Need help with nightmares

Dream Journal
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Hey everyone! After my previous post, I have been dream journaling quite consistently.

But last night, I had a nightmare: In the dream, my foot was cut off by the ankle for some reason and I could see the bare bone.

There was a lot more detail in that dream but unfortunately I can’t seem to remember any of it because after I woke up, I was trying to forget the dream. This was all happening unconsciously but I knew that I was in fear and my brain was scrambling to try to forget the dream.

What do I do in these situations? How do I handle nightmares?

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Hi, I’m not an expert when it comes to nightmares. When I have them I usually refer to it as my dark shadow approaching. I have a long history of observing nightmares. They are some of my favorite dreams because I know they provide a great opportunity to release into fear. I think what I do when I wake up from them immediately after can be used by anyone.

As soon as I know I woke up, I freeze and release into the fear, allow my imagination to go fully into it. WHAT IF my dream was real and it was happening now. Go towards everything that induces any spec of fear because the enemy of fear is a mind willing to run to it. Running at fear headfirst causes it to dissolve, in my opinion, which is much better then keeping your mind at a lower vibration, being consumed by it.

A cool side effect of this is it places you into a state inbetween dreaming and being awake where you can interact with interdimensional being. Often those ones in particular try to add to the fear, just something to be aware of. I let them touch me and stuff while I stay in a ver removed, passive observation. If you have no fear of them they will show themselves to you and will ultimately dissolve naturally.

I believe this happens due to what Charlie Morley stated in his book ‘Dreaming Through Darkness’. When you acknowledge your shadow approaching and work with it, that is all it asks. Fulfilling its desire to be seen and acknowledged allows integration, a new level of fearlessness and whatever other lessons it has to teach us during that time.

If you are not comfortable enough to do this right away when you wake up say a father, son, holy spirit type of thing right when you get up to what ever your personal belief is in.

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Thanks! I think that’s a great way to handle it. I do that in my daily life but I forget all that in my sleep lol. Will try that next time

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‎Edge of Mind Podcast: A Deep Dive Into The World Of Nightmares With Clare Johnson on Apple Podcasts excellent podcast with Andrew and Clare Johnson, Clare has a whole book on it!!

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Thank you! I’ll check it out

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Excellent advice and I like resources in the above posts. For me, I don’t have many nightmares and in recent ones, I have gone towards the shadows and embraced “the monster” which usually dissipates the negative energy. I describe one such nightmare here.

Recently, however, I reacted quite differently. I was riding in a train and it was a very small car. No seats were empty except one. Many seats seemed to be covered with dried dead bodies, animals and humans, and there was one person who was inviting me to sit. It was a man with his head cut off. He had scissors in his hand his head looked sorta like Gomez from the Adams family. He offered to cut off my head with his scissors. I thought about it, and thought about sitting down. I became lucid and realized what he was asking. Instead of getting my head cut off I woke up with a scream. Then, it was exhilarating! I realized that I should have let him cut off my head so I could see everything from 360 degrees. I felt sad that I didn’t complete the act.

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A few days later I was in a dream and tried to catch a balloon. When I reached for it found myself on the floor with an agonizing thud and nearly had my head taken off, sustaining a broken collarbone and a sore neck! I believe I was trying to get back to the former dream in the latter one. I don’t believe the dream was trying to hurt me, just fulfill my intention!

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@_Barry thank you for sharing your dreams! It’s incredible that you were calm in such a gruesome dream and took it in a positive way. Also love the colors. What’s your medium? Is it chalk? The colors and shades are beautiful :heart:

@jessicamurby thank you so much for that episode. I’m halfway through that and there is so much gold in it. I rescripted my nightmare and I feel so much better now :pray:

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Chapter 11 - dreams of light is calling :slightly_smiling_face:.

"Behead yourself! . . . Dissolve your whole body into Vision: become seeing, seeing, seeing!

RUMI

We’ve come to the edge of the map. We’ve explored the eight consciousnesses with meditations that help us access very subtle dimensions of the mind. Now let’s venture into contemplations and meditations that allow us to dip below any level of consciousness and into wisdom, the clear-light mind that underlies everything. At this level of perception, you will reach the bottomless bottom line from which everything above is naturally seen to be illusory. Here at the base of the mind exists sublime and subliminal territory where we will purify consciousness and experience a world of empty form. Ultimately, as a way of viewing the world through the eyes of an awakened one, we’re headed toward the experience of being centerless-or experientially headless."

