Possession And Dreams
I dedicate this feature
To the Former Me
Tormented as I was by Demons and Devils
Contents
The Devil of Public Opinion
Possession by Conviction
The Struggle with Sex
The Stranger Inside of You
The Child in the World of the Vampires
Meeting with the Devil
Possession by a Dark Shape
We are all Possessed
The Connections that can be Heaven or Hell
Possession and Dreams
In our everyday life, things such as love, anger, fear, dependence or similar interests, frequently link us powerfully with another person. Again and again I have observed that when a couple are in love, they often start saying exactly what is in the mind of their partner. This suggests they may be sharing a unity or togetherness at some level of their consciousness.
Also, a few people experience exactly the same dream on the same night, as in the example.
‘I dreamt my sister was attacking me with a pair of scissors. She backed me against a wall and stabbed me. During the day after the dream my sister phoned me at work and said she had an awful dream in which she stabbed me with scissors.’ D.
But sharing feeling links is different to feeling possessed. Love links us with another person, and maybe even allows a blending of minds, because we want to experience that. Possession refers to an apparently outside being or influence controlling us, perhaps against our will, or even without our awareness.
As an example of this, Mrs M. F. dreamt:
I was going mad. I was crawling around on my hands and knees and wailing and behaving in a most peculiar manner. I actually felt mad. But inside my head a tiny voice kept saying, “You aren’t completely insane yet — there’s still a chance.” People around me kept saying to each other, “We think she’s possessed by devils.” My sane voice then said, “Make the sign of the cross. Cast out the evil spirit.” I kept trying to do that but my hands wouldn’t or couldn’t complete the sign. I woke still feeling disturbed.
This dream clearly illustrates the frightful conflict going on between M. F. and what she experiences as a controlling influence.
Such dreams are frightening and need to be understood. The power we struggle against must be dealt with in some way. In doing so the subject needs to be clarified, and this alone can help.
Some years ago I listened to one of my stepdaughters talking with my wife. My wife started to comment on her daughter’s current boyfriend. Suddenly my stepdaughter butted in with strong feelings and said, “Don’t even say anything mum. Whatever you say influences me so much I can’t even think for myself.”
The Devil of Public Opinion
Being influenced in judgment or action by somebody else is extremely common. Perhaps all of us are deeply influenced by public opinion, or what someone else will think, feel or do. A married man or woman taking a lover will usually meet their new love carefully or secretly. Their actions arise out of knowing how other people would respond. And how many of us can undress in public, or even walk along a crowded street without socks and shoes?
The degrees of such influence range from mild to the point of us not being able to do something even if we wanted to. Losing our will to that degree could be seen as possession.
Because dreams portray the different influences within and around us as external beings and things, such a controlling influence could easily be portrayed in a dream as a possessing entity.
There are many other things that “possess” us in this way, many of them unknown to us unless we confront them. If we do, a struggle of will or decision usually occurs.
I once met a reformed alcoholic, John, who told me that his doctor had given him an ultimatum. The doctor had said that John must either give up alcohol or die from liver failure. John then stopped drinking and found that the doctor had got the ultimatum wrong. This was because, when John stopped using alcohol, he started meeting feelings and anxieties he had suppressed most of his life through alcohol use. He started experiencing the everyday anxieties about paying his bills, the feelings about his past and failed relationships, about his own behaviour and who he was in the world. These were difficult for John to face, so he was tempted again and again to use alcohol to suppress or deaden such feelings. Therefore John changed the wording of the ultimatum to, “Feel my feelings or die!” As can be seen, John did not confront his difficulty until he stopped using alcohol. Sometimes it is an event or change in life circumstances that confronts us with what possesses our will.
How many of us use alcohol, cigarettes, painkillers, prescribed drugs, or street drugs, for similar reasons? Perhaps we failed to face the depression arising from a failed marriage, difficulties in parenting, anxieties about financial security, or in meeting our own past. If so, what is it that possesses us? After all, we are not fully in possession of our own mind or soul if we need foreign substances to deal with our own feelings and fears.
Take a while to think about this. How many people use alcohol, tobacco, or antidepressants? What is it, as with Mrs M. F., that is driving them mad/depressed/unhappy?
Well, I know from personal experience that it can be a feeling that we do not have the strength, the resources, to deal with our own pain or depression, our own inadequacies. See Avoid Being Victims
Possession by Conviction
Having worked for many years as a counsellor using dreams, one of the awful forms of “possession” I have met in several people is something we call conviction. It is a positive word, but conviction can be a terrible influence to be possessed by. For instance, some people I dealt with over the years were convinced they were mentally ill because of the personal problems they faced. That conviction was a major cause of their misery and conflict. Once that conviction was melted and they recognise themselves as human beings with difficulties to deal with, they could begin work on reconstruction.
In a similar way, we might be convinced, or possessed by, a set of beliefs, as for instance religious convictions. And I am talking here about convictions of any sort that make a person completely rigid, and unable to take in or listen to any new experience or idea.
Sometimes we use such convictions like castle walls, to defend ourselves against anxiety, against uncertainty, against actually meeting the vulnerable and perhaps young and lovely self we were before the castle walls went up.
One of the most deadly convictions, one pressed into us frequently in today’s world, is that we do not have a central core within us, out of which healing and growth can emerge, out of which we can gain a sense of unity with the beautiful mystery that is the universe and our life in it. Without a sense of that core, we have no feeling of strength to face our own depression, our own darkness or childhood pain. Instead we have the conviction we are victims of a harsh life. As the words of the song say, “Life’s a bitch. Then we die!”
