THE PAINTING

My painting depicts the dream I had the night after 9/11, and is the reason why I wanted to use the Trade Towers burning as the backdrop to this work.

THE DREAM

I am in my bed at night. I hear coyotes in the distance. There's a window at the foot of the bed and a light in the sky, shinning in. I sense there's something out there. I move toward the window and as I do I am sucked out! I begin falling into endless darkness!

I am falling down, down into the deep darkness. I feel like screaming, but then I remind myself I am dreaming. At this point I become lucid.

I can see and feel everything slow, and I stop falling. I ask, "What is for me here?" I demand, "SHOW ME, SHOW ME!" Then, I begin to move upward. I see the stars as I am traveling up to the heavens. Then huge metal discs with alien writing start moving up around me. I yell once more, "SHOW ME!" — I even say this out loud in waking reality and I wake myself up.

IN WAKING LIFE

I was feeling tremendous fear, along with the rest of the world, after the terrorists' attack the day before. Coyote allowed me to be sucked into this dark abyss of fear to learn about its illusion, and my own power over it. In the dream I was able to stop my fall by waking up! By becoming conscious, I can choose love over fear and change the world I live in.

On a collective level, I believe the dream is warning us all to wake up to the negative effects of fear to our planet. We must become conscious of this deadly emotion and face problems in the waking world with compassion.

I am reminded of the famous Author/Astronomer, Carl Sagan, who always referred to the time that we are living in as an age of "technological adolescence" and said the first question he would ask of an Alien visitor might be, "How did your world survive its adolescence without destroying itself?"

On some level I know I made contact with a higher intelligence that night of 9/12, through my dream experience. Yet, I'm still puzzled why when given the chance to ask anything of my visitor, I asked about my own purpose. Perhaps this is where all important work begins, with an internal focus, changing the world one person at a time. Another thought is that what was communicated about my own purpose is too strange or alien for my mind to comprehend at this point in my development.

Recently, I attended a Dream Retreat with Jeremy Taylor, and one of the dreams we considered as a group also contained strange writing that could not be understood by the dreamer. Jeremy asked the group, "How many of you have had dreams containing unreadable/alien writing, or alchemical symbols?" At least 80% of the dreamers raised their hands! The resulting discussion from this astonishing show of hands was very convincing to me that a new language may be evolving; a new way of communicating primarily through images and symbols, which will far surpass verbal language in effectiveness. This idea resonated deeply for me, and seemed to explain the mystery of the alien writing in my dream.

Being an artist, it thrills me to ponder the importance of art in communicating spiritual ideas, and the possible unifying effect the emergence of a new language could have for the planet.

Also, with every dream painting, as with every dream, I always ask, "Why this, now?" It is now 2007 and most people have dealt with the horror of 9/11, have done their inner work and have moved on. I on the other hand, have chosen this time to postpone all my creative projects in order to paint "Fall Into Fear." Why?

On a personal level, the last two years have been filled with loss and pain. Everything in my life has changed and I have come to see this period as "The Deconstruction of Brenda." I have had to face all my fears straight in the face in order to learn the lesson Coyote meant for me personally.

During this time I have actually considered giving up my goals as a painter and dream worker, because life had gotten so tough! Through my suffering, I realized what my greatest fear actually is: When in that sacred void and I ask, "What is for me, here?" I fear the answer will be deadly silent, or after waiting a long while I will hear echoing through the universe, "NOTHING," ..."NO SPECIAL PURPOSE."

Anyone could accuse me of taking myself and my life too seriously, and as I contemplated the death of my own ego, I could almost hear Coyote laugh as lyrics from the National Lampoon's parody of "Desiderata" played back to me...

"You are a fluke of the universe:
you have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
the Universe is laughing behind your back."

From Deteriorata, by the National Lampoon

--Brenda Ferrimani

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