-Andrew Holecek

Love the artwork!

:+1:

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Colored pencils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Had another nightmare last night and it was much more scary. But this time I didn’t take it very personally and I felt more alive

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:+1: Nightmares offer great opportunity for growth from what I have experienced with them. I forgot who said it and exactly how it goes but there is a saying about the spiritual path being that of a warrior’s path.

Learning to observe and trying to work with fear will pay off exponentially in the future. By working with it I mean that over time it should lessen, two nights and there already seems to be some improvement which is great to hear :slightly_smiling_face:.

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Dear @zzz_zzz thanks for sharing your experience.
Here go some things you can do:

  1. Before sleeping:
    » doing the lying lion pose - learned this with Andrew Holececk: Lying on your right, right hand closed and stopping the air of your right nostril, legs slightly bending (this is the the Buddha position for the dying passage and for dreaming lucid but I have discovered that, in my case, it’s great for going to sleep in a good energy and have good dreams). There’s a variant in case your left nostril is blocked: what i do is putting my right hand on my forehead (the pre-frontal cortex is the part in our brains that allows us to dream lucid). The left hand is on the legs, resting;
    » imagining a circle of protectors with you. I learned this with Charlie Morley who has helped thousands of war veterans to heal their recurrent nightmares (it’s one of his expertise): with the help of your conscious breath, you connect with four light beings, or entities, or animals, or animation fiction heroes or ancestors with whom you feel safe and loved. And you feel their presence surrounding you: one on your head, another one, on your feet, another one, by your right side and another one, by your left side. Once this energy is strong and comfortable for you, you can start feeling the whole circle being around you, by thinking of other four entities who embrace you in love. It’s ok if you fall asleep with only one or two - it has happened to me :slight_smile: and it’s the loving intention and feeling their presence that makes a difference. One way to connect to these entities is, for example, choosing an animal or entity that you dream with, and with whom you feel connected in a loving way :wink:
  2. Room cleaned: in my first super lucid dream, I cleaned the walls of my bedroom. Before that, I had cleaned my bed sheets and did (extra) swiped the floor - I learned this with Dr. Michael Breus. It’s VERY important that your sleeping room is clean and in a frequency that welcomes the dreams you want to live and that it also supports good resting nights. I sometimes burn some white sage if I notice that there’s a strange smell in my room. There are many scientific papers showing that smell influences the emotions of our dreams.
  3. What do you allow into your world? Do you watch movies with violence? It’s probable that it goes into your dreams. In that case, it’s really good to dream lucid and work on that energy. Or imagine that you are a doctor and you dream lucid with a wounded leg, like you did: this could be excellent for learning to heal the physical body in a lucid dream - Charlie Morley is studying and researching about this. In this case, if you would like to do that, you could do a Lucid Dream Plan - if you enjoy this idea please reply to this and I can share a possibility here, in a next message;
  4. From my own experience, I noticed that when I was vegan I had the tendency to have more nightmares. At that time, I did a consultation and I had omega 3 supplement for 2 months and they ended. Nowadays I’m no longer a vegan. But I sure notice that when, for example, I disregard my nutritional needs (because I’m so enthusiast and passionate in my life) dreams touch the feeling of night mares :wink: (they have colors and themes that are not common in my dream life);
  5. Sometimes i fall asleep hugging all the people I love, one by one… it’s a great way to go into the night world :slight_smile:
    Infinite blessings.
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This is something I’ve noticed over time in my lucid dreams. Except I had beings that would guide me into rooms that were cleaned for me.

One time I saw a woman in a beautiful teal hijab with a veil. She guided me into a room and when I entered she was gone. The walls were freshly painted white and there were some words that you could barely see. The words were sins, like anger etcetera. There was a bed in the center if the room. The room was very small, after looking at the walls for a short time the dream ended.

Upon waking it left me with the lasting impression that she was cleansing my sins.

This has happened in two other dreams but instead of it being for me my friends and I were actively painting walls white for someone else. I never saw who they were for but these dreams always stuck with me and they always felt important when I woke from them.

The most interesting dream I’ve had with a similar phenomena was very recent. I was with my deceased grandmother in a non-lucid dream. The entire dream I was inside this new place that she called home. At the very end of the dream I went through a door that was not there previously and I saw Jesus standing there. I reached to my side and grabbed a handful of what could best be described as white flour. Then I spread it on the floor leading to my grandmother’s room and Jesus walked on it. Jesus set down a wooden bed. He then disappeared and I had conversations with the people in the room telling them the bed is a place for her to rest.