Whatever we may believe about that core, or the human spirit, we have incredible potential, amazing resources. But very often, what holds us back from accessing them is, as with John, the fear of meeting our feelings in any depth, or the lack of tools to deal with them when or if we do. Working consistently with your dreams is a path that can lead you to real transformation. It is an approach that is totally related to your own situation and needs in life. But it must be done in a way that brings you into a practical meeting with your personal history here and now, and does not fly off into fantasy about what you might be spiritually, or in past lives. See Life’s Little Secrets
The Struggle with Sex
However, there is another form of apparent possession arising out of ignorance or being misinformed. The following dream illustrates this.
Example: I am 18 and recurrently dream my house is haunted or possessed by the devil. I am not religious, but in the dreams with the devil I try to remember prayers to scare him away. In every dream my family and I have to pack our bags and moved back to the old house I lived in as a baby until 7. The dreams really frighten me and I can’t sleep. Barbara.
Barbara is a young woman, and is faced with either meeting herself as she is now — a sexually maturing young woman — or returning to a way of dealing with life relevant to a seven-year old. What Barbara is in conflict with here, and fears as something alien, is her own sexual drives, her own urges toward womanhood, toward independent life.
I grew up in a society, a religious indoctrination, that portrayed sexual urges as dirty, as degrading, as something to be controlled. I, like Barbara, in fighting my own natural urges, felt possessed by the devil. Fortunately I was helped to see my own inner drives — sex, anger, the desire to exist and flourish — as natural and not devilish.
Although Barbara says she is not religious, she is obviously talking about her surface sense of herself, because in the dream she prays for help. As with Mrs M. F. the sign of the cross will not cast out our own internal urges and splendid life energy. After all, it has often been the church that put the conflict there in the first place as a means of social and individual control. So how can the cross help, unless we associate it with love and life? See Amulet
In 40 years of dream work, I have not personally come across a case of possession in which there is an actual external entity fastening on the person involved. If I did come across such a case, I would still first explore the person’s own desires, their convictions and inner conflicts. I would try to uncover what desperate longings, dependencies or fears they are not admitting to themselves. These, I believe, are the underlying causes for the apparent possession we might be facing in our dreams and in life.
However, I would be very lacking in my understanding of possession if I did not take the description of it a little further. Also, I would be hiding the truth of it if I did not admit that I have experienced it myself.
In my own case, while dealing with personal problems, and delving into the unconscious to find their roots, I have passed through a whole territory of my inner life dominated by demons that were in various measures possessing me. It took me a long time to understand, or perhaps to put into some rational definition, what these demons and possessing influences were.
My understanding today is as follows — during our life we give tremendous amounts of time and energy to certain interests, ambitions, longings and desires. Everything we do influences our body, our brain, and produces changes. Anybody who gives a great deal of time and effort to the study of colour and form, actually alters their brain structure to some extent and becomes much more perceptive in those areas. What this means is that the brain, the mind, has set up a sort of focal point around which all the information, feelings, and flow of energy, circulate. Sometimes, these interests or ambitions become so powerful they have a life of their own to a certain extent. In a very real way they possess us, and divert energy toward the goals, hopes, longings, involved in them.
The Stranger Inside You
The unconscious, especially in its processing of dreams, depicts these focal points and their influence as actual things. They might be depicted as a dark shape, a demon, or a powerful figure trying to direct your activities. These dominating influences may actually be detrimental to your fundamental nature, to your happiness and health. As such they really are possessing influences sucking our energy. For instance a man might be so dominated or possessed by the desire to earn enormous sums of money, then he works himself to an early death.
In earlier cultures, they did not have our psychological language to explain these phenomena. Nevertheless, human beings like ourselves suffered the consequences of them, were haunted by them, and made ill or afraid. These cultures developed ways and means of dealing with them appropriate to their times. One of these is illustrated in the New Testament where Jesus casts out the demons. Those demons were almost certainly possessing psychological influences such as I have described. Such an influence might be a focal point for hate, for murderous rage, or even for a crazy irrational state of mind. In the case of Jesus, we see a clear unconditional love and attitude to life confronting the possessive and dominating influence of what we have called the demon. This state of unconditional living and clarity still works today. If you can arrive at such a state of mind, and maintain it in the face of the awful influence of the possessive forces at work in your nature, they will be “cast out”. This may be fast, or it may take time, but it will happen. Sometimes these influences in us exhibit extraordinary power in their hold over your mind and emotions, and in their being dealt with we face a great deal of uncertainty, and sometimes emotional upset. See Autonomous Complex
But there is yet another level of possession that is much more frequent than I believe our medical profession admits. To illustrate this I quote a dream sent to me by a woman.
I was in what looked like huge white ribs. In the ribs was a big heart beating. Beyond that was my homeopath. I could hardly breath, struggling to live. I could hear the heart beating, but as I listened I could also hear another heart beating. It seemed to me it was my sister’s heart connected to my own invisibly. The homeopath came forward and stretching open the ribs, reached into them, took hold of the invisible heart – it was like a shadow behind the other heart – and pulled it out. Immediately I could breath again and felt I was whole. In everyday life my sister and I have been incredibly linked, even to the point of having cramps at night on the same nights, though living in different parts of the world. I had become ill recently out of this connection, but as soon as I had this dream I was well again, but my sister became ill. She has just been diagnosed as HIV positive and is dying.
What this woman experienced is not uncommon. Our links with certain people are much more profound than we usually admit. A friend recently telephoned me to talk about a feeling that he was deeply possessed by his mother. He is a man in his fifties, but nevertheless feels his mother is an incredibly powerful force in his life. He said he feels almost as if she is a demon living within him, penetrating his very cells, sapping away his resolve and positive feelings.
These links can be formed through close relationship, such as that between parent and child, but also through enmity, and certainly through sexual relationship.
