“Scary Dreams”
by Kelvin Chin
Meditation Teacher
Scary dreams can happen anytime of course — before or after we learn to meditate. They’re not uncommon and happen when we’re releasing old fears.
There are basically two kinds of dreams — fantasy dreams and creative type dreams. Fantasy dreams can sometimes be fun and other times be scary. Creative dreams are the kind that we can get insights from.
“Turning Within” Meditation can facilitate both types of dreaming. Why? Because this meditation is waking the mind up to more of its creative potential, and at the same time is releasing old stress and balancing the system.
Plus, meditating in the morning right after waking up can also be helpful in spontaneously getting rid of the “cobwebs” sometimes left over from the scary dreams.
Whatever is causing the release, we don’t know, but the meditation is definitely not causing the scary dreams — the stress that you have stored up for probably years (and you are unaware of), is what’s causing the scary dreams. Whether the meditation — or a combination of the meditation and your sleeping — is causing the release, we will never know for sure, but the releasing is what’s good and important.
But regardless of what is causing the release, it’s not uncommon to notice strong, powerful, and sometimes scary dreams. And the intensity of the emotional experience is always connected to the intensity of the stress that has been sitting around in the nervous system. So the more intense it is, the “better a sign” that you have released something very powerful that’s been eating up a lot of energy — psychically, emotionally, or physically — that you were likely not even aware of.
We live in a world from a healthcare standpoint, as you probably know, which does not understand these things very well at all. We tend to live in a culture — and the healthcare world is part of that culture — where we think everything should be fine and smooth and we incorrectly think that is when we are “healthy,” i.e., not symptomatic. (“Give me a pill, and make my problems/symptoms disappear!”) But the symptoms are just a sign of what is underneath, sometimes of tensions and imbalances lying deeply underneath the surface. Those are what are causing our problems and need to be released/balanced.
Also...
We in the process often forget how many decades we’ve been building up junk in our system and while it won’t take decades to get rid of that junk, the rebalancing process will undoubtedly have some ups and downs and not be a completely placid/even/flat situation. It’s weird because we completely accept that we all sometimes have terrible times in our lives (and then when we get past them we often forget that we went through the terrible times). However, when it comes to our mental/emotional/physical health, and when we’re getting healthier, we somehow think (unrealistically) that we should be able to have no ups and downs...
The good news is that this simple meditation technique is accelerating the healing process exponentially because you are not only getting rid of old baggage, but also you are taking on less new junk.
The other thing that I tell people in my meditation classes is that our nervous system is also getting “used to” the balancing and releasing of old junk in the sense that our body does not know yet (especially if you just started recently), that you are going to be doing it every single day twice a day. So the body jumps at the opportunity to try to get rid of as much baggage 🧳 as possible as quickly as possible — which underscores the importance of the consistency and regularity of doing it twice a day in order to train the mind-body system that it can release stuff gradually ...and does not have to try to release it all at once.
😉
The body seeks balance, i.e., homeostasis.
The “Turning Within” Meditation technique allows the body and mind to naturally get what it has been seeking. In as easy and comfortable a way as possible.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.