I think you are really onto something with this! So important!

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thank you for the amazing sharing :slight_smile:
What I meant with cleaning the walls of my bedroom was literally cleaning them during the day, for the room to be cleared out of old memories.
But I guess you can also do it in the dream. I had never thought of that!
Amazing and brilliant.

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Great advice, Imwas thinking of recommending Clare Johnsons work as well (great minds think a like), Andrew speaks very highly of her.

I agree that her book on Nightmares would be a great resource to check out.

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Love the metaphor of nightmares being gifts in ugly rapping paper :slight_smile:
thank you for sharing this.

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Very curious to know what happened in this nightmare?

So much great advice from skilled dreamers on here. I am a novice, but I can parot what some of the experts have said:

Nightmares feel so terrifying becuase you are dealing with pure mind, and the emotions connected to it tend to get amplified very fast, in the case of fear, that small fire can turn into an inferno burning down the forest very quickly. If you can catch the fear early, and bring awareness to it, it can often help you detach from it a little before it spirals out of control.

COMPASSION is one of your most powerful ‘weapons’ to use against nightmares and fear.

Dont just run toward the scary thing, run towards it with love and compassion and openness.

I think Claire or Charlie may have said ‘HUG your monsters’, and this often will cause them to transform, or become friendly towards you, or have them deliver a message you desperately need to hear.

Remember, in most cases these monsters and scary things are YOU, they are a part of your mind or subconscious that is crying out for love and attention, like a hungry newborn! Give it the love and compassion and attention and openness it desperatley craves, and you may be shocked at the ramifications that follow.

Nightmares offer such powerful opportunites for growth if viewed with the right mindset.

In terms of daytime practices to prepare for nightmares:

“Do one thing every day, that SCARES you”

(one of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard :wink: :sunglasses: :cowboy_hat_face: )

It doesnt have to be an extremely scary thing like gowing skydiving, or jumpping into a bathtub full of snakes, it is best to start with small fears.

Doing this on a daily basis, coupled with mindfullness and compassion and openness will help you watch how the fear arrises, climaxes and then dissipates. It might help build the habit subconsciously, so when the next nightmare blindsides you, you will have powerful habits in place to combat it

Nightmares are typically the mind trying to get your attention that something in your life needs to be addressed, or something is not right and needs to be fixed. Write down these dreams in as much detail as possible, for they can offer great insights for personal growth.

Please keep us posted on your progress.

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I was in my childhood home and was feeling very sleepy. I was on the verge of falling asleep but I just wanted to make sure that my sister is asleep in her room. In my dream, my mind thought that she will be very very angry if she wakes up and she doesn’t have any control over it. None whatsoever. When I was checking, she suddenly woke up from her sleep and that was the exact time when I started falling asleep. I was so afraid because I couldn’t control my sleep and she just woke up and she can’t control her anger. I had no idea what was going to happen

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That is a very interesting nightmare. I have no clue what it means. But the strong emotions of Fear & Anger, are both worth noting.

I think this dream illustrates just how sensitive the mind is to suggestion (especially when sleeping!). Just the thought of “she could wake up, and if she does she will be angry”, makes the probability of that event happenening skyrocket.

Have you read TWR masterpiece?:

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Chapter 12 is chalk full of wisdom. The foundational practices dealing with emotions may be of benefit you.

" 2. REMOVE GRASPING AND AVERSION

Recognize all you encounter and your reactions to what you encounter as the luminous phenomena of a dream.

When you notice you’re having a negative reaction to people, situations, or your own thoughts, when you want the situation to be different than it is, realize this is an opportunity to practice. Immediately relax your body and center yourself in awareness. Observe the outer situation and what arises in your mind and body. Remind yourself that what you experience is a dream, that your reactions are part of the dream, and that your grasping and aversion are actions in the dream. Recognize this with a level of conviction strong enough to leave an imprint on your mind. Become lucid.

Further the practice by developing flexibility. Let go of your habitual reactions. Choose to respond positively and with kindness even when you’re in a bad mood or have been provoked. Choose to be calm when you are stressed. And so on. This will diminish the power of conditioning, deepening your practice and increasing freedom. You can be certain you’re doing this correctly if immediately on seeing your reaction as a dream, you become more present, and desire and attachment lessen."

In the book he mentions saying things like “this is Dream Fear” or “this is Dream Anger”. Its a profoundly powerful practice to bring awareness before the hurricane hits.

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