The Child in the World of the Vampires
There is a very relevant point in ones development as a child, that explains another aspect of possession. In many cases it appears that as children there is a point where our personal will develops, and through sheer necessity to survive, conflicts with the will of mother and others. It is possible that prior to this the will and awareness was in union with the mother or its objects of love. At this point of separation the will or identity has to be defended lest it be swallowed or vampirised by mother or adults. Possessive, over caring, or dominating parents can especially be cast in the role of the vampire.
Put simply, as a child your will might not be strong enough to confront that of the adults around you. In imagery of dreaming, it would seem that your very strength is being sucked out by an attacking vampire.
As a child, the means of defence against this are many — anger — hate — revulsion — a temptation to become invisible. Therefore you might develop a strong repulsion or anger against your mother or father. This enables you to separate yourself from them, and what they want you to do.
What has struck me so forcibly as I explored this situation, is that when we come to the point of learning to love as an adult, we face again this original behaviour pattern of defence. We defended originally against the loss of identity, now, to love, we come again to the melting of our identity in another person, and the original defence and fear arise once more — in fact they had never gone — until we dissolve them by conscious understanding. At such a time, the images of possession, of demon or vampire arise again, along with the feelings connected with them. See Individuation
Meeting with the Devil
Having watched a person meet the devil in their dream exploration, what they arrived at is very helpful in understanding any feelings about being possessed by the devil. She saw that her lack of self esteem, her self doubts and depression were like an open door that allowed destructive feelings and fears to enter. She also saw that this awareness of evil living in her, along with the attitudes or feelings described, were in part inherited from her recent and ancestral family.
Once this is understood it is easy to see that other things leaving such a door open are childhood trauma or abuse, and the attitudes and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and our culture. When this ‘devil’ enters us it can lead to self criticism, negative comparisons, the denial of ones own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, crime, murder and the infliction of child abuse and trauma. Such feelings, such entrance of foreign and destructive forces, is seen by our unconscious as the devil, demons or even a vampire. They suck away the life force and create illness in our body. Recognising them is very important for our health and person wholeness. This is called a dybbuk in Jewish folklore. Remember that devil is lived spelled backwards, and evil is live backwards. They both suggest the turning of your life force back on itself. See Satan; Secret of Time and Satan
Possession by a Dark Shape
Many people either see, feel or dream about an awful dark shape that threatens to envelop them. This can terrify them as in the past it terrified me. But understanding where such awful fears emerge from is helpful. Here is a dream that has in it the dark threatening shape.
Example: I woke from a strange dream this morning . It was set in a small semidetached house – at least that was the feel of the place. My young children lived in the house, and there was a terrible sense of poverty and fear. All the windows were blacked out with curtains, so the place was constantly in a state of semidarkness. There seemed to be one or two Indian men, but always in the background somewhere, in a slightly threatening way. In one part of the room, in the darkness, a tall black figure stood. That is, draped in black, in what looked like a gown flowing from the head right down to the floor, with the face hidden in a pool of darkness.
One of the Indian men had somehow procured a great deal of money, but this was hidden or kept upstairs in rooms that the children never ventured into. There was a feeling that the man would kill anybody who got near the money. Also at some point it seemed that my young son had either hung himself, or he had been violent with the other children and while he slept they put a noose around his neck and suddenly pulled him upwards.
This dream was explored at length and here are the comments on what was realised.
“I am feeling in myself what the children are. I sensed them as the many flowing urges, curiosities, feelings that are in me from youth. Today this developed further. The overall and underlying background to the dream became conscious. It is all about fear, apprehension, not daring to reach out, extend myself. I recognised that feeling because at present in the relationship with my partner I went through that darkness again recently. It is made up of many different feeling states, but part of it is that contact is too painful to go anywhere or do anything. At times the only thing I could do was to read or to watch a film to completely divert my attention from this dark room, this dark place in myself.
Another aspect of it is the fear that I will do something wrong and will become the victim of somebody else’s distress or anger. Of course that links with my mother. I never saw her in that light before. Of course I recognise that she in some ways smashed me emotionally, but she had never seemed to be somebody who threatened me or punished me much in an exterior way. But as the fear clarified I could see that the threat she used was that unless I were good, unless I did exactly as she wanted me to, she would put me away from her – the ultimate threat. This of course terrified me. So some part of me cowered in that dark room. My youthful intelligence, curiosity, desire to explore relationships, all these were turned back on themselves as illustrated in the dream by the aggression that my son showed, and the children hanging him. Such held back feelings often turn into murderous rage.
Looking back I can see that I gradually, and especially in teenage, possibly from the wonder of reading such things as science-fiction and books about yoga, shut the door to that room, to that house with its latent threatening death all the time. So I encapsulated that place, sealed off those feelings, and those fears. I kept it all so dark by my own efforts. The only way to escape was to be somebody else, to be another sort of person! But of course, in the background and behind the scenes, that dark room has always been there. I revisited this part of myself in and through my relationship with my partner, and the fear I faced was again that I wasn’t loved, that there was no future in the relationship, that I am trapped in the dark place of loneliness and fear, and that whatever I do will antagonise another woman friend and bring down some sort of punishment or judgement on me. So I have recently had to confront all these and pass through them. My sense in this is that it allowed the dream and what it portrays to surface and be dealt with. And this was why and how I managed to transform the place into the dwelling of light and change.
The dark shape was of course my feelings of doom, the unspoken threat, and death. The Indian man or men represent forces or things that I couldn’t deal with, or are foreign or alien to me, a further sense of helplessness and being trapped. And all the money is really the potential that has been locked up, the value in my being that has never been recognised or used, and is there now to become a part of my life as it is has been in recent years.”
As can be seen, when it is understood there is nothing to fear, but an awful lot to digest. The fear before it was understood was so bad it paralysed the dreamer in his ability to act.
