Night Flying - Part One

The first time I left my body, I had no teacher, no book, and no one to tell me it was real - by Nicole Cody

Hello, Friends.
I ended up on a remote million-acre cattle station in the Kimberley, Western Australia, in my mid-twenties. I was surrounded by red dirt, boab trees, craggy mountains and wide open plains, rivers full of crocodiles, and wilderness everywhere. It had not been my plan to go there, so far away from family and friends. I was chronically unwell even then (but still optimistic that I would somehow make a miraculous recovery), and in a relationship that wasn’t working. It had been his idea to take these jobs. Trying to hang on to my marriage while the rest of my life fell apart, I’d followed him.

Looking back I can see what a gift this relationship was, and how it led me back to a lost part of myself, but at the time it was just hard and unhappy. I felt completely trapped, trying to make the most of the situation I found myself in and pretending to everyone else that it was fine, and I was fine.

Outside of work I spent most of my time alone. My partner was often away working nights and weekends. Still, there were other staff I could have mixed with. Each night at the main station the rest of the staff would gather around a bonfire, drinking, singing and yarning, but I often didn’t have the energy for that.

Also, one of the Aboriginal stockmen seemed to have taken an intense dislike to me. He was the first person to greet us, just past the river crossing, when we had first arrived at the station. He’d stood in front of me and spat out ‘You dat ting’ (you that thing). He’d shaken his head at me and then whispered again ‘You dat ting’. He hadn’t said it as though it was anything good. Then he’d thumped me hard in the middle of my breastbone with his finger, before turning his back on me.

After that, he’d gone out of his way to avoid me. If he was in a room on his own and I entered, he’d leave. He even threw pebbles up onto my veranda before he’d walk past my quarters. His behaviour unsettled me. It was one of the other reasons I preferred to retreat to my room in the evening, to read and meditate before bed. The stockman was at the fire every night, and he’d stare at me until I felt so uncomfortable that I would usually go back to my room.

Meditation had been part of my daily practice since I was eleven. It was my safe space, and lately it had become helpful for reducing pain and bolstering my limited energy. I was also hoping it might help me manage an unwanted psychic awakening that I couldn’t seem to stop, and which had accelerated in the months before we moved.

On this particular night I was too restless to sleep, so I sat down to do a meditation. In my hands I cradled a stone I’d picked up down at the river. The stone was some kind of quartz, smoothed by the actions of the water and its weight felt comforting in my hands. As I held it the stone became hot. Not tangibly warm but hot, as if I were holding an ember from a fire.

The feeling of heat travelled from my hands, up my arms and into my shoulders. From my shoulders it snaked across my chest and into my heart. I was sure it was not my imagination. The heat soothed my aching body, helping me relax deeper and deeper into the meditation.

After some time I went beyond the usual feeling of humming energy through my limbs and chest that I experienced during deeper meditations. The energy within me rapidly intensified until, without warning, I found myself looking down at myself sitting cross legged on the floor, head bowed in meditation. Somehow my conscious awareness was no longer in my body. It was a very peaceful feeling.

Energy was pulsing through me, throbbing in my chest. Was I still breathing? I wasn’t sure and, strangely, I didn’t care. I looked around our room, feeling my shoulders and the back of my head bumping against the ceiling, although the ceiling did not feel solid. When I tried to concentrate on the sensation the ceiling seemed to melt. With a smoky rush there I was, suspended in the open air.

A dozen feet below me was the roof of our building. Above me was the dark vaulted sky, thickly encrusted with stars. I could see the bright trails of sparks that shot out from the bonfire where a few people were still gathered. I moved my awareness further out until I became connected to the trees and the land. A strong feeling of peace came over me.

The more I tuned in to that sense of peace the more I felt connected to everything around me.

And I thought, but this is crazy, that I could feel the earth… breathing.

Mesmerised I gazed around, wide-eyed and curious as a child. I felt, rather than saw, my partner’s troop carrier as he drove along the dirt road near the airstrip, his friend in the passenger seat.

I wanted to fly out to meet them.

I wanted to...

I heard strange words in my mind. The Aboriginal stockman’s voice. His angry, frightened voice speaking to me in his own language.

Bang!

I crashed back down into my body with some force. Breathless, winded and disoriented I began to shake.

I couldn’t quite remember how to move my limbs.

As soon as I gained some kind of control of my body I dragged myself up onto the bed, terrified. All of the calm and the magnificent wonder and oneness I had experienced a moment earlier was gone. My heart beat so wildly I thought it might burst through my ribs. My mouth was dry, with an odd metallic taste.

I knew that somehow I had done something wrong. Very, very wrong. Part of me wanted to run to safety. But where? And anyway, my legs wouldn’t carry me. I lay curled on my side, fighting to get my breathing under control.

As I did I realised that I could still feel my partner and his friend in their vehicle, as though they were a bright bubble of light travelling along a map in my mind. As I focused on that my terror subsided. Here they were, slowing down at the last tight turn near the end of the airstrip. Here they were, coming up towards the station yard. They were almost home.

