I had many powerful, helpful, and insightful dreams during
my first 10-day Goenka retreat. That was 18 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. When I experienced the infinite nothing underlying all of existence—what I now believe to have been the formless realms of the vipassana jhanas or ñanas—it completely shattered my equanimity. Abject terror. I shaved off my beard just to try to ground myself in physical reality, but I wanted nothing so much as to run from the center, run from the path, from this new reality. I don't know how, but I was able to fall asleep. When I did, I had a dream of a sorority tie-dye party. The dream camera panned around the room. All the young women were tall, blonde, tanned, gorgeous, and confident but more than a bit superficial, even air headed, and they were all wearing their bright, colorful tie-dye creations. The camera came to center on and look down upon the much shorter, rounder, bald, and pasty white Uncle Fester wearing all black. You couldn't imagine anyone more out of place. But the young women were making a show of being accommodating, warm, kind, and ostentatiously trying to engage him in conversation. The leader of their little group asked Fester the question, "Did you make a [tie-dye] t-shirt?" in her characteristically upbeat tempo. To which Fester replied in his iconic, gravelly nasal voice and flat, disinterested tone, "Yes." Not skipping a beat, the young woman got visibly and audibly excited and asked, "What color?" And with perfect comedic timing, completely deadpan, Fester responded, "Black." At which point, I jolted straight up in bed and laughed out loud, completely refreshed, though a bit ashamed to have broken noble silence as my roommate rested next to me. That dream helped shake me out of my funk and dive right back into my practice with unshakeable determination and a lighter perspective on the whole thing.
