How I Escaped the Devil in my Dreams

I dreamt of the devil the other night.

He has come to me four other times in my adult life that I can recall.  I say the devil because of the image it portrays in this society.  Really I don;t believe in the devil, he is the Prince of Shadows to me.  He is the very seductive masculine energy that tricks me into doing things against my intiution.

I didn't truly know his full nature until this visit though.  Let me share the other times he visited me and what was going on in my life at that time...

..... I had just fallen asleep, like literally just.  My husband was on the computer not more then five feet away from where I slumbered.  within moments I felt myself being pulled to the bottom of the bed.  That horrible feeling of being paralyzed, I was unable to stop it.  I was screaming loudly at my husband who was hypnotized by the computer a mere spit away.  I looked down and felt, more then saw this male energy.. aka the Devil, The Prince of Shadows.  He was laughing at me and drawing me to him.  I screamed so loud at my husband to come save me that I woke myself up.

Looking at the clock I had been asleep for about ten minutes.  Everything in my dream was real time and it felt like real energy.  I asked my husband if he had heard me but he said no I was sleeping soundly.  I was so unnerved.

The second time he came to me, again I had just fallen asleep.  This time his pull came from the side and caused me to begin to spin in my double bed.  I was sleeping alone, just my big black elk hound and I were in the room.  I screamed for my dog but he didn't budge from his slumber.  I was afraid but had been here before so was more analytical this time and didn't actually feel The Prince physically.  I woke within moments of falling asleep again.  I was unnerved again when I woke and wondered why he kept coming to visit me.  Although I hadn't seen him in a few years.

The third time he came to see me was a short visit and in a more of a dream state.  He wore a very seductive energy and came up swiftly behind me.  As he breathed his moist breath on my neck, I welcomed him.  The dream spun into something else after that.  This was the only time he came to me in the middle of the night and in a seductive way.  That's how I knew he was the Prince of Shadows and not my own fears.

The fourth time and the most scariest.....  I had barely and I mean barely just fallen asleep when I heard a loud knock at my bedroom door.  I was up and out of bed before I was even awake.  I knew deeply who was at my door and why he was there.  I was shaking and standing by the side of my bed as my boyfriend laid in slumber on the bed.

That was over a year ago now that I have had a visit from my dark prince.  Until the other night.  He came to me again in the middle of the night.  Paralyzing me as his energy crept up over my shoulder slowly.  I could feel his anger this time, not his laughter or seduction.  He was holding me so painfully tight.  I couldn't get out of his grip and I was angry not frightened.  Finally with my will I kept telling myself it was a dream and not real.  He was never real and this time was no different.  He got angrier and I woke myself up.

I am a big dream analysis girl.  I feel many of life's answers are embedded in our dreams.  This dream has always, since the first one, been my favorite one to interpret.  It is way more real then any dream I have ever had and honestly I have a deep belief that it really is an energy that lurks outside myself.  I used to think he was a warning, and to some extent I guess he is.

The first time he came to me, I was about to cheat on my husband for the first time.  My understanding of life was torn between the man I thought was my soul mate and the new man in my life that I seemed to have a deeper connection with.  Looking back now this is when I began to wake up from societies hypnotic trance and realize I was in  relationship keeping me asleep and from my path.  But at the time I seen it as a warning that I was about to embark on a dark path.... so i didn't.  I stayed in the marriage.

The second time honestly..... not sure why he came to me.  Probably because of entering a twelve step fellowship.  I was dating this guy, I should better rephrase that, I was playing this guy at the time and thought it was about him that the devil came.  So I broke up with the guy and tried to play it straight and narrow.

The third and fourth times he came to me I was with a new guy.  He came during drug relapses.  The first one I was just getting back together with the guy.  I seen it as a dooming sign but continued the path anyways.  The second time when The Prince knocked on my bedroom door I kicked the guy to the curb permanently.

I always seen the dreams to be warnings about the men in my life.  I can see now from the recent dream that it's never been about the men.  I have no man in my life right now.

However as I over eat and dose my body with toxins my minds positive state slips.  I am seeing a definite trend in riddling my body with negative energy, effecting my thoughts and leading me back to searching for something outside myself to feel better.  Guys are always that feel better out for me.  The Prince of Shadows is the seduction of Love.

Today I am not seeking the seduction of romantic love however.  I am actually achieving self love and embarking on my true passions in life.  The Devil in my dream was mad, real mad.  And for the first time, I was not afraid.  Just annoyed that he was there and I couldn't move.  He is losing power over me.  My addictions are losing power over me.  My need to self sabotage is diminishing.

What started in 2006 is finally coming to a close.  Cycles break at the 3, 7 and 13 year mark... in my experience.  This one is the 7 year mark.  I was awakened by that first guy all those years ago.   It has taken me this long to actually become confident enough,  to step into my light.  It took seven years for me to shed the old skin that protected me, to lose the baggage that I carried around.

 I feel like the Prince of Shadows has finally let go.  I feel like I have finally completed my journey to the underworld.  I am on a new path, a new cycle...

When the pain of staying the same becomes greater then the pain of change.

I am not sure if its just me but all the daily meditations in my Just for Today book seem to be about Higher power, Sponsorship or Romantic relationships.   Maybe its just my perception because its where I am at, but I am almost getting tired of talking about these topics.  However I will continue because even though I may not see the benefit today, going with the flow of the universe has proven highly rewarding in my life.

I definitely fell victim to looking for a person to fix me when the drugs were removed from my tool box.  I personally believe as a society we much more suffer from this issue then we do the issue of drugs, alcohol or food as a fix it all.  When I came into the program I latched on to a guy that I thought had this recovery thing completely in the bag and could share it with me.

It did not take long for the both of us to relapse and head for the hills.   Isolating and falling back into all the using patterns together... I was completely oblivious to the fact that even though we were together and thus not alone(isolating) that I was still in recovery and still working a program.  In my naive state I truly believed this guy still had my back, was still leading me to the light.

I was wrong.

When I finally gained a moment of clarity I freaked out and was packed  and on a bus back home before he even got home.  You would have thought that would have ended my insanity.         Nah, I am one of those incredibly slow learners.   We picked up our relationship where we left off a couple weeks later, this time keeping some distance between us.  I think my mind figured that I would recover at home and him there and we could reconnect when we were all well.

I never recognized that we were both latching off each other for our fixes now.  I was still expecting him to recover me and fill me with the years of knowledge he had.  I had a tremendous amount of expectations of him and he was drowning under them.

Now that I am really beginning to stand on my own and not need drugs, food or another person to fix me I am pushing away all those things that I leached off of in the past.   Drugs are far removed from my obsession, not saying I am getting complacent and losing sight of the fact i am just one hit away from a backslide to the pits of hell, just saying that my obsessive nature is acting out in different ways.  Like letting this guy go.

Part of the process of recovery for me was to walk through this relationship to see how much I indeed do hold on to people around me for my own sense of well being.  Letting go of those same people has been so hard for me to do and a deep process within it self.  It hurts me to hurt them knowing how much of a difference they made in my life.  However to hold on to them would be to digress and start walking back down the steps and that I cannot afford.  Sometimes seeing the larger picture does not help me in the current moment.  It robs me from my feelings needed to be able to break it off once and for all.

I dont have any way to end this post.  I am still knee deep in the process of truly breaking all the ties that bind me to my past and the ways I used to use to feel complete within myself.  I am drawing  off my new found inner strength and pray that soon I will be fully free of all the chaos and suffering my mind likes to create for me.  Till then I will keep walking towards the light and trust in the process, however shitty it feels.