Morality in dreams?

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morningmare

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So, I had a very interesting dream the other night. Let me see… I slept with another woman, while some guy was… erm… watching -_-. And then after she was gone, I had slept with that guy - who turned out to be my “husband” in the later part of my dream. Yeah… All in my dream. I’m straight and do not have a husband. (The husband in my dream was some hollywood actor that I wasn’t even interested in the real world.) It’s very strange. I mean threesome, cheating on a guy, etc is not something I am really into either.

Probably it’s due to my sexual frustration, especially I’m trying to stay pure as much as possible since couple months ago. So even in my dream, I kept telling myself this is wrong, I should say no. I felt like I had power over it but I let it just happen. Even during the dream I felt quite guilty, and when I woke up, I felt very relieved that this was all just a dream. But I still feel quite guilty about me letting it happen even in my dream. But it really makes me wonder… how much of this is actually wrong/sinful/immoral?
 
Dreams are collected images/sounds/situations from your memory that your brain uses when you are asleep to make sense of the electrical signals going through it. There can be nothing moral or immoral about them- that’s like saying sweating is immoral- it just happens. Since you have made a conscious effort to be pure in recent times, it is on your mind often- and you’re more likely to dream about sexual things.
 
You cannot be culpable for what happens in your dreams unless you desire those kind of dreams and purposely take action when awake to fill your mind with such stuff. Even then it is not a sin in your dream, but what you were purposely doing to bring it about when you were awake and concious. Your situation is not unusual.
 
I slept with another woman,
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Probably it’s due to my sexual frustration, especially I’m trying to stay pure as much as possible since couple months ago. So even in my dream, I kept telling myself this is wrong, I should say no. I felt like I had power over it but I let it just happen. Even during the dream I felt quite guilty, and when I woke up, I felt very relieved that this was all just a dream. But I still feel quite guilty about me letting it happen even in my dream. But it really makes me wonder… how much of this is actually wrong/sinful/immoral?
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I too have been there, so I know EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN.

I was in a loveless marriage where my wife did not want to have sexual intercourse with me. I was celibate within marriage. I had the opportunities to be unfaithful in woken life, but managed to avoid the act God knows how, but in my dream world, I often found myself making love to another woman.

The ‘die-hard’ fanatical Right Wing of Traditionalism may totally disagree with me but I think we can be over-scrupulous. We are after all sexual beings. Sex is also a very powerful drive in nature, it is after all the need to propagate the species. In that sense it is created, so we need not be afraid of it.

Dreams are also the mind’s way of healing itself. They are essential to maintenance of mind, brain and body. I think it is the only way that we can healthily come to terms with deprivation if we insist on living a life of enforced self-denial.
Voluntary celibacy is good but forced celibacy is unnatural and nothing short of wickedness.

Good luck to you in your dreams.

PS I have even committed murder in my dreams. I do not regret what I did. I had a recurring dream where I was constantly being followed and harassed. I tried all things to avoid this dream, even not going to bed, but it was always there. Lack of sleep was making me ill. Then out of desperation, took a gun to bed with me [no bullets in the magazine of course], slept with it under my pillow and going to sleep, kept telling myself it was loaded.

When the nightmare came on, I pulled out my pistol. For me, it was loaded. It was real. I let my assailants get in really close then I squeezed the trigger and ‘bang’ I shot one of them, then I shot the others, then I stood over their bodies and emptied the magazine into their heads.

I never had that nightmare again!

Later in life, I heard a sad tale of someone else who was in a terrible state of depression due to a recurring nightmare. Councillors, dieticians and other medical people were unable to help. I suggested they tried my remedy and it worked for them too.

Do not be too hard on yourself. Enjoy your nocturnal emissions. Good luck and God bless you.

PS In woken life, I am a pacifist, except for National Armed Defence, do not believe in any sort of violence, not even use of negative language against wrong-doing, which I think is another form of violence. Correcting error is best done without beating up the wrong-doer, but don’t let the die-hard ultra Right here me say that!!!
 
