I Walk With My Own Flame-The Forgotten Power of Dreams

There are doors we pass without seeing them. They open quietly in the night, not with hinges or keys, but with a change in the air. A dream does this—not the kind that flickers and fades in the light, but the kind that lingers in the bones. The kind that stays.

One night, in sleep, I saw a door. And through it, something stepped—a figure not entirely human, nor entirely beast. Pale, with yellow eyes that held the color of old honey and something deeper behind. It had fangs, like a bat or a demon-child, but it didn’t strike. It looked at me. Then it lifted a hand and beckoned, before vanishing.

by Elina

It lasted only seconds, but the moment pierced something inside me.

I did not know then what it meant. Only that I had been seen, and that I must follow—into what, I wasn’t sure. But something in me had stirred.

For a long time, I carried the image of that creature like a stone in my coat pocket. Not heavy enough to burden me, but always present. It became the seed of a painting—Shinigami—but I sensed it was more than that. A symbol, perhaps. Or a messenger.

There are selves that live beneath the skin—selves we forget in the noise of living. The world teaches us to be one thing: pleasant, consistent, understandable. But the truth of a person is not a single thread. It is tangled. It is myth and memory and shadow, pressed together like layers of wax in a candle.

And so I tried.

Not in daylight, but in silence. In the darkness behind my eyes, where thought begins to loosen. I closed the doors of the world and opened the one from my dream.

The first time I entered, I found only ocean. A vast, dark body without shape. I walked back out, disappointed, as if I had knocked on a door and no one answered.

But the second time, there was a door again. The same symbol etched into it—a circle, with something sharp inside. I opened it and waited. At first, there was nothing. Only deep, unending darkness. The kind that doesn’t press on you but stretches infinitely.

Then I saw it.

A figure, hiding at first. Slowly, it came forward. Half-beast, half-human.. Winged like a bat, or a dragon, or a fallen angel. Its eyes were yellow and unblinking. It had no clear gender. Its presence held a strange contradiction—sensual but austere, proud but monk-like. Untouchable.

 It did not ask who I was. It asked nothing. It waited for me to remember.

I asked its name.

It said, “You know.”

But I didn’t—not in words, not yet. Its gaze made the question feel unnecessary, as if names were a language it had once used and outgrown. I asked again: “Who are you?” It didn’t answer. It only looked into me, not at me.

Then it answered: “Self.”

Not your self. Just Self. Whole. Unfragmented. Unashamed.

I asked, “Why were you born from me?” It smiled, not kindly, not cruelly. A knowing smile.

It came closer and placed a long tongue into my hands. Not metaphor. Not vision. I mean it placed a long, physical, pointed tongue into my hands. I held it. Warm and strange.

When I asked why, it said: “To speak.”

Then I asked, “What do you never tolerate?”

It replied: “To be small.”

Not humble. Not still. But small—as in, hidden. Diminished. Unseen.

It said that it was born to be seen, to be heard, and to own the power it deserves.

Then it stretched its hand toward me.

“Follow me. Don’t be scared.”

I was scared. Part of me feared it would turn, bare its teeth, consume me. But something deeper knew: this was mine. Not foreign, not an enemy. A part long exiled.

So I followed.

We descended into a tunnel. Carved from black rock. No light. Only silence and the feeling of stone and breath.

At the end, a cave opened. Vast, circular. It was lit by thousands—millions—of beeswax candles in spiraling layers, like those in old churches. Their scent was thick and golden. In the center was a pond, still as glass.

We lay there.

It said: “You know me. You’ve known me way back.”

And I did. Not from a moment in time, but from something older than time. I wasn’t afraid anymore.

But the details began to fade at the edges. I told it I had to go. That I would return.

It gave me a lantern. A small flame flickered inside.

“To walk back through the dark.”

I took it. And I walked back out.

And when I reached the end of the tunnel, I felt sorrow. Not for myself—but for it. For the one who waits in silence, alone, behind the door we so rarely dare to open.

Jung spoke of the Shadow—the part of ourselves we reject or repress. It is not evil, he said, but simply unseen. In dreams, it often appears in distorted or animalistic forms. The Shadow is not our enemy—it is our teacher. To meet it is not to fall into darkness, but to retrieve the pieces of ourselves that the world told us were unworthy. When such figures appear in dreams, Jung believed we are being offered a mirror to what we must reclaim.

Most people pass through life without meeting themselves.

They wear a name, they speak in their mother tongue, they carry a body through rooms and cities. But the Self—the deep, mythic self—remains buried like water beneath stone. It speaks, but not in sentences. It speaks in dreams, in shadows, in strange gifts that appear on the path. A tongue. A flame. A hand in the dark.

Carl Jung once wrote that we do not become enlightened by imagining light, but by making the darkness conscious. The being I met—the one who waited through silence and dream—was not there to flatter me. It was there to call me downward. Into depth. Into truth. Into contradiction.

Erich Fromm said that dreams are the last uncorrupted expression of who we are. In dreams, we do not perform. We return. We remember. The dreamer is not inventing—they are uncovering.

And perhaps that is why it matters.

Because the world often demands performance. Surface. Politeness. We forget how to speak the language of the soul. We forget that some voices are born in silence, and some truths come fanged and winged.

What I met in the cave was not fantasy. It was recognition.

It didn’t ask for worship. It asked for courage. And when I stood to leave, it gave me something else—a lantern, with a single flame inside. To walk back through the tunnel, it said. To see in the dark.

When I returned from the cave, I felt something I hadn’t expected: grief.

Not fear. Not awe. But the sadness of parting from something I had only just remembered. I worried I wouldn’t find it again. That it would stay in the dark, alone, waiting for a knock that never comes.

But then I remembered: it gave me the flame. Not just to see—but to return. To keep the path lit, even when the world outside grows loud or cold.

The message it left me with was simple. It didn’t speak it aloud, but it hung in the air, warm as the beeswax:

You are not small.

You are layered. Remembered. You carry a tongue meant to speak, and a light meant to guide. You do not have to justify your voice, or seek permission to become whole.

You already know what you are. You’ve known it “way back.” You just forgot how to look.

If you have ever woken from a dream and felt the echo of something ancient—

If you have ever seen a figure in the dark, felt pulled by it, frightened and drawn at once—

If you have ever heard a voice within that doesn’t speak in words but in certainty—

then I ask you not to turn away.

Sit with it. Let it come to you slowly. Don’t rush to name it or understand it. Ask it what it knows. Ask it what it remembers. And listen.

Not all truths arrive in the shape of angels. Some wear wings of stone. Some crawl up from tunnels, with eyes yellow as fire. Some smile when you ask them who they are. Some say: Self.

And if one day, you find yourself walking through a dark corridor, unsure of what waits at the end—

then walk with your own flame.

You won’t be alone.