The sinfulness of dreams

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DiscerningTheTruth

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Hi All,
I was recently discussing with a dear Catholic friend how she feels that we should confess sinful dreams. For instance, if you were to play with a Ouija board in a dream, or if a dream were sexually explicit in nature. To me, this seemed like scrupulousness bordering on superstition. But, as I’m new to this, I figured I’d see if any of you know if this is a real encouragement of the church or not? Thanks
 
You can’t sin in your dreams.

I had a terrifying dream last night that two dogs were licking my neck, it woke me up with a fright.

If however you have been dabbling with the ouijaboard then it might be on your mind too much.
 
Can’t sin in a dream. You literally need to make a conscious decision to sin and when we are asleep we are unconscious.
 
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Dreams are not sinful, we engage in them when sleeping. Be at peace over concepts in dreams.
 
You can’t sin in your dreams. We all have sexual dreams from time to time and often they involve acts that are so outlandish we would never even consider doing them in real life, same as when we have dreams about walking around school or office with no pants on. It’s not our conscious mind doing this and it’s simply the brain sweeping itself out.

If you’re reading porn before bed or playing with the Ouija board in real life, then the sin is that you read porn or played with the board in real life, not that you went on to have a dream about it.
 
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I once had a dream where I sinned by eating a potato. I mean in the dream it was a sin to eat a potato and I ate one. Well really, there was no moment in the dream where I ate one, but one moment I hadn’t and the next I had eaten one years ago. So I was guilty of eating a potato.

Well really, I just made all of that up because my real dreams would take too long to explain. But what I described is very much like my dreams and probably like a lot of people’s.

The point here is that in dreams you don’t actually know what is and is not a sin, you aren’t capable of actually choosing to sin or not sin, and the alleged sin in question might not even have happened only been remembered as having happened.
 
St. Thomas Aquinas says:

“Every sin depends on the judgment of reason… Now during sleep reason has not a free judgment. For there is no one who while sleeping does not regard some of the images formed by his imagination as though they were real… Wherefore what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason’s judgment, is not imputed to him as a sin.”
 
Now, if you made a decision in your dream (some people can supposedly control their dreams through “lucid dreaming”) then it may be sinful.
But for the most part we don’t make decisions in dreams. Dreams may be trying to tell you something deep inside your psyche, however.
 
I don’t know how much people can actually control their dreams in lucid dreaming. To put it another way let me posit you two dreams.

In Dream 1, you realize that you are dreaming and can control your dreams and you start doing whatever you want.

In Dream 2, you dream that you have control of your dreams and that you are doing whatever you want. You aren’t actually controlling anything, the dream is just about you being able to.

How could we possibly tell the difference between these two dreams.
 
I dunno. I don’t lucid dream, though sometimes it does feel like (especially if I am about to wake up) that I can control my dream a bit.
 
My question is, can you actually control it or is it just an element of the dream that you think you can?

Because I suspect that even in the case of lucid dreaming, we aren’t actually awake and we aren’t actually rational enough to control ourselves properly.
 
I am not an expert, but at a certain point I wonder if there is really any difference. If you tell yourself, “I shall make myself be able to fight against temptation in physical form in my dream” and then you consistently could do such, is there really any difference between what you suppose?
As I said, I do not lucid dream. I am no expert, but many seem to purport being able to control their dreams. I am taking their word for it.
 
The idea of “lucid dreaming” or “controlling your dreams” is New Age gunk. If you can control what’s going on in your dream, then you’re probably not asleep or dreaming in the first place.
 
Dreams are involuntary, they are not real happenings. There is no way a dream could be a sin as the dream is unreal.
 
I agree with @Gripper. You can’t sin in dreams. You could murder someone in your dreams, but, since you didn’t actually do that, it wouldn’t be a sin. I hope this helps!!! God bless!!! 🙂
 
Although there actualy are a few people who have the capacity to “direct” their dreams, I don’t know if even that is really in the realm of willful action. They’re still asleep while they’re doing it. I suppose it is something someone could know they’re doing and want to do differently, but that’s not something I’d take to confession.
 
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