Disturbing Dreams After Meditation

Question

I find that when I fall asleep again after my morning meditations, I have scary disturbing dreams. The theme is always the same. Spirits of some sort or someone harming me in the dreams. I am always trying to say Om Guru or call out our Guru’s name but I can’t seem to find my voice, nothing comes out. I can only call mentally. Why does thus happen?

—Karan K, Australia

Answer

Dear Karan,

Many times when we dream what we experience are simply random thoughts that are stored in the subconscious mind. What is stored there is unique to each person, and contains every thought we have ever had (over all our lifetimes), no matter how insignificant it might be. In fact, the subconscious mind can be compared to a refrigerator, in that it does not discriminate, but simply stores thoughts.

So why you have such disturbing dreams after your morning meditations is not easy to understand. Perhaps it’s a sign that you shouldn’t be sleeping after your morning meditation! Which, in any case, would be a suggestion I would make to you.

I think I would be more inclined to look at a solution to this disturbance rather than trying to understand what the dreams mean. Most likely, even though they are vivid and disturbing, they don’t mean anything. I would also take this approach because the most important thing you are doing in the morning is engaging in your meditation practice. Anything that comes in to disturb that should be strictly avoided.

My suggestions to you would be: to avoid the situation where this disturbance occurs (so no sleep after morning meditation), and to focus on feeding your subconscious mind a continual stream of positive and uplifting spiritual thoughts through affirmation, music, and good spiritual satsang with friends. These uplifting thoughts and energies will begin to diminish the power of the negative and disturbing ones, leaving them eventually to blow away as dry leaves.