Their vehicle rattled over the cattle grid. I heard it clearly, and felt it on my internal map. A minute later the Toyota’s engine sounded along the road outside, headlights flickering along the wall above me as they drove past to the machinery shed. But I could no longer tell what was in my mind and what was coming from outside of myself.

I felt my partner’s boots crunch up the dirt road and onto the veranda. I heard each step, and felt it in my own body, as though it were happening to me. I lay perfectly still, barely breathing, so alarmed at what had just happened that all I could do was focus on my heartbeat, and the pulsing sensation of blood in my ears and my eyelids. While he headed for the shower I consciously pulled my energy back into myself and fell into a deep sleep. For the rest of the night I dreamed flying dreams and crazy snippets of things that made no sense.

When I woke just after four am it was as if my whole body had been run over by a bulldozer. My limbs ached, I still had that strange metallic taste in my mouth and I was dizzy and disoriented. I knew I hadn’t imagined what had happened in my meditation. I also knew that I couldn’t explain this one away as a symptom of my mysterious illness. It had too many hallmarks of the kinds of meditation experiences I had read about as a child – sometimes called OBEs (Out of Body Experiences), Astral Projection or Lucid Dreaming.

A realisation came to me with sickening clarity. When the stockman had called me ‘dat ting’ he’d meant that I was psychic, or whatever this thing was. He’d felt my meditations, maybe even before I’d arrived at the Station. He’d felt my clumsy energy work. He knew this dark secret inside me.

How could I tell him I had no idea what I was doing?

I had no teacher, no mentor, not even a book to show me what to do. Worse still, I had no way to control this psychic stuff or to stop it from happening again. And now I’d made him angry. Things were going from bad to worse, fast.

Over the next few weeks I continued to fly in my meditations and my dreams. But I couldn’t summon that experience at will. In my meditations I was clumsy. I bumped into things. I had no control over my height, speed or direction. It was fascinating and it also made me feel uncomfortable, as if I was doing something wrong.

In my dreams the flying was smoother, and I could go further. But the flying dreams didn’t happen often. I was sure it was my subconscious trying to make sense of my meditations. I felt like such a freak, and I longed for someone to talk to about it, or a library book that might explain what was happening to me.

And then one afternoon I found the Aboriginal stockman waiting outside my office. Awkwardly, without looking directly at me, he told me that his brother was coming to visit tomorrow. Would I be here, he asked?

Of course I would be. I never went anywhere.

That night, after a completely normal meditation where I did only breathwork, I fell asleep, and my night was filled with crazy dreams. One in particular stood out. An old, stout Aboriginal lady with a jolly face, and wearing a faded pink dress, took me flying through the night sky. She held my hand and we effortlessly glided above the sleeping landscape. I could hear the thoughts and the dreams of the people and the animals below. The air around us was silvery and slippery somehow. I don’t remember how I came home, but I woke up in my bed the next morning almost convinced it had been real.

The next afternoon a rusty old truck rattled up through the riverbed and into the station. The Aboriginal stockman stood in the middle of the road, just outside my office, waiting for them. He whistled loudly, and called me over.

I was introduced to the stockman’s brother, and then an old lady climbed down from the cab of the truck. She was barefoot, wearing a faded pink dress, and she was plump and jolly.

“Dis our Aunty,” the stockman said.

“Hey girlie,” she said to me in a raspy, strong voice. “I know you.”

I thought my legs would go from under me. It was the lady from my flying dream.

She came over and put her warm hand on my face, looking deep into my eyes. “I know you,” she said again.

“Hmmph,” said the stockman. “I told you. She dat ting.”

I felt like I was hollow, like I was being sucked into another time and space. I could hardly breathe.

The old woman patted my arm kindly. “I need a cuppa tea,” she said.

I just stared at her.

“Tea,” she repeated. “We need us some tea.”

Then she led me by the hand over to the staff dining room.

We didn’t talk about my dream, or about flying. Instead, she told me about fishing, and the little birds in the trees outside the kitchen. But mostly we just sat and drank tea, and every so often she would rub my back or pat my hand in a comforting way.

Before they left that evening, she promised she’d come back and visit with me again.

As I stood in the dark waving her off, she stuck her head out the window.

“I see you in your dreams,” she said. “I’ll take you flying.”

And she did.

I felt so out of control back then. Like such a freak. Psychic awakenings can feel like that — messy, and not the kind of thing you can easily share with others. But over the months ahead, Aunty helped me trust myself again. She made me feel that what was happening to me was natural and normal.

What frightened me so badly became, in time, a practice I trust now, and dearly love. In the next part of this story I’ll show you what night-flying became, and what it is for me these days. I’ll take you flying.

For now, if you’ve ever experienced something that sits outside what we’ve been told is how the world works, I hope I can help you to feel a little more comfortable about that too. Take heart. It might be part of your own awakening.

Much love, Nicole xx

If you enjoyed this essay, you may also like:
My Medicine Bag - Part One

My Medicine Bag - Part Two

The Baby Who Needed To Speak