But here is another type of dark shape that is the essence of what many people fear. At first the dream:
Example: Then the scene changed and I was walking up the several flights of stairs to get to the attic room. I was holding a small dog in my arms – one of those rather flat nosed toy dogs. I arrived at the attic and put the dog down. But now the attic was empty and dark. I could feel my hair stand on end and my skin ‘crawling’. Actually I feel it all again as I write this. The feeling arose because there was an unformed dark shape creeping around at the far end of the room. The dog was really afraid and jumped into my arms.
Then the dark creature leapt at me, transforming into a massive mouth with huge fangs and awful demonic face. Immediately I leapt at it in the same way and smashed against its face with my own huge fangs. This utterly disarmed it because it had felt, in its primitive way, to terrify me. It surprised me too that I could so immediately transform into a monster when necessary. 
Then I approached the dark form, back in its original condition, trying to find out what it was and why I had met it in that way. Gradually I experienced its situation. It had originally been a human being, but had gradually lost its humanness and become this slinking darkness. I was slowly able to help it realise that it could once more take the path to become human if it wanted to. Then it asked me how that could be done. I told it that first of all it had to come out of this dark and empty place to mix with people. The human environment created a different surrounding and influence that would penetrate it and help it to change. It also asked me how I knew about its condition and how I could transform into its own monstrous form. I told it I had once experienced that condition, and that’s how I knew it was possible to come out of it.
This extraordinary dream doesn’t need much interpretation. It shows that with courage and love you can meet almost anything. The love shown was in his way of dealing with a threat and showing the person the way to a new life.
When you sleep and dream your voluntary muscles are switched off. This can mean that any dream activity that not only originates the spontaneous images of dreams, but also gives rise to all the muscular impulses that are part of the dream movements, so it would seem to you that an alien force or being has taken over. In other words because it is spontaneous, and because we do not believe that anything other than you can originate movement, it feels as if something other than you has taken over.
Also dreams arise from a very deep part of us, the Core, from which all the impulses of existing, growing and surviving originate. Even when you are awake such processes control you – for instance your breathing is only partly under your control, but all the vital things are purely unconscious and you are thereby controlled all the time. Try holding your breath and see how strongly you are possessed by Life itself.
But of course you are used to those everyday massive controls. However, sometimes our Core wishes to make us move, to control our movement, usually in sleep, but sometimes while awake. These movements are in fact as natural as the urge to breathe, but because in our culture we are so out of touch with how life works we are often terrified of spontaneous movements. Such movement are about growth of some part of us that we have not allowed before. If we can allow these and not react fearfully, then we will be shown the wonders of our life and how it originated – what is usually called the unconscious. For a fuller description ‘see’ LifeStream.
The Connections that Can Be Heaven or Hell
From the point of view of the deepest teachings about the nature of human life, we are all, at our very core, connected. Such links are therefore part of our very nature. But many of them are positive and supportive. Usually, the negative link, such as those described above, only occur because we, perhaps in some unconscious way, invite or support it. But of course, during our infancy, such a depth of feeling connection is natural and part of our development. It is only in adulthood and in the attempt to become independent that such powerful merging can be a threat.
Having experienced such a linkage, I say again, that the discovery and expansion of the unconditional attitude in your life is the prime force for dealing with these life sapping links. And by unconditional I mean a way of living that does not cling, does not desire to possess, looks upon jealousy and rage as a sickness, and reaches out to love and life despite pain. Possessiveness, jealousy, the rage at being left or abandoned, of being overlooked, can all become focal points for the energy that becomes a possessive demon. This is sickness — and until we admit it as such, it can still dominate us and rob us of the richness and fullness our life could attain otherwise.
There is another explanation about possession in the feature Autonomous Complex
May love go with you on your journey.
Comments
Okay this happen two nights in a row. Okay the first night i had a dream i was getting attacked by possessed people and i was trying to fight them off and tried to run off. The second night i dreamed that i was in this house like in those paranormal shows where they go into places over midnight and investigate well yeah i was in that type of scene and i was with some people i knew but couldn’t recognize who they were i knew i was with one girl i had a class with and in the dream we were in this house and i kept hearing voices in the house and a lot of paranormal activity happening in the house and i only heard that one voice was “get out before i turn you all possessed” and we ran out of the house into the car and green lights was happening in the house and one girl said she forgot something and she had to go back in the house and we tried to stop her but she went inside anyway she went in the house and she yelled out the window “got it” and then we yelled hurry up and then she got possessed and we drove off. and that’s when i woke up feeling very disturbed.
Cheyenne – Unfortunately we all develop the most awful habits, and fears felt in dreams are simply that – awful habits. After all we are alone in our ‘head’ when we sleep and dream – nobody else at home. So our fears are habits that tend to play at certain times.
But we can deal with them. Nothing is possessing you in your dream except the fear of being possessed, which obviously you are not possessed. We can deal with such fears by a little education and a way of dealing with our fears.
So please read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dream-yoga/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-dreaming/
Then practice the following till you see you can get through it: http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions/#FaceFear
Tony
The dream: Normally it’s myself watching me sleep in whatever room I am in (I’m starting to think the me that is watching could be some kind of astral projection I do when I sleep, which is slightly frightening in it’s own). What’s concerning is that there’s a dark figure laying right next to me. The dark figure slowly wraps its legs around mine and then pulls on my hair, it’s yellow eyes dancing with amusement. The sleeping form of myself opens their eyes quickly with a look of panic on my face. I feel almost paralyzed since I know this is happening in my sleep but I can’t scream, I can’t move. I can’t do anything to wake up. It whispers to the form of me that was sleeping “I want to keep you”. I watch myself reply “No. I don’t want to be possessed.” The figure cackles then and in a harsh voice says “Everyone’s possessed and you’re next” before biting my shoulder with it’s sharp teeth. I instantly wake up from that screaming from the hot pain I feel from the bite on my shoulder and from the fear in my heart.
