Banishing in the name of God

[Rain_Dancer]

This dream theme has been recurring intermittently for at least the past 2 decades...and since July I've dreamed this theme at least 6 times.

General theme is - feeling powerless against an invisible force that feels threatening to me (in the past it has been harmless poltergeist activity, recently has been escalating to paralyzing my body, and last night harming my children - then attempting to verbally banish it in the name of some "higher power" (God, Jesus, Christ, the angel Emmanu-el).  Sometimes I have been frozen, last night I felt I had mustered more strength than before in "fighting" it.

I'm interested in ideas about how to approach the dream.


Banishing in the name of God


This horrible vicious, invisible force has taken my two children, I remember an image only of a flash of them, one boy, one girl, about 4 or 5, struggling and being taken down a tunnel, slumped inside together (reminded me of “It” the Stephen King novel).  The image of them has a pale sickly green hue.

I am terrified..my husband and I are lying down, and I get up trying to find my children.  I’m saying desperately and hoarsely to my husband, “I need your help!”, only it’s difficult for me to wake him up, my thinking is fuzzy, and he isn’t responding.

I feel the invisible presence of something evil all around me, pressing on me, and I may have had a crucifix and I walked from room to room, with difficulty as I felt very very heavy, slow and sleepy, saying, “I banish you in the name of God” with as much strength as I could muster, over and over again.

I didn’t really believe it was working, though.

My body felt strongly contracted upon awakening.

[Leswan]

Hi Rain,

I've had several extremely similar dreams to this and also some OBE's where I have, in desperation, resorted to using the name of God or Christ to banish whatever was causing me the problem.

I say in desperation because I am not religious in the common sense of the word. In fact, prior to my OBE's I didn't have time for any religion or religious scripture. It was only OBE's that caused me to reconsider everything about my belief systems and world view and sparked some curiosity with regard to world religions.

For me, whenever I call to Christ in harrowing dream / OBE scenarios (which is usually an internal call - if that makes sense) I am hugely empowered and filled with a tingly energy.

I'd be interested to hear what Tony says about these dreams of yours. I spotted an article he's written about his meetings with Christ, but haven't had time to read them yet. 

[Rain_Dancer]

I read Tony's dream dictionary entry for "demons", and what stood out to me is this:

"Although many dreams about demons are probably reflecting anxiety feelings and struggles we have with moral issues or sex, sometimes the battle with demons can be about our body fighting a virus or bacterial infection. See: devil  under archetypes."

He then goes on to describe a dream that is so similar to mine that I can't help but take notice, the dreamer says in his dream, "“By the power of God within me, I dismiss you” – or words to that effect."
 

Suddenly the connection between many of my dreams over the past few months came into focus - they have been increasing in intensity, featuring being surrounded and feeling crowded and overwhelmed by dozens to hundreds of black people...first they were just in my space, then I was trying to get rid of them and couldn't, and most recently have been at first trying to get in through a locked door and then streaming in through a back way.

In addition to this, I dreamed the dream I posted, of someone being sick and resisting healing for her own reasons, plus another recent dream where someone was saying to me, "remember, T's car has seasonal problems, remember how his car had a flat tire last year.

I was exposed to black mold at work a few months ago and immediately developed a sore throat and painful cough.  I don't have health insurance or funds for a doctor (probably wouldn't see one if I did), and it took me nearly a year just to find a job that pays slightly more than minimum wage, so I didn't want to rock the boat or say anything.

I'm thinking all of these dreams are reflecting allergies and black mold reactions.  I've been feeling really terrible this week and left work early yesterday.

A recent dream of being invaded by flocks of black men featured a burned carcass of a dog, intended to scare me and warn me not to use my own dog to protect me, or it would end up the same way.  I'm taking that to mean not to try to use strong drugs (masculine/forceful methods - I've used a lot of pseudoephedrine and anti-histamines in the past) so today I picked up a homeopathic remedy.

In addition, yesterday I went back into the dream I posted above - at first I felt deeply the distress of not being helped by the husband, and repeated, "I need your help!" over and over until I felt a release and began to cry.
Then went into the rooms to "banish" the presence, and repeated "I banish you in the name of God" over and over and over again, going deeper and deeper into the emotion of it until I was exhausted. 

While I was doing this I noticed another connection to another recent dream of a crazy black woman, and someone explaining to me that she is soothed by repetition...what a web!

At some point I realized I had been floating in a state of timeless peace for a while.


No intense dreams last night, I still felt pretty crappy last night and this morning...I'm going to take it easy and allow myself to be lazy and stay in bed all day if that's what I want and see how things play out.

[Tony Crisp]

Rain_Dancer – What wonderful responses and I do not want to take any of what is said away – excuse me for my clumsy phrasing, I am still learning to speak and express in words after my stroke.

I want to quote to you one of the first dreams I remember and how it worked out.

“I dreamt that my wife and I were in bed. She was asleep on my left against a wall. I was lying awake wondering whether there were any ghosts in the house. Deciding to test this, I said aloud, “If there are any ghosts, show yourselves.”

Nothing happened, and feeling a bit smug, I close my eyes in readiness to go to sleep. As I did this, the door to my right creaked open, and two black men entered. They looked as if they had risen out of a grave, almost as if the flesh was hanging of them. I was very frightened as they came towards me with their arms reaching to me. At the time of this dream I was a member of a group teaching me about the inner life, and one of the things I had learned was about the said power of the sign of the cross. So I made the sign of the cross, and said one of the words of power used by the group. At this the two black men disappeared. I felt, not only great relief, but also as if my knowledge had given me some power. I suppose, once more, there was some smugness, as if I was strong enough to meet anything.