Sixtus said:
PS I have even committed murder in my dreams. I do not regret what I did. I had a recurring dream where I was constantly being followed and harassed. I tried all things to avoid this dream, even not going to bed, but it was always there. Lack of sleep was making me ill. Then out of desperation, took a gun to bed with me [no bullets in the magazine of course], slept with it under my pillow and going to sleep, kept telling myself it was loaded.

When the nightmare came on, I pulled out my pistol. For me, it was loaded. It was real. I let my assailants get in really close then I squeezed the trigger and ‘bang’ I shot one of them, then I shot the others, then I stood over their bodies and emptied the magazine into their heads.

I never had that nightmare again!
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I wouldn’t recommend that kind of thing here. St. Thomas Aquinas opined that if one’s dreams reflect deliberate intentions or thought processes engaged in while awake, that could be imputed to them as a sin:
Summa Theologica II:
A second cause of nocturnal pollution is on the part of the soul and the inner man: for instance when it happens to the sleeper on account of some previous thought. For the thought which preceded while he was awake, is sometimes purely speculative, for instance when one thinks about the sins of the flesh for the purpose of discussion; while sometimes it is accompanied by a certain emotion either of concupiscence or of abhorrence. Now nocturnal pollution is more apt to arise from thinking about carnal sins with concupiscence for such pleasures, because this leaves its trace and inclination in the soul, so that the sleeper is more easily led in his imagination to consent to acts productive of pollution. In this sense the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 13) that “in so far as certain movements in some degree pass” from the waking state to the state of sleep, “the dreams of good men are better than those of any other people”: and Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 15) that “even during sleep, the soul may have conspicuous merit on account of its good disposition.” Thus it is evident that nocturnal pollution may be sinful on the part of its cause. on the other hand, it may happen that nocturnal pollution ensues after thoughts about carnal acts, though they were speculative, or accompanied by abhorrence, and then it is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause.
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I have “committed” mortal sins in dreams before. Waking up to realize it never happened is a great feeling! 🙂
 
No doubt. I hate how Aquinas calls it ‘nocturnal pollution’.

I had a very rare violent one last night. I was relieved when I woke up and it was over.

I used to have a dream that came back once a year, and was very freaky…it was a questy-type dream. One year, I let myself be ‘killed’ in the dream, and it never came back. This kinda rings like the poster above and the gun.
 
And then there are annoying persons like me, who almost never remember our dreams at all! 🙂

They’re just dreams. Don’t let them trouble you. Don’t feel guilty about them. If you think your dreams are reflecting some personal problem, deal with the problem. It may be that you’re not entirely decided about what to do, and so it’s coming back on you in your dreams. Or it might just be the stress of your situation. (When I have a particularly stressful day on the job, I do sometimes dream that I’m at work.)

If you’re really annoyed with the whole thing, mention it to God and/or ask for your favorite saint’s intercession to get rid of the annoying dreams.
 
St. Thomas Aquinas opined that if one’s dreams reflect deliberate intentions or thought processes engaged in while awake, that could be imputed to them as a sin:/QUOTE
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If this is true then I wont tell you what I think of Aquinas, as the mods will probably have a thing or two to say about my thoughts.😛
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Thank you all for replies and making me feel better 🙂

The thing is tho’ I felt like I had control in that particular dream. Like, many dreams, I would be there, passively, just enjoying the stuff happening around me. but this one, I felt quite active, and it felt so real… I guess it was almost like guy’s wet dream or something (btw, does that count as a sin?). How much control did I actually have… I guess is another question.

mmm… just on that note that dream being telling me what I want deep inside…(Freudian!) Does that mean I might be a bisexual…? The only time I remember liking girls is when I was in all girls school, and there were couple of sporty girls who looked like really pretty boys… I thought that’s actually pretty normal. 😛 (And no I was in middle school and but it was not sexual way. Just middle school girl crushes :P)
 
morningmare said:
Thank you all for replies and making me feel better 🙂

The thing is tho’ I felt like I had control in that particular dream. Like, many dreams, I would be there, passively, just enjoying the stuff happening around me. but this one, I felt quite active, and it felt so real… I guess it was almost like guy’s wet dream or something (btw, does that count as a sin?). How much control did I actually have… I guess is another question.

