Dreams have always been an interest of mine. I read several books on the subject when I lived in Virginia (near the bookstore at the Edgar Cayce Institute). I went through a period of several years in which I was recording my dreams and trying to make some sense of them.

I've always scored high on "psychic" tests and I've had more than one "precog" dream. I dreamed that my grandmother came to tell me goodbye the night before she died, and in the dream she was plump and lucid again, not emaciated and incoherent. I woke up crying, and wasn't the least bit surprised when they called to tell me she'd died. And there have been others. I dreamed that my daughter was trying to kill me and woke up to find her walking into my bedroom with a butcher knife in her hand. (She's a drug addict and has some serious mental and emotional problems.) I'm convince that dream saved my life that night...

But the ones that have caused me to seek explanations are some recurring dreams I've had all my life...I first started having them when I was really small, far too small to understand what they were about and they've come and gone with varying frequency over the years. They were more frequent and intense during puberty and during my early-mid thirties (peak sexual times, obviously), although only about a third of the dreams are overtly sexual.

In the dreams, which vary in details of day-to-day things, but never in the "overall"...

I'm a young monk whose name is Stefan. I am a monk not because of religious calling but because I'm a bastard orphan and there was nowhere else for me to go.

The time is difficult to determine. Something makes me think around the l5th century, but in the dreams I'm illiterate and have no knowledge of such things. My job at the monastery is to help with the gardens in warm weather, and in winter, I help in the kitchens and stables, though I'm terrified of the big animals there.

The few glimpses I've had of my own reflection in water or whatever show me a slender youth with dark hair and eyes, nothing extraordinary. I don't know what country it is, though from the moderate climate, I'd guess somewhere around what is now northern Italy or Greece.

The language is not one I'm familiar with, though I've traveled in Europe and have heard various European languages. It has the fluidity of French, but it isn't French. Some of the others speak Latin, and I can sing some of the songs in Latin, but I don't know what the words mean, except the really obvious things like Pie Jesu.

My 'room" is about the size of a modern closet, just big enough for me to spread out a scratchy straw pallet for sleeping. It's cold in the winter and hot in the summer. There's a small window, but no glass, and I have to cover it in the winter--it gives me too much of a draft in the winter, and never enough air in the summer.

I have two items of clothing--a thin robe for summer wear and a wool one for winter wear. The wool irritates my skin and makes me break out, so I sneak and wear the summer one under it to keep my skin from itching so badly. In the summer I go barefoot, and in winter I have some crude shoes made of poor quality leather.

There's a pond roughly fifty yards from the buildings, and we fetch water from a stream which feeds the pond. I go there once a week, weather permitting, and bathe. And sometimes when I'm not needed elsewhere, they let me go fishing there. It makes a nice change for meals.

I have no political consciousness and little awareness of the world outside the monastery, as I have been here all my life and have never been given any education beyond what I needed to do what I do.

The dreams don't come in chronological order--I might dream of "me" in my twenties one night and mid-teens the next. I'm not really sure of my age, but have a vague notion of how many years old I am.

In the younger dreams, some of the older priests come to my cell at night and use me (orally). They are rough and casual, seeking only their own pleasure and having no concern for mine, but I expect no more from them. Sometimes I hide under my rough blanket and pleasure myself but I feel very guilty for doing so--this is a terrible sin, I know. But it feels too good to give it up, and since it's one of the very few pleasures in my life, I tolerate the guilt in exchange for the pleasure.

I'm about 16 when another monk arrives there. He's a few years older than me (maybe 19) and very different from me. He name is Raul. He's taller, a little heavier though still slender, and moves with uncanny speed and grace. He has silky blond hair and enormous emerald green eyes, and I think he's the most beautiful creature God ever made. I worship him, and would do anything for him. We become lovers and he becomes my protector, keeping the others from bothering me in any way.

He's not just a sexual lover, however. He's warm and sensual, with a smile that brightens the day. Sometimes when I walk past him, he'll casually move in such a way that I brush his shoulder or touch his arm, and he always grins and winks at me as if to my, "I just had to touch you." Those emerald eyes shine and my knees get weak from love of him.

Because there's no continuity in the dreams, and I have no control over them, some of them have been very confusing. In one of them, Raul is dragged out into the yard, the robe ripped from his back, and he is whipped, while I'm held back from him, sobbing hysterically. My emotional state is so strong that the modern me wasn't able to discover what was going on or why he was being whipped.

