Five Dark Sides of Nightmares

Nightmares don’t just take place in rooms and alleyways with very little light, their very substance is knitted together with the fibers of darkness.  The word’s first five letters not only describe the time nightmares happen, (night) but describe many sides of the themes they present.  As I’ve delved into the dark world of nightmares, I’ve stumbled across so many dark sides, that I thought I’d share just five of my discoveries.

First Dark Side:  The darkness in nightmares are drawn to darkness within the dreamer.

Dark forms of entertainment, depression, and most other negative feelings and attitudes can attract nightmares.  Again, this is the principle of what we focus on we attract, is certainly applicable here.  This is often the reason people have nightmares about some aspects of a horror movie after watching one right before bed.  It has little to nothing to do with the fact that the person watched a scary movie before bed, and nearly everything to do with the fact that something within the dark entertainment found commonality with something within the person watching.  There’s a common connection.  Some ancient cultures viewed the eyes and ears and mouths as a gate of sorts.  What’s the purpose of a gate?  Simply to keep certain things out and allow other things in.  So then, they believe, that if there is no discretion in what we allow through our eyes, into our ears and out of our mouths, unwanted things can make their homes within us without us even knowing.  If those things are dark in nature, it is those dark things that are drawing in fear, hopelessness, even evil that make up the essence of nightmares.

Second Dark Side:  Nightmares can trick us into believing things we know are untrue in our waking lives.

This first begins when we are children.  We’re frightened into believing there’s something hiding in the closet or under the bed, and captured by fear to such an extent that we’re too paralyzed to do much of anything about it.  All through those years of childhood, we’re being trained to fear things that have no merit.  It’s as if we’re being trained to accept things without thorough investigation.

You’re an adult now, and the nightmares continue.  You’ve been conditioned to act a certain way when you experience a nightmare, and when you wake up from a nightmare.  Although you may not be aware of it,  the fear and doubt and hopeless you experienced while you slept can spill out of the dream and continue in your waking life.  So what? you may ask.  It was only a nightmare.  I’m the one who determines the direction of my life, I make my own decisions.  You are correct.  But consider this.  If your day holds an important decision that involves risk, and you’re used to fearing risk in your nightmares, your emotions just may kick into autopilot and make a decision that moves you in a different direction than where you want to go because of fear.  You’ve been tricked in a sense.  You’re being misdirected by your feelings.  Feelings that originated in a nightmare.

Third Dark Side: Children who are born with gifts in the dream realm are often plagued with nightmares.

I can’t tell you how many people who have gifts to interpret dreams are tormented by nightmares when they’re children.  There seems to be a strategy here.  When fear greets a person when they begin dreaming they want to stop having dreams to get away from the fear.  Since it’s nearly impossible for people to control whether they dream or not, some decide to get as little sleep as possible and choose to live a life of sleep deprivation because they don’t know what else to do.

There’s this idea that certain identifiers in peoples lives are visible in the spirit world.  This allows dark entities to identify the talents and gifts a person is given and they start working early to destroy it.  Nightmares begin in the formative years of life and by the time the child is moving into adulthood they’ve developed their own way to handle it.

How many people do you know who intentionally delay bedtime because they’re afraid of nightmares?  They could very well have a gift that is buried within them but not yet realized by the diligent work of dark spirits.  So where am I getting this idea that dark spirits work through nightmares?  Ah, that’s revealed in the fourth dark side of nightmares below.

Fourth Dark Side: The very definition of the word nightmare comes from the Middle English words niht and mara meaning night demon.

One day I looked up the meaning of nightmare in a dusty old dictionary I got at Goodwill some months before and got the shock of my life.  The first definition of the word was: a demonic spirit that torments and suffocates people in their sleep.  It’s a bit of an archaic definition, but if you look up the meaning yourself in a dictionary or online you will find that same definition, although it may have been moved to the last listing.  If you’ve experienced sleep paralysis you know just how real it feels when you awake and how accurate this definition really is.  Sleep Paralysis, if you’re not familiar with the experience, is a phenomenon where the sleeping person awakes to feel like something is holding them down and keeping them from moving even their mouth to speak.

 Fifth Dark Side: Evil wants to fashion you into its own image.

Given the definition above, it appears there’s something going on in nightmares that we may not have realized.  Evil is never neutral. Its purpose is to gain as much ground in your life as possible in order to carry out whatever it can through you.  I’ve noticed certain patterns in nightmares that have the dreamer stripped of their clothing and either painted over or redressed in clothing that doesn’t fit.  It’s vital to understand the allegorical nature of dreams in order to understand what is being communicated.  Clothes are something we wear, but ancient cultures also had the idea that we can also wear compassion or other positive attributes.  Following this rationale, it is also possible to wear evil traits that have been put onto us as clothing.

 Nightmares are not the last word.

Although nightmares are intimidating and terrifying, it is important to note that nightmares are only offering suggestions and dreamers do not have to follow the suggestions.  Now, you may be thinking that fear is one of the strongest motivating feelings we can experience. This is true.  But if we wake from a nightmare and call out to peace instead of stew in the fear created by our dream, it is a first step in living a life without torment.

Do you, dear reader, believe that is possible?  Have you had any of these things happen to you?  Share your comments below.  Who knows, we all just might be able to learn something from your experiences.  I have in no way exhausted this subject with this short blog post. 

EB

Photo credit: Michał Koralewski – mobile photography / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND