I was about 8 or 10 years old, I believe, when I had this dream, and it was the first dream in my life that had an impact on me that I would carry with me the rest of my life.

I am walking into my bedroom. I look down and see glowing footprints in the carpet--if I am recalling correctly, they were glowing green. At first I think that perhaps they are the footprints of an alien. I follow them to my closet door. I open the door. At this young age, I do not own many clothes, so my mother keeps many of her evening dresses and fur coats and such in my closet, all the way to the right. I reach in, sweeping my hand behind her clothes and sliding them towards the left of the closet. All of this occurring in slow motion, in a way that some movies portray dreams even though they rarely happen that way. All of my mother's clothes are brushed aside except one piece: her wedding dress, and I take a moment to gaze upon it and contemplate it. And I even wonder to myself if this is significant in some way, and if it is I ought to take note of it. I push aside her wedding dress. And behind that is a doorway into another room. The room itself is quite dark, despite that across it is a doorway into a hallway that is filled with blinding light: for some reason that light does not pour into the room. In the room are two rose bushes, one large and one small. There is red light glowing from the large bush, and green light glowing from the small one. I try to walk around the bushes, but find resistance. I immediately know that I cannot walk around them, but must walk through one of them. I walk through the large, red glowing rose bush. I walk towards and enter the hallway. I am holding my hand up in front of my eyes to shield them from the piercing white light. I keep walking. At some point, for some reason unknown to me, I stop. I put down my hand. There is a figure standing in front of me. I can only really make out the outline, and from that information alone this figure looks to be either Jesus Christ or The Virgin Mary. It opens its arms out to me--they were in a position of prayer to begin with. With outstretched arms it welcomes me, calling me to it. I look at this figure long and hard and think about this and contemplate it for a few deep moments.

And I decide to turn around and walk away. It all happens even slower. I feel good about this, really good, in fact, I feel wonderul and on top of the fucking world about this. I even smile.

Before I exit the hallway, I wake up.

I remember as a child thinking this might be one of those "near-death" experiences. And I always interpreted it as my choosing to turn away from death, and rather embrace and choose life instead, having some control over my life that way.

I call it my "anti-religious" experience because I now interpret as my turning away from religion and belief in god altogether. I had that dream when I was at most 10 years old. And it was before the age of 10 that I embraced my atheism. So that was my conscious decision to turn away from religion and theism. And I have never looked back. I have searched for deities in other places, but have always come out either empty-handed, or I find only illusion crafted by the power of the mind and strong desire.