Empathetic Dream

[The Cloud]

I had a dream this morning that forced me awake, but not in a way that I've ever experienced before. It wasn't so much the content of the dream (I only remember some of it since it was very long, possibly the longest dream that I've ever been able to remember) that was different, since I often have very strange dreams. Rather, it was at the very end. Without going into the details of what was happening, I was in the third person observing this girl who was the current main character of the dream, and suddenly an event caused her to feel a profound anguish. I know this because I could feel it through her, as if I was feeling the emotion in the third person. It was the most terrifyingly intense emotion that I could ever imagine, a literally sanity-breaking force of misery. It was so incredibly powerful that I woke up because my body was shaking so badly. But I wasn't feeling the emotion, I didn't feel anything once I woke up, I wasn't crying or yelling or doing anything, I actually felt better and more awake than I normally do when I wake up. But I just haven't been able to get the memory of the profundity of the anguish out of my head. It was so profound that when I tried to go back to sleep after I wrote what I could remember of the dream down (I never do that, but I felt I had to), thinking about the man that caused the anguish in the dream caused me to feel a lot of third person anger, and I started shaking again.

What I'm asking is that, if anybody has had a similar experience, has it meant anything? Normally I write off dreams as merely entertaining since I can never seem to make a connection between them and my real life, but after experiencing more emotion through a dream than I could imagine ever feeling in real life, I'm wondering if there is something to it.

[Bliss Sage]

Could you say what the man did?

[Dan.Linehan]

I had a dream last week that brought me to tears; I was crying when I woke up. I did the same thing as you too: I wrote it down even though I never generally never do that.

Mine took place in the future. There was a overriding sense of blatant disregard for human life throughout it, in several explicit scenarios. Even in my dream I remembered something different, a time when human life still mattered. That's what made me cry.

As far as that meaning anything... it well represented my frustration at people's growing reliance on technology as a means to disconnect themselves from their neighbors' suffering. But it hasn't came to mean anything to me personally beyond that, at least not so far in any literal sense.

[Old Soul]

was in the third person observing this girl who was the current main character of the dream, and suddenly an event caused her to feel a profound anguish. I know this because I could feel it through her, as if I was feeling the emotion in the third person. It was the most terrifyingly intense emotion that I could ever imagine,

Yes!! Yes!!!

In the dream there was only one person, She was sitting in a chair with a greyish light all around her illuminating her, She was crying and holding a box of kleenex, in her lap the other hand was holding a wet kleenex and she talking but I was unable to hear what she was saying, she was very disrought and in a great deal of pain..... I call it a soul pain , because it was pain beyond emotions really. ( I was the observer in this dream)

I woke up around 7 am got up, I felt like I had been drugged, or hit with a mac truck , I was disoriented , shaken and way off blance!! I could not shake what I was feeling, even after 2 cups of coffee , I was full of contradictory thoughts and emotions and what made it harder to deal with is, the person in the dream is someone I know quite well... I did not know how to interpret the pain, was it my pain because i was dreaming about this person?
or was it her pain.. and i was carrying it

at 8 or 8 30 am i got a call from a family member telling me that her moms house had burned down in the night... later I discovered from my family memeber ( step daughter), that when she went to see her mom at another relatives place, the first thing she saw was her mom sitting on a chair holding a box of kleenex and crying......

the person in my dream was my step daughters mom

[Mato Kinze]

I generally have two types of dreams; what I call "medicine dreams" in which I receive guidance and knowledge from my Spirit Guides, and "regular" dreams. Regular dreams are artifacts of my mind. They make up the bulk of my nightly dremaing. A regular dream will play out for me like a movie; sight and sound but no emotion and no other senses.

Medicine dreams, however are different. Medicine dreams incorporate either (or both) high emotional states or deepended sensory input such as taste, touch, and smell.

I've had Medicine dreams such as you describe in which it feels that my heart and soul have been ripped away from me. They usually involve the death of someone very close to me. These are not precognitive dreams. They are a lesson in the meaning of the relationship that I have with that individual and are sent to validate my understanding of that person't place in my life.

I'm not a dream interpreter, but I would suggest that your Guides are trying to show you something that you haven't recognized as important in your life.

OR you may be tapping into someone else's energy.

I once had a Medicine dream in which I was with a close friend. She was mad at someone and was starting to get into an emotional spiral of increasing anger.

Turns out, that same night (and same time) she was having a dream about our shared teacher in which she was very angry at him for some perceived slights.

We share a special connection that I think precipitated this shared experience, but as Old Soul pointed out, that's not always necessary.

Perhaps a good dream interpreter could help you better understand this dream, but I don't think it's anything to be worried about.

