[Nglvayhp]

Greetings brothers and sisters!
To start sorry if i post this in the wrong place.
About 1-2 years ago i had an awful nightmare which is related to religious things(which im not
comfortable with)
I went to sleep as usually and i dreamed something horrifying but cant seem to remember so well.
It was something about the Saints,
i was saying the Saints one by one such as:
Saint Peter,Saint Andrew and so on
and on one point i said(may God forgive me) saint Judas(Iuda in romanian) then i heard a burning voice screaming and i woke up suddenly very confused and damaged spiritually.
It could be cause of my sinful acts?
Please forgive me if i have offensed someone with this.
All advices are welcomed.
God bless us all!

[aideriimibion]

Hi Dobra.

The best thing to do when you have a bad dream, is incense your home and do your prayer. You can also put some Holy oil on your head.

I would suggest you visit your spiritual father and talk to him.

Hope this helps

With Love in Christ
Angela

[fajerdoksdsaaker]

Sometimes when I feel I am under demonic attack I 'post' St Michael at the foot of my bed. On other occasions I have envisaged my whole house cloaked under his protective wings from specific exterior attacks. But ditto above for talking with your priest.

[spacecrafty]

Greetings in Christ,

Sometimes dreams bring stuff up that needs attending to. I had such a dream that brought me to confession and then resolution. The devil strikes through fear.

In Christ,
Deborah Agape

[Dynasty]

I have found saying Psalm 50 and the creed ALWAYS repels evil from me.

[Serttyfd]

I have 3 boys with special needs, two of them seem to have nightmares the most often of the three. I now annoint with olive oil before bed, and ask God to send his angels to surround my children while they sleep, praying that no bad dreams , only good, dreams, that no evil may befall them or our home, and to surround our home with angels. That has seemed to stop the bad dream for them

[hrthwhr]

When I was going through a period of having a lot of nightmares, my priest recommended sipping some holy water before going to bed. Also, there are prayers in the evening prayers that mention peaceful sleep and specifically mention dreams. Make sure you pray those prayers before bed.

[xqdrocherz]

Thank you all brothers and sisters
I always pray before going to bed since then and it seems that the nightmares have gone away.Also i will consider your suggestions so that i can sleep without any nightmares.
God bless you all!

[carfAball]

My wife has nightmares if she forgets to pray too. She finds that the Lord's prayer is often enough on its own to avert them and she says only this if we get to bed late!!

[ssiikmuz]

I would be curious to know if everyone is eating similar foods (greasy, spicy) before bed or watching tv (NCIS?) or reading similar genre books or staying up too late and not getting enough sleep / over worked or if you all are really being tormented by demons.

Persoanlly, I am not so important they need to attack me in my sleep. I am pretty good all by myself in tormenting me. Usually it involves jalapenos and velveta at midnight.

Paul

[Lillie_Steins]

Don't know about jalapeños and nightmares, I eat enough of them without nightmares, but I do know that when my daughter was going through a bad bout of nightmares, a sprinkling of holy water and an icon of the Theotokos in the room, saying the the Jesus Prayer and the nightmares went away.

Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Herman

[idertedype]

I agree with you Herman..it is very important to use these blessed sacramentals and prayers which our Church offers.
For many decades, from my childhood on, I would occasionally get horrifying nightmares involving demons. I would never go to sleep without crossing my pillow as well as having an icon with me, yet unfortunately, I would still occasionally get them. I would wake up literally paralyzed with fear, but always said the Lord's Prayer (didn't know the Jesus Prayer back then), Never knowing when they would come, I was scared to ever be alone. Thank God they have ended. I am most sympathetic to anyone undergoing this particular type of demonic attack.

[shumozar]

I would wake up literally paralyzed with fear

I have never had a particular problem with nightmares, but I have suffered from occasional sleep paralysis since my late teens. I know that many native religions in particular consider this to be an overtly spiritual rather than psychological or mechanical phenomenon; they think of a demon sitting on the chest and pinning down the limbs of the affected person. This is of particular concern, since I am unable to cross myself while affected by it. Does anyone know if the fathers write about this particular condition?

Thank you,
Jeremy

[StampNews]

Yes, it would be interesting to see what the Fathers wrote about sleep paralysis...if that is what it is. In my early twenties I had this experience a few times whilst at my Anglican seminary. Two times it was of an amorous kind and one time it started as amourous and was accompanied by a myriad of little voices in my head swishing from ear to ear, like a stereo going from one speaker to the next. I could see everything in my room but couldn't move. I then got the pinned down my the chest feeling and a demonic face appeared with an elongated neck making a triumphant roar. I didn't quite know what to do at this point but I remembered my pentecostal grandmother 'pleading the blood'. So I just shouted out: 'by the blood of christ go'. Next thing I knew it was off my chest and literally flew rapidly out of the bedroom window with a dash. I then came around. I mentioned it to my pastoral tutor but he had little experience of these things and just mentioned to me how St Benedict in his cave was visited by erotic demons and he would roll around in the thorn bushes naked to get rid of them.

