How can we distinguish the meaning of dreams?
To begin with, let's understand what we are talking about in general when discussing dreams. From the point of view of science, sleep is a special state of the human body, when some parts of the brain rest and some parts work, but, so to speak, in a different mode. When we sleep, we don't stop thinking, we don't stop remembering, but we do it differently than when we are awake. You can read more about this in medical and biological literature, but all I am saying is that there is nothing mystical about sleep - it can be explained by quite natural reasons.
But it is much more important to talk about how to treat dreams from a spiritual point of view. Because everything that happens to man, whether he sleeps or is awake, has to do with his spiritual life. And here is a great danger to be aware of: the danger of giving spiritual meanings to one's dreams that most often are not there.
Yes, we know from the Bible that God can send a person special dreams, prophetic dreams. For example, in the Old Testament we read about the dreams of Joseph the Beautiful and his father Jacob, in the New Testament Joseph the Betrothed, the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, received in his dreams a revelation of what to do with her and then with the Divine Child: how to protect and preserve them. We also know from Church Tradition that evil spirits, that is, demons, can also send a person tempting dreams to harm his soul.
But both are extremely rare, with people of holy life, and in the vast majority of cases our dreams are simply dreams of natural origin. If we remember them, we should not look in them for any signals from above or, on the contrary, for "lowering. Even if, thanks to such dreams, we see something in a new way, find a solution to some seemingly unsolvable problems (for example, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, who dreamed up his periodic table of chemical elements), it is still thanks to ourselves. There is no supernatural component here.
If we wait for some mystical revelation in a dream, it can end very sadly. This is called "charm" (the verb is "flattery," that is, an evil deception). In the Orthodox Tradition there are cases, when the holy ascetics saw in dreams or in visions bright angels, offering to worship them, promising great spiritual gifts, an audience with God, and so on. If the ascetic took all this at face value, he could perish spiritually. If he had the sobriety and humility to cross himself and cry out to the Lord, the "angels" immediately took on their true appearance, for they were demons in disguise.
If we believe that God, the Virgin Mary, angels, or, on the contrary, evil spirits really come into our dreams, are we not being overconfident?
Those ascetics, of whom I have just spoken, were people of enormous spiritual power, they were moving towards holiness, and therefore were of particular interest to the demons who dreamed of destroying them. We, spiritually ordinary people, are not so interesting to them that they visit us in our dreams. They think that we, with our constant petty sins, are already their rightful prey.
If, however, such a rare event (or should I say miracle) has happened to you that God has sent you some kind of revelation in a dream, you will wake up and have no doubts. You will have the deepest inner certainty that the dream is from God. But I never had such dreams.
As for the priest who said that dreams are from the Evil One - the priest most likely did not mean that all dreams are necessarily "sent" by demons, but the same thing that I say: do not attach any importance to your dreams, to see in them hints and instructions from above. If you dreamed it, you dreamed it, so let's move on.
You must be logged in to post a comment.