This dream only occurs when I’m alone. It never happens when I’m sleeping next to my husband. The one time it did happen when he was home. But he was playing a video game while I slept next to him on the couch. I don’t always remember waking up from this dream or screaming. But he said I shot up from the spot I slept on and sat on the floor screaming like I was being attacked. This dream thing only gets weirder because my sister has the same one almost exactly at the same time if we’re both sleeping. Even after I moved, it still happens to the point when we’re calling each other crying because we’re not sure how to handle this. She never sees the figure speaking to her because in her dream she sees me standing there reaching for her but my fingers cannot grasp hers. But the figure in hers says the same thing it says to me in mine. I don’t know what this all means. It’s quite frightening.
So i had a dream last night long story short my step sister was asked by my brother to look through this hole and say what she sees she does and says nothing its dark, then i look through and at first its black then i see green eyes in the darkness and then i start hearing these sounds in my head like yells or loud horns not sure. once i pull away from the wall my brother yells at me “you hear it” then hold me down to the ground and something inside me tells me to get away anyway i can and my brother keeps saying let it out and i start throwing up and feel something deep inside of me come up like im trying to throw it up but nothing is coming out shortly after throwing up more and the same feeling of something come up i pass out and wake up. once i woke up i felt as if someone or something was watching me.
I woke up from having this dream about two older ladies that I believe one is my mom. They are either mentally insane or possessed. But they keep killin people. There is this tree in the back yard with a hole in it and I keep looking there and finding really disturbing messages on them I get a creepy evil, demonic feeling from them. Im constantly in fear of them and trying to save them. But I also try to protect myself and others. I feel like they don’t know I know about them being possessed or insane. I have had similar dreams before.
I have a recurring dream about people or things around me that are possessed or that I am fighting the devil. And in these dreams, I always have Holy Water in hand to sprinkle on the possessed entity, but before the dream concludes, I wake up. I am very bothered by this and I would like to know what this means.
MY – This is a sign that we have all been infected with the ancient teaching of the church that were originally spread to make people feel dependent upon the church and it ministers. It taught that we were all sinners and open to attack by the devil.
Dreams are a magical mirror in which your innermost hopes, longings, fears/terrors and genius are made real. They are made real as external environments, people, animals and relationships. Unfortunately this wonderful virtual reality world is usually felt as dealing with other people, as externals, like something that can damage us, or something like the Devil that can possess us. But the greatest truth I have found in exploring dreams – not interpreting them – is that we are alone with ourselves in the world of our dream. If we can acknowledge and admit that our terrors we dream are actually our past hurts that we have not faced or ideas we have been infected with presenting themselves for us to heal; that the ghosts and demons that can rampage about our night are embodiments of our fears and ideas presented to us as truths; that our wonderful visions and insights are an expression of our own infinite potential, then we can walk a pathway to finding what we really are.
There is not harm in the devil you meet in your dreams, and by spreading holy water it is obviously doing no good. It is repressing the feelings and not facing them. You can honestly walk up to the devil and say to him/it, “I recognise you for what you are, you are my own life energy turned against myself through fear –devil spelt backwards is lived. You are the life energy I will not allow to live in me. So now show yourself to me.”
The church did a great job in telling people their sex drive was wrong – the life energy turned backwards.
Tony
i had a dream with demons i think. i thought i woke up from the couch and i was extremely disorented i could barley stand or walk i was puking everywhere. iwas trying to get to the light switch. i reached it then i was fine. i went to the kitchen and my dogs attacked me i had to kill them. then my little sister came in [she is 8] and stabed me, i had to kill her aswell. It seamed extremly real, i could feel the pain completly. PLEASE RESPOND
Leland – When you dream you create a totally real virtual reality. It is not like computer generated virtual reality because in your dreams you are totally immersed, feeling all body sensations, emotions, sex, all together. I call it The Magical Dream Machine. If you had been in such a machine, and on coming out of the total involvement of these moving experiences, you were told you had created it all yourself – that on the black screen of your consciousness you had, out of your fears, habits, secret longings and passion; out of your immense store of memories; with your unbelievable range of feelings and creativity – you had given form to urges and processes in your body and made this rich world of experience, what would you feel? Would you disclaim responsibility? Would you consider it meaningless? Would you realise what amazing creativity and potential you have?
So it wasn’t demons attacking you, it was the embodiments of your own fears – probably created by ideas you had been taught about religion and devils. And that goes for the other events in your dream. Of course you were vomiting – you were sicking up all the horrible fears you had taken in. If you had eaten something poison you would have vomited it up also. But in this case it is poisonous feelings and ideas you have taken into you – poisoning your soul.
Then the dogs are another illustration of how your helpful instincts – your dogs – have been destroyed by attitudes and ideas that have put you out of harmony with yourself. Even your feelings about your family have been killed out by something you have been thinking, planning or feeling.
Please look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if within your deepest heart you feel good about yourself. If not, then go in a different direction.
Tony
I had a strange dream last night. I dozed off on the sofa before bedtime and dreamt something, someone, was trying to enter my body. I’m not religious but I recall being somewhere around people I recognised (but don’t remember now) and I starting to recite a prayer. Suddenly, I was back in the room looking at myself lying on the sofa and could see something positioning itself in the same position I was lying in and then seemingly sliding into my body. The feeling was overwhelming. I didn’t awaken abruptly – I opened my eyes slowly and felt like I could still see whatever it was entering my bod. So I stood up slowly, got a drink of water and went up to bed.
It seemed so real because I’d fully awaken and it seemed to be still happening until I walked away.
Any ideas?
N – It sounds like, because you were viewing yourself at a distance, out of your body so to speak, you witnessed a dream sequence that is a representation of a reality. Every image and person in your dreams is an expression of your own life process. As such it is alive and intelligent and is something sent to help you. A dream is like a projection from a movie projector, except that you are the projector. Everything you see as outside you is coming from you, your emotions, your fears, your beliefs, your joys and explorations are all you, clothed in the dream images and drama.
