Another restless night

Yesterday I met another person that fascinated me during dinner.  After exchanging introductions and pleasantries I soon realized that she is another active seeker on a path of her own.  What makes her exceptional to me is that she is Muslim thus challenging the notion of mine that Muslims are too ideological and unyielding in their beliefs to ease up enough on them to make an honest effort to find the Truth.  To take that responsibility upon oneself requires a willingness to accept that one's beliefs may very well be the source of their suffering.  This woman had  been to Hindu temples, Buddhist temples and churches to locate God that is unheard of in a person whose religious doctrine frowns mightily upon any such deviations of faith.  This woman is a rebel and her somewhat peevish mannerisms drew my attention and once the subject turned to spirituality she held my focus for the rest of the evening.  

That night at about 1 am I was awakened for no apparent reason.  Subsequent efforts to return to sleep proved futile, each sleep transition was thwarted by an gasping, abrupt jolt of panic.  I felt a sense of unease that I was not alone in the room and that something was trying to invade my being.  I remembered my first night in Madrid in that hotel room with my friend Lorena.  At that time I had the same sense of unease and it resulted in a stark paralysis that was terrifying and only broken by Lorena's intervention.  This time there was no one in the room to rouse me from that state if it occurred again.  I thought of the girl that I had met earlier that night, could she have something to do with this encounter?  She as well as Lorena both seemed to be on a higher spiritual plane than most people.  Was this presence that I felt a consequence of my meeting such people?  I recalled that Lorena too was unable to sleep that night.  I picked up my phone a typed a text message to the girl that I had met to ask her if she was having trouble sleeping but I did not send the message, I felt it was a little too weird since we had just met.   I got out of bed and occupied myself in the kitchen then laid in the family room by the window where immediately outside there was the junction of a brightly lit shopping boulevard and major street.  Though mostly devoid of activity, the light from the hotel and high rises across the street provided enough comfort for me to fall asleep without interruption.

The next morning I spoke with my father, I asked him how he had slept during the night.  I was stunned to hear his response, "I didn't sleep that well, there seemed to be an entity or something in the apartment...".  I could scarcely believe that he said that when I had not spoken anything of my own restlessness.  This sort of thing simply doesn't happen to people like me, the most ordinary guy who until 3 months ago was living the most ordinary life.  It is going to be a lot more difficult to dismiss my nocturnal feeling of unease as my imagination from now on.