I’ve had nightmares for as long as I can remember, some so intense I’d wake up terrified and sweat-soaked, my heart pounding furiously in my chest. The nightmares used to be so bad I would be afraid to go to bed, afraid to watch horror movies, and often slept with my light on and the door open, giving me an escape route should the demons attack.
And, if you believe some people’s horrific interpretations of nightmares, they would only reinforce this fear, these defense mechanisms.
Some of this information really requires you to push the envelope in terms of suspending disbelief. James Odinga recently published a non-fiction novel titled: OVERCOMING SPIRITUAL MARRIAGES: A practical help for people who are sexually assaulted by DEMONS. What? Sexually assaulted by demons?
Hang in there. It gets richer.
According to Odinga, these incubus and succubus demons, who normally attack while a person is sleeping, have even seduced people in their waking lives, murdering their spouses “to continue their practice without much rivalry.”
Odinga’s not alone.
Noel and Phyl Gibson, authors of Evicting Demonic Intruders, write: “A young lady was lying in bed in a caravan when she heard a voice in her ear asking permission to have sex with her. No one was with her at that time. She readily agreed, then felt the weight of a body, was stimulated and came to orgasm without seeing any one. From then onwards, she was subjected to periodic internal stimulation.”
The authors provide other examples of these demon attacks: “A young man who had been deeply into all forms of sexual pervasions and witchcraft, ended owning two massage parlors, he confessed to having had naked female demons masturbate him frequently at night. He said ‘I used to think it was in my mind until I woke up and found they were really there.’”
In his book, Curses, Unforgiveness, Evil spirits and Deliverance, Rodger Miller says: “We have worked with several people who have these problems but didn’t know it was demonic (I am not aware of anything in the bible that specifically named these demons as incubus and succubus). There are vicious spirits, which can molest and torment individuals. Those attacking females are called incubus and those concentrating on males are called succubus. They often come in prominence in connection with witchcraft, spells, love potions and other curses of lust. They can also operate when people consciously and habitually experiment with sexual sin….The attacks are usually concentrated on the individuals while he or she sleeps and he or she may be awakened with fondling hands, caressing hot lips and tongue and other forms of lust-inducing stimulation.”
But, I’m not going to debate whether the aforementioned writers are actually documenting real-life experiences or not. It’s a common belief that nightmares are a terrifying and destructive force in our lives. As a horror fiction writer, I exploit that notion myself, but only for the sake of an entertainingly scary novel. Typically horror fans just love to be scared.
But in my younger years, that was my view of nightmares; powerful, destructive, terrifying, maybe even real. Until I began looking a little deeper. If you look at nightmares in the context of lucid dreaming (being aware you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming), nightmares become a hugely valuable healing mechanism.
Let’s say you were in the throes of a terrible nightmare, and suddenly became lucid. That would give you the power to step outside of the horror movie and view it from the outside looking in. This change of perspective from victim to spectator created by lucid dreaming would then allow you to come to grips with the source of the fear, control it, and lessen it considerably. After all, the nightmare is a product of your subconscious mind. It’s a part of you, wanting to be heard.
In one of my nightmares, I was being pursued by a rather nasty-looking killer. Or at least I thought he was a killer. Suddenly I became lucid, realized I was dreaming, and it gave me the courage to confront the attacker, confront my fear. I stopped and turned around to face him. He stopped so close to me his acrid halitosis-breath assaulted my senses. “What the hell do you want?” I asked. “Why are you chasing me?”
He scratched his stubble chin and ran a hand over his pock-marked face. His beady black eyes rolled around in his head. “How the hell should I know? It’s your nightmare.”
Then the attacker vanished, my fear vanished and I woke up with an epiphany of sorts. Nightmares are not to be feared. Nightmares are to be embraced.
According to lucid dream educator Charlie Morley, nightmares are powerful psychological statements. By confronting them in a lucid dream, we learn to face our psychological issues and fears. He says if we face them with lucid awareness they cease to be nightmares and turn out to be amazing possibilities for transformation and “clear-seeing.”
Notable psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung takes it a step further, using a term he calls “Shadow Integration.” The Shadow describes the part of the mind which we have denied, disowned, or outright rejected. It’s our dark side. But Jung maintains that while the Shadow operates as a reservoir of human darkness, it’s also a wellspring of all human creativity; not something evil or bad, just a part of ourselves that we are unwilling to face. Shadow Integration means going to the source of the fear and forming a relationship with your dark side.
By doing so, the shadow becomes a source of warmth and positivity rather than a destructive force.
During one of his lucid dreaming retreats, lucid dream educator Charlie Morley asked one of the participants how his night went. The man said he’d had a wonderful night, full of nightmares. Initially Morley thought the guy was crazy. But, after he developed a fuller understanding of lucid dreaming in the context of nightmares, he realized the man was right.
So, next time you have a terrible nightmare, try and get lucid in it; form a relationship with your dark side, and come to grips with your fears and phobias.
It might be the greatest gift you can ever give yourself or anyone else.