So it is normal to see pictures of something you felt. That it was scary doesn’t mean it was evil. After all people get terrified when they wake up in sleep and cannot move. I got terrified when I first experienced leaving my body. It is because we are completely uneducated – ignorant in fact – of how our mind works and uses images to communicate with our conscious personality. And ignorance breeds fear.
So what you saw was probably your energy self slipping back in having left your body – remember that these are all images trying to show something.
The fact you could still see it happening while you were awake is a common experience. It is that the dream process can occur while we are awake. So it seems what we see is outside of us – as it is in dreams. Again, not knowing how the mind works can cause distress.
Tony
hi, i had a dream last night that i heard a scream from my living room outside. I found my freind in some sort of coal bunker with a knife loosly in her chest! I carried her inside and the knife fell out, she was weak but fine. We walked up the garden outside and a strange character with long greasy hair came out and slashed her several times killing her then collapsing to the ground i was furious and when i went to stab her murderer i coul;dnt and felt helpless.from what i can remember i was then camping with my cousin in a feild trying to find fire lighters to light and we finally had a fire, it was late and i had a missed call and message, my mam had texted me saying “im not angry your out late without telling me but just to warn you there are bad people out there” the time was 12:43 i think! next stage of my dream was the possession part! my sister was possesed and the same figure which killed niamh was controlling my sister, my sister kissed me lustfully at one stage which was very strange! There was a message written on wooden strands of which i could only read half of and it said “If satan where to write Mary a letter it would say…” I snapped a peice of the wood and they bought got very angry! This is all i can remember and i had a weird feeling afterwards please help?
Brian – I feel you have been troubled by dark feelings and urges. That is why you heard the warning scream and witnessed the death of your friend. I believe she represent the warm feeling of love that has been destroyed in you, perhaps by recent events. The greasy haired man was your own dark mood.
The message from you mam was another warning not to allow such dark feelings to possess you. The same greasy haired man/your dark feelings, possessed whatever part of you your sister represents.
The fight goes on in you between whatever is haunting you from your dark feelings and the you that fights it. Your mam is a strong image in our dream so hold onto that. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk as it will help.
Tony
I’m not sure if my dream falls under the examples shown for “Possession And Dreams” but it sure did feel like someone was controlling me.
In my dream I was flying… not by will. I would be doing my own thing minding my business and all of a sudden I would start flying… it felt like someone was dragging me around in space. I remember that in one part of my dream I was in my house, sitting on a chair in the living room before I started being lifted off the ground. I was led to the office where my father was sitting at his computer. I kept flying around the room. I held out my hand so my dad could try to pull me down… but I kept going around in circles.
I don’t remember much more. I just didn’t like not knowing what it was that was making me do this.
Tracie – When you sleep and dream your voluntary muscles are switched off. Also dreams arise from a very deep part of us, the Core, from which all the impulses of existing, growing and surviving originate. Even when you are awake you are controlled by such processes – for instance you breathing is only partly under your control, but all the vital things are purely unconscious and you are thereby controlled all the time.
But of course you are used to those massive controls. However, sometimes our Core wishes to make us move, to control our movement, usually in sleep, but sometimes while awake. In our culture we are so out of touch with how life works we are often terrified of spontaneous movements. If we can allow these and not react fearfully, then we will be shown the wonders of our life and how it originated – what is usually called the unconscious. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/the-lifestream/ for a fuller explanation.
Tony
Thank you. The link you referred me to was very helpful.
I guess I have to learn to let go and not feel the need to be always in control.
Tracie – I think we are usually programmed to be in control all the time because we are never introduced to how Life functions in us. Maybe it would help to use http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-arm-circling-meditation/ as it can be a great way to learn to let go.
I feel that we need to control and we need to let go – at different times.
Tony
I once had a dream were I was in a Bamboo thicket looking for my cat and I got lost in the Bamboo thicket and I was walking aimlessly for hours and then midnight hit and I heard a twig snap behind me. I turned around and I saw a woman she was wearing a white kimono and she Had long black hair Draped across her face and she has no eyes and Blood was running down her face. suddenly she smiled at me showing Grotesque Blood stained teeth and I started to run away I tried screaming but No sound came out Suddenly she Showed me a mirror I saw my face and it turned into hers I ran the opposite Direction then I suddenly was in a room full of mirrors and I saw her face. then she was Behind me and she smiled and said “Your next.”
I dont understand what this dream means but I’ve been having this particular dream for months now. what does it mean?
Skye – This is obviously a threat of death. The bamboo thicket is you going deeper into yourself, your mind or unconscious. There you meet an image that is also obviously about death. Then she says, “You’re next” which is another death threat.
I have faced such horrors myself, and the easiest way to deal with them and transform all that energy expended in running away is to turn round and challenge the figure/death to do its worse.
A dream is only an image we create ourselves. And we often create awful images of death. But when we challenge it, it has no power – because the only power it has is fear. And remember fear is only an emotion, and challenging death is actually facing your own fear and meeting yourself. Please read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dream-yoga/
Tony
Hi there.
To begin with, when i was a lil younger i used to have these “falling dreams”. I would be AWAKE in bed late at night and all of a sudden id get this cold chill throughout my body, (still awake) and knowing that i am awake even made it more scary. Anyhows i would grind my teeth with the shivers and just at that moment id fall. Straight through my bed (still awake) could feel myself falling through a hole in a huge dark cave, than suddenly im back on my bed :(. I am now 27, these dreams started around 15. They went away for a while, but these last two years i been having the same type of dreams. Lately ill be sleeping and that cold dark chill will haunt my body, even in my sleep (as strange as this might sound) my sub-conscience feels the chill. Not effecting my dream, as in where and how the dream is. I really dont know how to explain this or even search for an answer on the net. so here it is.
