Nightmares- What is the Metaphysical perspective?

[Psychonaut1984]

I don't know if this is a silly question but I was wondering from a metaphysical perspective what exactly are nightmares? Also why does melatonin sometimes trigger them.

I notice for me I have 3 different types of nightmares. There are dreams that are on the threshold of being nightmares.They have an overwhelmingly sinister or depressing feel to them, often nothing particularly nightmarish happens but its just the feeling of it. Then there are dreams that make a wrong turn somewhere and either bring up something that is actually happening in my life that I find upsetting, or some typical nightmare scenerio happens, like having to take refuge from the living dead, or being eaten alive by a great white shark. These might upset me or sometimes I wake up with a little adrenaline rush. I tend to use these as inspiration for artwork. I might feel a little stunned when I wake up but I move on with my day like normal.

Now there is another type of nightmare I will get once in a blue moon, these nightmares tend to have a distinct feel to them, different than the other nightmares I described. When I have these types of nightmares usually when I wake up I feel almost traumatized almost like I had just been raped spiritually and/or psychologically. They always have a distinctly "Evil" feel to them, demonic, beyond sinister, images/scenarios that are just so horribly disturbing, twisted and messed up I wonder where such things come from. Do negs play a role in these types of nightmares? When I wake up I feel like I have been kicked down to lower vibration.

I had one of these last night... I shook it off but it makes me wonder if something tried to "hack" into my brain to try to lower my frequency and if I should be on guard when I try to project tonight.

[CFTraveler]

I think (and this is my opinion, naturally) that there are many reasons for nightmares, not all metaphysical.
I think when we sleep lots of things happen- first and foremost, unless lucid our subconscious takes over the thinking, and everything becomes literal and symbolic at the same time- something like someone walking away can be interpreted as 'being left', (you see what I mean with symbolic and literal?) and a big old nightmare about being left may be created, because of the way we think while awake being reinterpreted (sometimes terribly). Then you combine it with energetic happenings- like energy body expansion causing amygdala tickling and those 'horrific' feeling nightmares that have no horrible content perse, and you add some outside tampering (like another projector, negative entities or just passerby astral wildlife), and you have a recipe for all kinds of interesting visual information.
So it's an "all of the above", depending on the moment, IMO.

[Psychonaut1984]

So if another projector were to come across a dreamer, could another projecter dramatically alter another person's dream? If someone was having some freakish nightmare and all kinds of crazy things were taking place would other projectors be able to see what is going on or would they just see the projector walking around in a drunken state?

[Korpo]

Kurt Leland thinks that dreaming takes place - metaphysically - in our own little "bubbles" in the astral. This is why dreams are such emotion-reactive environments. So if you have these changes of scenery that bring certain feelings, or if there is a "background feeling" to a dream, then I personally would say it is your own emotional world or mood setting the stage.

Now I had dreams that did not react like that, even when my interpretation within the dream got emotionally charged. I think that these kind of things are not really dreams and do also not happen in the astral plane. Maybe the mental plane? Because they did not react to my emotional reaction. They also seemed like past or parallel life impressions. That also is suggestive of a higher plane than the astral plane if it was indeed happening "in a place".

Kurt Leland further writes in Otherwhere that the act of getting lucid allows dreamers to exit "the Dream Zone" and go into the wider reality of the surrounding planes. All these attempts have ended weirdly for me - I can remember at least two instances where I realised I was dreaming and would exit the dream (one time through a door and one time through a "consciousness switch") - and end up not seeing or perceiving anything. Maybe the senses I need to see what I would have seen are still not accessible to me. On another moment of becoming lucid and entering another room my sight became all blurry and skewed. On other occasions I switched to talking to my wife alongside or instead of the dream, but not having any perception outside of that.

So - what I read and what I experienced seems to suggest that dreams are connected to a wider metaphysical environment (not really a new idea ;) ) and there is indeed a good chance that they are an environment in the astral, reacting to our emotions, acting as a teaching tool till we master our emotions. While I cannot prove the latter, it seems to be a good provisional belief. Then nightmares are similar that most of them play out emotional reactions within us or try to resolve things in the emotional parts of our psyche. I am not claiming all dreams are of this nature, but IMO most are.

Oliver

Not all nightmares are influenced by negs.. i have cheese-induced ones sometimes when the need for cheese outweighs the need to avoid my allergic reactions to dairy o_O

[Jaco]

I have almost no nightmares, or at least I don't remember them.
I had a couple of dreams in which foreign entities with different attitudes appeared, and those dreams weren’t exactly scary.
Usually this caused me to gain lucidity in the dream, after which I could feel them immediately and I knew where they are.
The one common thing was that after waking up I had a feeling that "intrusion" took place. I have had the same feeling with dreams in which I did not gain lucidity, and just after waking up and not remembering my dreams.
At least in my case, entity intrusions seem to leave an "aftertaste" and other dreams do not. Of course this also may depend on my sensitivity, I might not pick up all of them.

:)

[Korpo]

Coming to think of it, I had one dream that was actually influenced by another person. It was harmless enough it was not scary at all, but the thought is kinda scary.

Oliver

[sdbl731]

Not all nightmares are influenced by negs.. i have cheese-induced ones sometimes when the need for cheese outweighs the need to avoid my allergic reactions to dairy o_O
This totally reminds me of something from a video game:

Welcome to Hatchet Sal's cheese induced nightmare. Well, at least now we know what Big Tony's left hand man looks like. Just goes to show, if you mutilate people for a living you've got to expect to lose some sleep.

Andy