Hell Dreams - Do Changes Mark Progress?

[Leo]

When I was first realizing I didn't believe Christianity at all anymore, the only thing left I had was the fear of Hell. Like lots of people write about on this site. I would occasionally have dreams where I was on the edge of Hell, or floating over it, and saw that I would eventually go there. and down there, I saw all the people I've known for years and years, people some of them dead, but most statistically likely to go to Hell if you believe the Christian ideas on the topic.

But gradually, the sounds of people down there started to be fainter in my dreams, and the images got, well, more goofy, I guess.

Last night I had a dream again, and this time Hell was a room made entirely of fire-retardant plastic, the floor was liquid lava. For some reason I couldn't feel the pain of the lava when crawling around. We were all crawling around. And this young-ish hipster woman who could have been at Occupy Wall Street a few years ago was in charge. She'd be handing out blowtorches and directing us to burn each other with them. Every time someone new came in they were given a blowtorch and directed to periodically burn someone. One of the leaders of the Atheists meetup I go to was there, in the corner. I kept wanting to get over to him. But except for the occasionally burning, there wasn't the screams and sulfur of my earlier hell dreams. Finally, towards the end, the guy from the meetup group was caught trying to give one of the new arrivals a cookie from a secret stash. Apparently he was higher up there, and so had access to that stash, but had now pissed her off by offering a cookie to someone she hadn't given any kind of permission to. So he was dragged off. Then, the devil showed up, as the Yahweh character from the Darkmatter525 video series, if you have seen those on Youtube. He was angry at her and eventually came over to me. As he bent down to pick me up, I was defending the guy she had earlier dragged off. All I knew was I was up in the air out of the lava, and it felt from behind like the Yahweh / devil character had a wool suit on. That's the closest I had ever gotten to that character in my dreams.

Anyway although I woke up with heart beating fast, at least I didn't see nearly everyone I know in there this time, and the Hell wasn't even so horrific, like I said, the whole thing was starting to get goofy.

While I haven't had the panic attacks, the triggers, and a whole host of other things I've read about on here that others suffer, I have had those recurrent dreams, occasionally, maybe every couple of weeks or so. I'd like to think that we're getting somewhere if it's morphing into the ridiculous.

I still say, one of the most relieving aspects of discovering Hell's origins in history and religion, is to finally, after 20 years, know that the friend I knew who died of AIDS isn't burning forever. To know that all the people I know who are not Christians, a majority of people I've been friends with for my whole life, are not statistically likely to end up being tortured forever and ever. Ironically, that thought used to plague me to no end, far more than my own personal fear of ending up there, which was pretty great at times. Certainly once I realized I simply didn't believe any of it anymore.

I know this isn't as bad as what a lot of you face and have faced. But I have wanted to shake myself clean of it. Rationally, I understand the situation for what it is now. But still, I get the occasional bolt of fear, or the occasional image of people I know burning forever. Christians think other Christians don't want to hear Hell messages because of being soft, or something. But whenever I heard those messages, I saw my friend Duayne, dead from AIDS, a bisexual in the early 90s, burning in Hell. Or people in my industry who have died, burning in Hell. Looking back I can see it was constantly with me as a Christian, even though it was under the surface, something I didn't bring up, something I tried desperately not to think about.

But I can't seem to make my emotions catch up with where my rational mind is. Perhaps it's happening over time.

[Voice]

It is happening over time and the emotions do catch up.  Your dream was entertaining.

[directionless]

I've never had dreams of hell, but I do have bad dreams.

 

I used to go to sleep again immediately after a bad dream, but lately I have tried to fully wake up and think about the dream for a while before going back to sleep. Thinking about the dream while it is fresh in my mind seems to remove the emotional power that it would otherwise have if I simply went back to sleep and thought about it the next day.

 

I also had a recurring dream for about 30 years that has only begun to change in the last several years. I think that is a sign of emotional progress.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I echo the others that the mind takes time to re-train. My own dreams had me confront "the devil" which was always my fear, and the one that brought me to faith in the first place. In my dream he was a little boy, giggling in the dark of the back porch of the house where I grew up. I recounted this dream in another thread so won't go into detail here, but eventually I saw that this was my unconscious self testing me to see what I'd do with "the devil" now. I recognized that he is me and that he is very creative and interesting, more than I realized was within me.

[Leo]

Thanks guys for the responses. Yes, I will keep track of these dreams and mark my own personal progress on this journey. I believe after I have taken an iTunes U course (free) on psychology, just the basics, then I will again try and read through Carl Jung and figure out what is meant by archetypes, and how it relates to us.