This has happened at least 4 times in the last 6 months.
My Dream
I find myself in some sort of arena, more likely an old broken one, like the coliseum, but smaller. I looking for my girlfriend and somehow i know where she is, behine one of the pillars i see a “clown/ragdoll” type of figure putting her head out from behind the pillar. She has some sort of power over me (the cold dark shivers i spoke of earlier) (becos of my previous dreams, somehow my mind has told me when this is about to happen(i know im not making any sense here) but at this point my eyes are open. im still in my dream but my eyes are looking to the window (next to my bed)
i try call for my girlfriend to warn her of this dark scary figure, but right there and then this ragdoll/clown charactor RUNS to me (not fly or float towards me) but runs towards me. My body is now frozen and in my dream as well as on my bed (eyes still looking out the window) i cant move!!! at this point i know i am awake and now petrified, i try scream out (not in my dream ) but out aloud.. My throut is somehow blocked with this cold shiver and icant even get a word out!! suddenly i see this charactor approch me at this point only, does she pounce on me. My body jerks (im am really telling u the true here) my body litterilly bounces off the bed.. (not off as in off the bed but like a jerk) My eyes at this point roll back with my body still frozen and my words failing to speak. And then…… i sit up in my bed and find myself tormented.
Telling this to my BEST friend this morning, he laughs at me saying it was just dreaming… but i eplained to him that i was awake.. still thinks i was dreaming.
Sir, i know we all have our issues and what not. but really really i would like a professional opinion on this dream. If this was a once off feeling in a dream then yes i will take it that it was just a dream… But its happening more nowa days..
I dont go to church or even pray for that matter, I do believe in God and Jesus… But i cant help feeling that i have something inside of me.
Everything i have said here is the truth.. I swear on my life and everything dear to me… this is all true. Can u help me figure out what it is that is happening to me..
Thank you
Brendan Leak
Brendan – You seem to have a mixture of two conditions that can be very frightening, but they need not be when you understand what is happening.
The first is the experience of going to sleep and yet maintaining awareness. So you can see the window. I developed the same thing when I was about 15. But fortunately I didn’t find it frightening. But I think that yours is not so clear cut as mine. So you have a dream character, the ragdoll appearing.
The other condition is called sleep paralysis. It is usually not noticed by people because when they go to sleep they are unconscious. But in fact while we are dreaming our body is paralysed; our voluntary muscles are switched off. That means you cannot move, speak, etc. Because you can maintain some awareness in sleep it causes a lot of problems for you. But I know people are okay with it and can learn to work with it.
I have to be quite honest and frank with you. The only reason the dream/visions are difficult is because you fear them. When we go to sleep most people lose awareness, so they cannot know what is happening to them in sleep. And of course most people accept that as normal. But what happens if one starts to wake up in sleep? A whole new world of experience opens, one which is very unlike waking awareness. And there are levels of it too.
When it occurred to me I felt as if I had completely lost my body and had no awareness of hands, arms, head or legs. Instead I felt as if I was a huge expanse of awareness. I didn’t feel afraid but felt I had found something I had been looking for. But I had already read about the teachings of yoga in a book The Fourteen lesson in Yoga Philosophy, so I had some idea of out of body experience. And that was what saved me from fear. But without that most people fear they are dying – because that is what waking up in sleep is like at first.
So I would suggest you read something like the book I mentioned or the feature http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/
Hopefully this will gradually take away the fear, and without that you have a wonderful gift enabling you to explore a wonderful and fascinating new world – one that only a minute proportion of the world have any idea of.
Tony
Last night, I had three dreams in a row about possession. I don’t remember every single detail about them, but I remember most of them. The first one is the least clear- I remember that I was in a house with a bunch of people and we heard noises coming from downstairs, so we all turned to look. When we turned back, the blinds had opened. We all went outside because we were scared. All of a sudden one of the men changes into a dark blue color and switches back and forth between that color and a dark green one. He looked at everybody in a very mean looking way. One person went up to him and stabbed him. The blue/green guy fell down and then got back up. He said, “You really think thats gonna work?” So he stabbed the guy and then I woke up. The second dream was me my sisters. What I remember from this one is me seeing the devil in different forms, which they couldn’t see. In one part, I saw him as a little eskimo kid walking in my sister’s back yard. I went to go kill him, but when I picked it up, it was a stuffed animal-like toy. I ripped it up. I remember the devil laughing at us because we kept falling for his tricks. I only vaguely remember the end of it, but it did result in me being possessed. In the third dream there was this girl with her family. My point of view kept switching from me seeing the whole scenario, to me being the girl. The girl started arguing with her parents or something like that and then walked halfway up the stairs where there was a platform. She broke a vase down the steps, and her parents started freaking out. The girl started playing terrifying head games with her mother. The mother then caught the girl in a lie saying something about the girl’s bra. The girl replied a logical answer, but the mother said it wasn’t it wasn’t the girl’s bra, it was her’s. The girl then went to attack her mother and I woke up. -I really want to know what these dreams mean. I haven’t been remembering dreams very often, and I just think its weird that the first time I remember my dreams in a while, I have three dreams in a row about possession, all in the same night. Does anyone know what these could mean?
Thomas – Possession means that some force that you cannot really control is pushing you to do things against your will. But considering that many things are not under our conscious control that is not surprising. To understand it you need to have a good look at yourself.
If we say that you as a conscious being are the centre of masses of things that act upon you, you can begin to understand. So there you are standing in the middle of a grand circle, and there are things coming at you, such as:
Sight – hearing – sensation – smells – thoughts – emotions – tastes – dreams – instinctive drives – ideas and impulses coming from the media – supernatural experiences – spiritual insights and so on and on.
