I dreamed I was attempting to find the seat of consciousness, which I believed was perched at the top of a stack of heads that sat on my head. Each head was smaller than the one below it, so I—or rather my awareness—could walk all the way to the top like I was climbing stairs. But I had to embody the understanding of each head before I could move up to the next one.

Finally, I reached the top. This is it, I thought. What I found there wasn’t freedom or understanding or release or enlightenment. It was a glass cube. My father sat enthroned within it eating dead worms. There was a lock with an alarm on the cube’s door. It wasn’t to keep others out and keep him safe. It was to keep him in and to keep others safe. If he broke the door or smashed the glass, the alarm would go off. Then what? I don’t know. He never got out of the cube. I never stopped having to carry him with me everywhere.