I never did roll around in the bushes or check the story out

[*Playergirl*]

I had to laugh in listening to Fr. Hopko's lectures on Evolution, recently referred to here on another thread, where he says he has terrible dreams. I have recently had much more pleasant dreams about people in my life that I used to have very bad dreams about some years back. I hope it is because I am benefiting from the spiritual work I have done. So while I would never disparage the use of holy oil, icons, etc., in addition I think it is important to purge ourselves of sinful thoughts that occur to us in our waking hours. And this is mostly just hard work and requires constant attentiveness.

[RenyBontes]

There is actually a physiological explanation for sleep paralysis. The body shuts down motor functions during sleep (so you don't jump up and slam into a wall when you dream about running), and sleep paralysis is believed to occur when the body restores consciousness before restoring motor function. I've experienced it numerous times myself. However, the spiritual and physiological explanations are not mutually exclusive - a given case might be one, or the other, or both.

Jeremy - if I might make a suggestion, when in that situation you could pray the Jesus Prayer silently until you can move again. I've used that strategy myself a couple of times when I was experiencing sleep paralysis and something "felt" spiritually wrong. For that matter, I've done it a couple of times when nothing felt spiritually wrong - I was just trying to overcome my annoyance at not being able to move!

[Tij84ye]

I had a terrible dream last night, and also have terrible mental images in my imagination when I pray the Jesus Prayer sometimes.


The evil images are caused by evil demons.


St Ignatius Brianchaninov speaks about why these mental images appear in our imagination, in this chapter of his audiobook:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKTTzGQG_0c


I believe in what he teaches there to be fact, because of evidence which was revealed to me by experience.



Here are quotes from Holy Fathers of the Philokalia and St John of Sinai about dreams.



St John Cassian (this is a remarkable story)

" 'It would take me a long time to give an account of the deception of that Mesopotamian monk who, having shown great self-control, shutting himself up in his cell for many years and surpassing all monks in those regions in asceticism and virtue, was then so deluded by demonic dreams and revelations that he reverted to Judaism and circumcision, in order to deceive him, the devil often showed him dreams that turned out to be true, in this way making him more ready to accept his final act of deception. One night he showed him the Christian people with the apostles and martyrs, downcast and filled with shame, wasting away with dejection and grief, while on the other side he showed him the Jewish people, with Moses and the prophets, surrounded by light and living in joy and gladness. The deceiver then advised him to be circumcised if he wanted to share in the blessedness and joy of the Jewish people. He was deceived and followed this advice. From all this it is clear that none of these people would have been deluded in this pathetic and miserable fashion had they possessed the gift of discrimination.' In reply to this Germanos said: ‘By means of these recent examples and the statements of the fathers of old, you have made it clear that discrimination is the source, root, crown and common bond of all the virtues."



St Diodachos

"37. The dreams which appear to the soul through God's love are unerring criteria of its health. Such dreams do not change from one shape to another; they do not shock our inward sense, resound with laughter or suddenly become threatening. But with great gentleness they approach the soul and fill it with spiritual gladness. As a result, even after the body has woken up, the soul longs to recapture the joy given to it by the dream. Demonic fantasies,
however, are just the opposite: they do not keep the same shape or maintain a constant form for long. For what the demons do not possess as their chosen mode of life, but merely assume because of their inherent deceitfulness, is not able to satisfy them for very long. They shout and menace, often transforming themselves into soldiers and sometimes deafening the soul with their cries. But the intellect, when pure, recognizes them for what they are and awakes the body from its dreams. Sometimes it even feels joy at having been able to see through their tricks; indeed it often challenges them during the dream itself and thus provokes them to great anger. There are, however, times when even good dreams do not bring joy to the soul, but produce in it a sweet sadness and tears unaccompanied by grief. But this happens only to those who are far advanced in humility."

38. "We have now explained the distinction between good and bad dreams, as we ourselves heard it from those with experience. In our quest for purity, however, the safest rule is never to trust to anything that appears to us in our dreams. For dreams are generally nothing more than images reflecting our wandering thoughts, or else they are the mockery of demons. And if ever God in His goodness were to send us some vision and we were to refuse it, our beloved Lord Jesus would not be angry with us, for He would know we were acting in this way because of the trick of the demons. Although the distinction between types of dreams established above is precise, it sometimes happens that when the soul has been sullied by an unperceived beguilement - something from which no one, it seems to me, is exempt - it loses its sense of accurate discrimination and mistakes bad dreams for good."


St Maximus:

"89. Once the soul starts to feel its own good health, the images in its dreams are also calm and free from passion."



St John of Sinai:

"Demons often transform themselves into angels of light and take the form of martyrs, and make it appear to us during sleep that we are in communion with them. Then, when we wake up, they plunge us into unholy joy and conceit. But you can detect this deceit by this very fact. For angels reveal judgments and separations; and when we wake up we find that we are trembling and sad. As soon as we believe the demons in dreams, then they make sport of us when we are awake too. He who believes in dreams is completely inexperienced. But he who distrusts all dreams is a wise man. Only believe dreams that warn you of torments and judgments. But if despair afflicts you, then such dreams are also from the demons"