We usually think of all these as ‘me or ‘I’ but of course they are not. They are a whirling world of impressions. Some of them are easy to meet, some are terrifying. And the ones that disturb us we try to block out. And dreams are just like that. But the impressions in dreams that arise, whether they are in the form of emotions, fears, wonder, or suppression, are all clothed in images. And all those images are masks that are actually all you – your emotions, fears, and things you are trying to hide from or suppress in you.
So, supposing you try to hide from or suppress a powerful instinctive urge, what would you have? After all an instinctive urge is very important and stronger than your own will – try holding you breathe and see how strong it is. Then you have an image that seems as if it is possessing you.
In the past we gave the sexual impulse and anything that pushed us, the name and image of the Devil. Here is a dream I have quoted elsewhere, but it does answer your question.
So you need to ask yourself what are you restraining or suppressing to cause so much pressure and lead to these dreams.
Tony
I keep having reoccurring dreams about my mother being possessed. She is currently suffering with a prescription medication addiction. The most recent nightmare I’ve had is where I am in an unfamiliar place. Everywhere around me is dimly lit and I am unable to see far ahead of me.
Then someone who resembles my mother and is very similar to her. This woman’s face is distorted and resembles that of a demon, I beg her to stop and to leave my mothers body. She laughs in a demonic way and starts screaming in a different language and then says in English that she’ll never leave this body. I keep begging for help but no one comes. I hear a voice somewhere off in the distance saying that she(my mother) is mine. I try putting on her a cross but that same voice says he can’t help you now.
After she then takes a knife and starts slicing her palms. I am now sobbing at this point and this womans body starts to become distorted an twisted. Then a white bulldog appears and tries to attack me.
And then abruptly I wake up, feeling very disturbed and afraid.
What could all this mean?
I regularly have dreams about being possessed.
They aren’t all the same and I don’t remember every detail in the morning.
Last night I dreamt I was possessed and I was with my family – I think we were under water – we were floating around?
I kept talking to people but every so often then devil would speak through me to people and my family and I couldn’t control it – my voice changed when I spoke and my body felt tight and twisted. After the devil had spoken through me i would apologise to who I was speaking to and say “it wasn’t me it wasn’t me” – I don’t remember much else as I have these dreams so often they don’t even bother me that much any more.
In fact I’d say 75% of my dreams are nightmares – in which something horrible is happening to me or around me, being chased, killing people, people killing me I literally have the worst dreams!!
I am constantly waking up in the middle of the night with what some people call ‘sleep terrors’ where I can see in my room – sometimes with a figure and I can’t move… I have to literally push and push my body to try and sway and then eventually I’ll break out of the hold – what are these all about?
I had similar strange childhood dreams where I would wake up in the night and something felt as if it was round the corner of my door – I’d feel people sitting at the end of my bed and one time I had the quilt over my head and something ran their fingers across my face and then pushed on it.
Do you have nay idea what or why i have such strange dreams all the time?
Jenna – I believe all this horror and nightmares arise because you do not understand who you are, and what is Life.
This really a case of re-education, because everything you describe is about repressing the natural you and trying to be what you are not. And I am not saying you are really devilish – quite the opposite.
When I was meeting this myself I was possessed by creatures that had climbed out of the grave – so I would wake up screaming. I felt so ill also. But it can all go. When I really learnt to explore my dreams, I discovered that it was my sexual feelings I had repressed, and so they were presented to me as rotting bodies.
But first of all the Devil is simple Lived backwards and Evil is Live spelt backwards. And that is exactly what they are, Life turned back on itself.
First of all read Sleep Paralysis by putting it in the search box. You also need to read about the difference between the waking and the sleep and dreaming state. For instance, to quote from my book Dream Dictionary, “In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream.”
I realise as I read people’s dreams that I will have to start all over again with very straight forward explanations. But believe me Jenna you are fine, and I wish I could show you what lays behind the surface if your dreams. But come back to me with more questions if you need to.
Tony
A couple nights ago, I had a dream that scared me half to death. I was at my school at night time with these two girls whom are in my marching band with me. I’m not really friends with them though. I barely talk to them. Nobody was in the school except us and this crazy old lady. We decided to leave the school to go to a movie… the old lady followed us. The tried to take me and attack me… nobody was saving me… they were all into the movie or something. I punched the old lady and she fell to the ground unconscious. We left the movie theater to a camp site. There she was again… We went back to the school hoping we could just go home. We saw her slowly following us into the school. We all ran and hid in different spots. I went into the gym and in the gym was this door that held all of the sports equipment. I hid right under the door. I heard the gym door open… so I looked outside the equipment door and saw her looking for me. She finally opened my door and grabbed me. All of the sudden, I was possessed. I had a demon’s face. The old lady was still dragging me around. I remember screaming in some freaky language at the two girls and they didn’t do anything. They left me… alone with the crazy old possessed lady. The next day when I woke up… I printed out an Ouija board hoping to ask a spirit what it was about. Nobody was there. I began twitching and my hands and feet were twisting in very deformed ways. I couldn’t go to sleep that night because I thought something was going to happen to me… so i tore up the Ouija board and threw it away. What the heck is going on?
Kelsey – If you are going to use the ouija board you need training in ways to use it. Because all you are opening yourself to is the fears, fantasies and past experience that is seeking to be known and sorted.
The old lady is probably the left over troublesome experiences you had with your mother and grandmother. Please do not be afraid of such images. They only chase you because you are afraid. What they really need is to be understood. Love is a great power, ao direct it at the woman and ask her how you can help her and why she has disturbed you like this.
Ask me for help if you need it by imagining holding my hand as you go into this. I have met so many ogres that turned out to be wonderful friends when greeted with courage and love.
Tony