends and enjoy each other most of the time but for some reason we cannot live together anymore. My wife and I finally separate. We feel that we sort of enmeshed when we left the borg and we were using each other as crutches. We figure we should try to find strength seperately and then see if we want to get back together later. We remain close friends. As soon as she moves out the dreams intensify. Every god-forsaken night they come. It starts to drive me crazy. So I decide to contact the girl. Yikes! 20 years later!!
So I find her on the internet and I put out a feeler e-mail. Just saying hi. It ends up she has a family and lives in a foriegn country. So we have some small talk. I am flabbergasted that I am going to do this, but I write her an e-mail telling her that I was in love with her in High School and that I had crazy JW parents and my home life sucked and I was a coward for not telling her how I felt about her. I explained all about the JW's and all about the mind control and how they are a cult. I send the e-mail. Then I drive to my parents house and tell them that I loved someone in High School and that I was a coward for letting them and the JW's get in the way of love, even if it was 14 year old love. It ends with my mother yelling frantically and calling me Satan. I realized at a soul level at that moment how insane this religion is, and how insane my parents are, and that I will not give another ounce of my energy toward it. I feel tremendous relief, like I just dropped some weight off me. I had fulfilled the dream.
So a couple days pass and I get an e-mail back from this girl. She drops a bomb on me.......SHE HAS BEEN STUDYING FOR 3 YEARS WITH THE JW's in this foriegn country (around the same time of my first dream!). I am floored. I literally fell on the floor. She said that he experieced a major tragedy in her life and she asked for God to come into her life and the Witnesses knocked on her door a half hour later. Here, this girl represented freedom and liberation to me from the life that was planned for me. I think my heart felt that she was my ticket out of this suffocating box. Now, years later, she is going into the box that she inspired me to leave and what I have struggled for so long to escape from. Leaving has consumed my whole adult life. The girl (woman) also is floored. She didn't know anything negative about the Witnesses and is in the honeymoon period. They have been real good to her and her family. We e-mail back and forth to each other for about 2 weeks on a daily basis. I sort of still feel love for her and feel like an old wound is healing. At the same time I'm aware of letting her go. It's really hard on me, even though it's been this long. Then she e-mails me and tells me she had a dream about me. She tells me the details. The bizarre thing is that I had the same dream on the same night with the same details. It was like we both consciously communicated in the dream world. I tell her this and I think it creeps her out.
Then, about 2 nights later. I lay down on the couch and I fell asleep. I had what is known as a lucid dream. I didn't know I was dreaming. I was laying on the couch in my dream so I didn't even realize that I had fell asleep. Anyway, this girl walks into my apartment. I'm like, "What are you doing here? This is impossible!!" She walks up to me and crouches down by the couch. She puts her forehead against my forehead. I say to her, "I missed you all these years." and she says to me, "I know" Then she dissappears. I'm still not sure what is going on so I get up and get on the computer. I cannot see the characters on the screen. I realize that I must be in a dream so I say, "wake up dude" and I am back on the couch. I don't tell her about this dream.
Anyway, after that, I don't feel the need to contact her anymore and I feel a sense of completion. I don't know what will happen on her end but strangely, I'm not compelled to talk her out of becoming a JW. I still feel a connection to her, though, on a soul level. I think it was a lesson for me not to look for power or purpose outside myself and that everyone is on their own life journey. I also feel some forgiveness to my ancestors for getting the family into this mess. Anyway, just thought I'd share this story.
Mil