smiling through the eyes of a stranger

I met my pal The Wan True Wolf for an after work coffee and a chat. I've come through quite a difficult period recently and he knows me better than anyone.

My struggle is a very normal one. One with the shadow guy within. What he wants, what he says to me about myself. I don't like myself much when I listen to him, and I think that is part of my problem. He IS part of me and accepting him is something I'm trying to learn to do. The Wan True Wolf was sympathetic, but then he is The Wan True Wolf.

On our walk to the train station afterwards we saw this in a newly built apartment. What it reminded me of was a dream I once had, well not a dream but ... let me just lay it out as it happened.

I have this beautifully smart, insightful and spiritual friend who lives in India. We connected through twitter and have stayed in touch on and off over these past years. She was once helping me out during quite a tough time in my life, shortly after my marriage petered out. She had shown me some techniques and methods to try and help.
So this night I am asleep and I'm walking down stairs to a railway platform in my dream. I'm with GG an old friend of mine. We set foot on the platform and GG says he needs to go to the loo that's there in a wee building in the middle of the platform. Off he goes.
I go and lie down just around from the door of it and know I am waiting for him to emerge. Something does emerge, I can sense it behind me. I FEEL its presence approaching me. I turn around and it is a silhouette-like figure not unlike the chap here in the window (but no horns). I can't move as it approaches. It's got some kind of an urn thing, also in silhouette. It gets closer and closer. I watch and watch, immobile to its approach. Suddenly it tips the silhouette urn upside down over my head ....

... and I GASP awake, just like in cheesy horror films. My heart is pumping as if from a chase. I felt the thing tip something over me. I heard myself gasp (I've actually never done this, before or since!) I'm alone in the old marital bed, in the dark of the old family home empty but for me. But something has shifted. Some wee nettle of the mind that wouldn't let me settle there. I go back to sleep and wake up fresh as the rising sun's shadow the next morning.

So off and out I get and am walking along Dumbarton Road towards the train station. I approach a bus stop where - as ever - everyone is consumed with their mobiles. As I walk past it one of the people look up and give me the warmest, friendliest most loving of strange eye-to-eye smiles. Then goes back to her mobile.
I get the un-nerving feeling that I've just seen my friend in India smile at me through the eyes of a stranger. The world inflates. The road to the station stretches ahead of me. People hurry, cars grumble at the other traffic, the buildings lie still. I get a very clear understanding and sense that every single thing I can see is the same thing in a different form. Like a blown up balloon is all the same rubber. So, inside the surface of material is this consciousness keeping it expanded and in different forms, the way air expands and forms a balloon.

My reverie probably lasted about 6 seconds then slipped away from me. I contacted my friend about what has happened and asked her,

Did you just smile at me through the eyes of a stranger?

She laughed at my whimsy.

No, she said, it was probably just the Universe saying Hello.

What a friend! Guapa, that she is.