Sleep•Dream•Fly: My Recollection of Past Dreams and Experiences

By Donna A. Heyen-Bishop

Sleep. Dream. Fly

Since childhood, I have been sensitive to the other side, as they say. I have had some pretty strange things happen to me throughout my life. To even talk of such things, someone might think you were tu sei pazza, which in Italian means youre crazy. I wanted to write this book to let people know that this is not a curse or some freak event but a gift . The more open your mind is to the possibility of something beyond what we can see makes it easier, I feel, to accept what is happening and to not be afraid.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524511777

Donna A. Heyen-Bishop

About the Author The author has lived in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and San Diego. She currently resides on Long Island with her husband and six rescued cats and two baby possums. This is her first publication of nonfiction. If you would like to connect: [e-mail] Cover photograph by Donna A. Heyen-Bishop, titled “Ethereal” Author photograph by Gil Sacks, Jo-Art Photographers

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

LEARNING TO FLY

I WAS BORN ON September 1, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York, during Hurricane Donna … and yes, my mother named me after a hurricane. Both my parents were artists, but I didn’t exactly live a Bohemian lifestyle as one would think having two artistic parents. But I was taught from an early age to view the world and everything in it with an open mind … not to go through life with horse blinders on, as my mother would say.

We later moved to Manhattan in 1964, with my new baby brother, Christopher, to the Lower East Side, which is now affectionately called Alphabet City. My first experience happened when I was around six years old. I was asleep in my bed one night when I opened my eyes and the tip of my nose was touching the ceiling. I turned my head and I looked over my left shoulder and saw myself sleeping in my bed below. I became frightened, screamed, and fell back into my body with a thud. My father came into my bedroom and asked what was wrong. I told him what I had seen. He explained that what I had just experienced, some monks have tried to achieve their entire lives with little or no success. He said, You just had your first out-of-body experience! This was the first of many for me.

I have had some pretty strange things happen to me throughout my life, such as out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, visions, and visitations, as well as past-life regressions, and I have even met my future grandchildren! I never shared any of this with anyone except a few close friends and not until I was in my fifties. To even talk of such things, someone might think you were tu sei pazza, which in Italian means you’re crazy. I wanted to write this book to let people know that this is not a curse or some freak event but a gift. The more open your mind is to the possibility of something beyond what we can see, makes it easier, I feel, to accept what is happening and to not be afraid. There is an old saying: The Veil between this world and the next is thinner than you think. Not exactly sure who said that originally?

CHAPTER 2

DÉJÀ VU

I REMEMBER GOING TO the A&P supermarket with my mother on the corner of East Fifth Street and First Avenue. Back in those days, the supermarkets were always trying to sell you stuff like pots and pans, dishes, and even encyclopedia sets. Depending on how much money you spent that week determined how many Plaid Stamps you got. Do you remember pasting those little colorful stamps in the books? So one day, my mother and I were in the A&P and whatdaya know … they had an encyclopedia set for sale! Sorry, I don’t remember how many Plaid Stamps it would have taken to buy the whole set, but I bet it was a lot. I gravitate toward the E volume that was on display that week, and on the front cover were all these Egyptian hieroglyphics, and it all made sense to me. I mean I was reading! I probably wasn’t more than six years old … maybe seven. I took the E volume, and I go running up and down the aisles looking for my mother, who is obviously shopping, and I said, Mom, can you buy me this book? She said something like, You just can’t buy one book. You’d have to buy the whole set! I said, But Mom, I can read! She I am sure said, What can you read? I pointed to the symbols on the front cover and said, You see these wavy lines mean water … and these other shapes mean, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc. She took the book from me and flips through the pages and had this funny look on her face. She closed the book and tells me that I can’t have it and that’s final … not another word, she said, as she stood over me with her finger pointed in my face. Looking back, I think I freaked my mother out, that I really could read those Egyptian hieroglyp hics.

I just remembered another occasion that freaked both my parents out. One summer, it was very hot and dry in NYC. It hadn’t rained in weeks. You could see the asphalt sizzling in the distance like a mirage, not to mention the stench of it all. One day, my mother said, Donna, why don’t you do a rain dance and make it rain? I’m a kid; it sounds like fun, so I start dancing. I am jumping up and down, going around in circles whooping and hollering, okay. Not more than five minutes later, it starts to rain and not just a drizzle—it was pouring! Now in this instance, I’ll say it