The Old Witch
THE OLD WITCH
At the same time my brother was having his disturbing visions of The Old Hag, I was having recurring nightmares. Until he wrote this, I never knew of his experience with The Old Hag, nor have I ever shared my own experiences of what I called an Old Witch.
The Old Witch would chase me in my dreams. She was terrifying and I would always flee in great fear. But the more times I saw her, the more advanced my fleeing efforts became. At first I would run and she would chase me. Eventually I took to flying. Once airborne I took to dangerously weaving in between the branches of thickets of trees. But the terrifying chase scene was unrelenting because she readily adapted to my flights and feints, no matter the destination and no matter whether on or above ground. Strangely, she never caught me. But I couldn’t shake her, no matter my strategies.
Eventually, I came up with an entirely new strategy: my dreams turned lucid. At first, once that lucidity had occurred, I simply instructed myself to awaken. Which I did, instantly. The nightmare was over.
But her dream appearances continued as did the chases. Since I knew I could awaken at will, I began to perceive her, within my dream, as harmless. Once that realization occurred, I would turn and face her and basically tell her I was immune to her threats. I’d literally tell her that she couldn’t catch me or harm me. I told her she could either back off or I’d simply wake up. It was that simple. That always stopped her in her tracks. It undeniably neutralized her. After a few episodes of threatening to awaken myself she went away and has never returned.
After reading my brother’s accounts, I am left to wonder if she was the same entity that he was experiencing. I have no idea, but it certainly seems possible. I also wonder if this wasn’t some type of training session. Perhaps she was there to somehow motivate me to be more aware or perhaps she used her frightfulness to help me to develop some necessary spiritual skills, including the ability to stand up and face terror.
Looking back I can see this notion of being ‘un-harm-able’ or unable to be spiritually damaged took root in me, at least in a certain sense. Because, as I discovered many years later, it turns out that the defense against such attacks is the purity of heart. A pure heart is impregnable. That’s not to say we can’t damage our physical hearts, or that we can’t suffer from broken hearts. But a pure heart traveling in what the Buddhists call The Pure Land cannot be damaged. This purity of heart overcomes the threat, the fright. The threat backs down either involuntarily or on command. Because the pure heart acts as a protective bubble or shield, impenetrable.