The very youngest dream (in Stefan's time, that is) is one in which I'm about 14, I'd guess. In the oldest ones, I'm no more than mid-twenties. I think the reason is that I died at a very young age. In one of the oldest dreams, Raul and I arc running--scrambling-- through the woods behind the monastery, and I'm totally terrified, fear so overwhelming my guts are cramped and my heart is beating erratically. Raul holds my hand tightly and helps me.

I can't move as fast as he can, and I get winded very quickly. (From this and other things, I think I must have a faulty heart and/or respiratory system. I tire easily at any labor, and often have trouble breathing. [Interestingly, I have severe allergy problems now, and sometimes have to use inhalers to ease my breathing.]) We're running from someone, but I don't know whom. An invading army? The people who were responsible for Raul's beating? I don't know.

The dreams have influenced my life in a number of ways. One is that I'm very comfortable with gay men, and they seem to be very drawn to me and find me very easy to confide in and talk with. Another is that my very favorite form of sex is anal sex, which Stefan was made ecstatic by. The older monks forced him to suck them, and he hated it and gagged. Raul never did that, but just took him anally. To this day, I hate blowjobs, and have been known to throw up from giving one, even to a man I care a lot about. But I can have a very orgasm [sic] from anal sex, even if my clit isn't being touched.

I have read books on dreams, reincarnation, anything that might explain why I've had these dreams. And yet here I am pushing 50 and still don't know what they mean. They are very vivid, I might add, with color, sound, smell, touch, taste. Very detailed, such as when I'm lying on grass under a tree, staring at the clouds, and I can feel the grass tickling me through my thin robe, and smell a nearby honeysuckle vine, and taste the tart-sweet flavor of the apple I'm munching.

Do I have other dreams? Sure. Lots of them. These monk dreams come and go. Sometimes I have them for several nights in a row, other times I won't have one for weeks at a time. Some are very sexual, others not sexy at all. The sexual ones were particularly strong and intense from the time I turned 11 until I got married at 17, and then again in my early 30s (even though I was married to my second husband then and had a pretty active sex life).

If you can explain them to me, you're a better 'man' than I am, as I can't do it. But they are very real to me, and have recurred too many times in my life, with details in them that I could not have known, for me not to know there's something in them. I just don't know what.

--Anonymous #2323

[The October issue had a ton of questions and advice for #2323. The December issue had 2323's replies. Here are three, including a follow-up dream in the series.]

To Doug Montgomery: No, I'm not a Catholic. In fact, I never knew anything at all about the Catholic faith until I was in college. I was raised in a fundamentalist family, with religious information very sparse. I finally took a course in college in which I learned about other religions, and when I realized that what I was reading about was what I'd been dreaming about all those years, it scared me half to death. I'd thought the dreams were nothing but dreams until that point. And then I wasn't sure what they were.

To Edith Gilmore: No, it is absolutely, positively, not possible that I read a book which caused me to think these were dreams. The reason is that I was born into a very poor family in the mountains of Kentucky. The only book I ever had as a child was a Mother Goose book.

I'm also certain of the time the dreams started. I had rheumatic fever when I was four years old, and spent two months in the hospital because of it. The dreams had started prior to that, and I clearly remember having them while I was in the hospital. I woke up from one of them and asked my doctor what I was doing in the infirmary. He laughed and asked me where a little pint-sized thing like me learned a big word like that, and I said I didn't know. I was afraid to tell him about the dreams.

I had never seen a movie at that point in life, and also had never seen TV. I do not know where the dreams come from, but I know that they came from my own mind, not from external sources.

To Judy Landaiche: I have never tried to consciously control the dreams. Although apparently something about your suggestion spoke to my mind, and I did have a dream within the past month in which Stefan died. I have apparently come close to dreaming that many times in the past, as I've often dreamed of Raul and me racing through the forest, terrified. But before, I always woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the dream.

But this time, I dreamed that we stopped and hid in an animal den of some sort. Very smelly and icky. Barely room for the two of us to crawl into it. I could see feet running past the den, and knew it was the men who were chasing us. Raul was holding his hand tightly over my mouth to keep me from making a sound. I think I would have screamed if he hadn't. I was literally crazed at that point. When they were all past us, and I was calmed a little, he slumped down and said that it was useless for us to hide, as there was nowhere we could go to get away from them. And we couldn't survive for long in the forest without help. I begged him not to let them take me. He said there was only one way to prevent that, and I agreed with him.

He took a knife and slit the veins in both my wrists, then did the same to his own. Then he put his arms around me and we lay there until the life drained away.

I don't know where these dreams come from, and don't live in an area where I could find a therapist to try [pastlife] regression. But they are real, and have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.