[The Cloud]

Upon more thought, I believe that I have figured out some of the symbolism of the dream. Here's an abbreviated version of it that's been edited for the things that are most relevant to the progression.

There is a large castle in the middle of the ocean. It is black, and very imposing looking, more like sharp weathered peaks of black rock spearing up out of the water than a thing built by man. But, it does not have a sense of being evil, rather it has a sense of being foreboding to evil. A girl is entering the castle for the first time. This girl has a sense of good and purity about her, as if she has been accosted by evil all her life but has managed to remain true to herself and her values. She then meets the keeper of the castle, an old haggish woman, who introduces her to another girl. This girl is the polar opposite; dark and brooding, morally ambivalent, not interested in right or wrong, but simply alive to take a grim amusement from the predicaments and misfortunes of herself and others. A girl who lost the ability to care about right or wrong long ago. Then, some plot that isn't very clear happened. Next coherent thing that I remember was the good girl standing by the ocean outside the castle. She puts on a silver amulet shaped like a circumscribed 5-pointed star that is infused with the power of an angel, causing her to take on some angel-like characteristics and sprout wings. Then a male and female demon appear, and the female demon possesses her and she started destroying the castle. But she realized that this was not her, and as she had all her life, she rejected the demon. Meanwhile, the ambivalent girl inexplicably risks her life to take the trident away from the male demon and cast it into the ocean, lessening his power. He then kills her. The good girl then proceeds to fight both the demons. Eventually, she gains the upper hand, and and emissary of God appears to allow her to ascend to heaven and banish the demons to hell. The male demon is made lord of hell.

In hell, the ambivalent girl is sitting next to a man that is her father, though she does not know. Her father is a warlock that murdered her mother to gain power, which was in large part what led to her lack of belief that good had any power in the world. They are reading a fiery script (I forget what it said) that is supposed to be causing them torment, but instead is just boring them. Then the devil comes in and orders everyone to get back to their torment, sending out his minions to enforce his demands. The man says "What's his hurry, it's not like he's going to run out of tenets." Him and the girl then go for a walk through evil-looking castle hallways. They talk about their past, and the subject gets uncomfortably close to the issue of their relation to each other. So, the man demonstrates his abilities as a warlock by showing her how to make a deadly poison out of an orange. She then becomes very suspicious as to who he is, so he sends her into a room. There she finds a jewelry box. She opens it and finds some jewelry she recognizes as her mother's, along with a crystal turtle with warlock inscriptions on the bottom. At this point, she realizes the man is her father, and feels an incomparable anguish, causing me to wake up. This is not the complete dream, there are pieces that don't make sense because I forgot the portions that justify them, but it's the gist.

For the record, I am entirely convinced that Christianity is not a valid religion, and am thoroughly agnostic despite my Lutheran upbringing. I believe that the good girl represents a person with incorruptible internal values, that knows what she believes and is not worried about the opposition of the world to her. The other girl has become convinced that values have no value, and simply acts arbitrarily to be contrary to the values of those around her. Her life has been such that she sees no point to it, that nothing means anything and so any action is as justified as any other. But there is a part of her that knows that there is something out there that is worth something, it is simply subdued until she aids the good girl by taking the demon's weapon. She then gets sent to hell, not so much to punish her as to give her an opportunity to wrestle with her demons personally. Now, I know it seems like I'm answering my own question, and I guess I am, but I still don't know how this relates to my actual life.

*I don't remember the faces of any of the people in the dream, they are more the embodiment of concepts rather than actual people. I know none of them in real life.

[Old Soul]

wow how creative!

Seriously I would be writing this out as a short story! it really is interesting, it should be in a book

[Liara Covert]

Hi Cloud,
Your dream indeed full of intruiging imagery. You can find different levels of significance in dreams, if you choose to do so, by yourself or with guidance. One view is dreams contain an inventory of unfinished emotional business and unexpressed feelings. You may view them an an opportunity to deepen your own self-understanding.

In the modern world, many people evolve to become desinsitized to how they feel and repress anger, guilt, frustration or other kinds of discomfort. Its common to live within a protected defense system which only permits you to think briefly about hope and even more briefly about confusion or pain. We each evaluate what's in our best interests, but we may be selectively blinded from the truth.

I sense every human being needs to have his or her feelings validated and accepted for what they are. Dream analysis and interpetation are some tools you may use to break through the defenses invented by your mind. You can choose to clarify misunderstandings and illusions before you retreat from perceived fears. In many cases, as people learn to better understand their dreams, they more effectively work though waking situations to avoid or minimize distress.