mmm… just on that note that dream being telling me what I want deep inside…(Freudian!) Does that mean I might be a bisexual…? The only time I remember liking girls is when I was in all girls school, and there were couple of sporty girls who looked like really pretty boys… I thought that’s actually pretty normal. 😛 (And no I was in middle school and but it was not sexual way. Just middle school girl crushes :P)
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It could be that your fight against sin carries over to your dreams, yet, since you are not fully conscious within the dream you have a dilemma; you know it is wrong, but you cannot fully control yourself, so it feels like you have sinned since you knew it was wrong but did it anyway.

Pray to Jesus to stop any disturbing dreams, especially those which involve you sinning.

God Bless!
 
I still think you’re taking this a little too seriously.

You felt like you had control. But did you? Hard to say. Some people can minutely control their dreams, but most people can’t. Nightmares aren’t something most folks would choose to have, for example. 🙂

So you had a dream. Heck, even if you had several weird dreams, that wouldn’t mean you have bisexual tendencies, any more than if I dream of bananas that I’m really a gorilla. In dreams, people who hate bananas can like them, or bananas can become the only substance that can save the world. That’s how dreams work. Generally, that doesn’t make somebody like bananas in real life any better.

It sounds to me like the fact that your dream came across as pleasurable has made you curious. But honestly, it sounds like your brain was just in the mood for a pleasurable dream and everything else just got thrown in on top of that. Would you take it seriously if you’d found yourself dreaming of Elmer Fudd? Would you be angsting about whether you had hidden Fudd-loving tendencies, or whether you really had a deep-seated need to love men who love hunting ducks and wabbits?

Then why take this any more seriously? It’s brain fuzz, that’s all.

Logic is not a priority of dreams, and making any direct correlation between a dream and the real desires and concerns of the waking mind is… well, it’s iffy. Especially since the brain is really just dumping out the mental trash, deleting data from the buffers, (add your own analogy here) and thus presumably doesn’t want whatever it is that the dreams are dealing with.

So you really need to put this aside and forget about it, and stop angsting over it. It’s like sorting through your trashbasket and trying to find Deep Meaning in the pattern of crumpled balls of paper. If you didn’t find any clearcut answers in the first thirty seconds after you woke up from the dream, you’re probably not going to find anything more by spending twelve days on it.
 
morningmare said:
Thank you all for replies and making me feel better 🙂

The thing is tho’ I felt like I had control in that particular dream. Like, many dreams, I would be there, passively, just enjoying the stuff happening around me. but this one, I felt quite active, and it felt so real… I guess it was almost like guy’s wet dream or something (btw, does that count as a sin?). How much control did I actually have… I guess is another question.

mmm… just on that note that dream being telling me what I want deep inside…(Freudian!) Does that mean I might be a bisexual…? The only time I remember liking girls is when I was in all girls school, and there were couple of sporty girls who looked like really pretty boys… I thought that’s actually pretty normal. 😛 (And no I was in middle school and but it was not sexual way. Just middle school girl crushes :P)
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Don’t worry about the feeling in control. I often have lucid dreams where I can be somewhat in control of my dreams, but my reasoning and level of control, no matter how great they seem while I’m dreaming, are usually much less than you believe once you wake up and really think about it. However due to the lack of fully functioning reasoning while you are asleep, you still can’t sin mortally, even if you have some control. The lack of reasoning is obvious when you think about how you can accept some of the strangest stuff happening in dreams as if it is normal or without questioning it and instantly realizing you’re dreaming.

jimmyakin.org/2005/09/sinful_activity.html
 
I have been struggling with lust and with very inaropriate sexual thoughts, which i am finding carry over intomy dreams because i wake up every morningthinking about them. I am worried too because the dreams are really perverse and wrong. I am going to try not to think about such things during the day, and to pray that the dreams be stopped - howeaver, i don’t think it is sinful.
 
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