So I lay back in bed ready to sleep. As I did so, once more the door creaked open, and in came the black men. This time none of my waving of hands in the sign of the cross, and all my magic words, stopped them. They reached me and their hands went around my throat to strangle me. I woke up screaming and terrified.”

About four years later I dreamt the following:

“I was on a red underground train, sitting at the end of one of those carriages with doors only in the middle. I noticed on the seats opposite me some cardboard boxes full of books and pamphlets. On looking at them I realised that they were mine. I had left them there on a previous journey I couldn’t even remember. I got up to leave the train but two well-dressed black men blocked the gangway. One of them - the furthest away - who looked whiter than the other, moved aside in a friendly fashion. The other remained in my way and I bumped into him trying to get by. Then I said “Excuse me” three times. He made no effort to move, in fact purposely ignored me. So I pushed by him, not roughly but firmly. As I stood at the doors waiting for them to open he rushed at me in anger. He went for my throat but my hands linked and we grappled together but I forced his hands down and felt a match for him. It went through my mind as we struggled, “This is what yoga has done.” (That is, given me the strength to hold my own against the coloured man.)”

It had taken me that long to meet what were my own terrors. And what I gradually uncovered was that the terror was about my own sexual urges that I had forcefully buried. Those black men were my own natural urges that I had pushed into the grave of my unconscious; natural urges that I had turned inwards against myself. I even more slowly realised that there is nothing evil in our inner world, but forces in us that have been turned into a direction that is negative. All the holy words cannot protect us from meeting ourselves and what we have done to ourselves. We have been educated educated to believe that there is so much evil in us and the film industry has deepened that. We have been taught that we all have original sin. If we have it is only from the current views of our society. My mother terrified me by shouting at me that if I masturbated I would DIE!! That is how I created my terror. For seven years I managed to kill out my natural urges – I was truly castrated and buggered as a growing young man. I had to face death to come alive.

Of course there is evil in the world, it flows out of people who have themselves created it in them by turning what was natural into something that is flawed. Whole governments are sometimes expressing such deeds.

Tony

[Leswan]

Tony, that's a really helpful explanation. When you say there is nothing evil in our inner world - where is the dividing line between our inner world and the wider non-physical environment? I've not been able to find one, and yet I'm certain that I've been outside of my own mindscape. 

I have found that in my inner work it can be helpful to spend a few minutes 'aligning with Christ / Higher Self / God' whatever label you choose to describe our highest aspect. When I wrote that it was an 'inner call' to Christ which empowered me, I mean that literally. I say something to the effect of "In the name of Christ, whose, grace, love and humility fills me, whose power and light protect me...". This isn't an outward call asking for JC to come and bail me out of trouble, rather, it is an acknowledgement of what I know lies at my (ad everybody's) core and this reminder (using the story of Jesus Christ) helps me to connect to this, linking me directly to my highest potential.

[Rain_Dancer]

I'll post more later, but for now I'll say this..
Tony, what you've said here resonates with me.  I am aware that allergies (overreaction of immune system to a non-threat), fear of sexual energy, inner conflict, illness in general, are all related.

Since going back into this dream, the tone of my dream has changed noticeably, including a sexual dream the nature of which validated to me that my sexual relationship with myself is improving   

Last night's dreams were of worlds upon worlds and unfolding and spiraling eternally.  Dreamy and blissful!

[Tony Crisp]

Thank you for being part of this Forum.

All I would like to add is something I came across yesterday and published on the site. If you have time please read it: http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/dreaming-of-myself/

Tony

[Rain_Dancer]

This line from "Dreaming of Myself" touched my heart and I teared up a bit:

"You need to find innocent love, not grasping or jealous, possessive, and bending love."

Looking back over my dream journal entries, it's surprising that it has only been 10 days since that dream, along with a series of equally intense dreams.  
Along with dreamwork, for a few weeks I've been practicing a (daily 1-hr. minimum) meditation of acknowleding and letting go of whatever I'm feeling, seeing, thinking, hearing, focusing often on my most intense memories (both painful and pleasurable).

Last night I experienced brief lucidity and flying, more relaxed than previous lucid dreams where I wanted to do everything all at once and would get in a tiz!

I also dreamed this last night:

>>I am sitting on a comfy couch, there are a few women on either side of me.  They are looking to me for guidance.  I begin to lead them in a grounding meditation, making some gestures and movements with my hands and bringing them to my heart and 3rd eye.  I instruct them to repeat after me,
"I am Here,
in my Body,
Right Here,
Right Now.", 3 times.  

I am sitting cross-legged and while doing the hand gestures, I lean over and lose my balance a little and laugh as I sit back up..."don't do that part!", I joke.

I notice a woman to my left is reading an email on a laptop, from someone who is saying negative things about me.  That I stole the grounding meditation from a website, and some other things alluding to me being a fake and not original.  I lean over, trying to see who the email is from, while the woman laughs and has a “so what?” attitude, she sees the bitterness of the person who wrote the email, and doesn't seem to be bothered by it.
We all stand up, it’s time to leave.  I feel very connected to these women, and as we get up and move around to go, I light-heartedly lament, “We didn’t even get a around to doing Dream Theater!” (which made me laugh when I woke up).<<<


I have benefited so much from your work, Tony, thank you!

[Tony Crisp]

Thank you.

I am benefiting from being here too, exposed to so many dreams, and me trying to understand them and comment on them.

Tony