Dreams & Childhood Religions
Last night’s dream makes me think of primal fears and I wonder, just how deeply rooted are the religious ideals taught to us as children?
This isn’t the time to get into detail about the dream because I have to leave this morning, but the general idea is that there was a stereotypical demon that had come back to “haunt” my brother & I. When the demon showed itself my dream self became incredibly frightened.
This demon character had every intention of killing my mother and basically everyone else that we cared about. This can give an idea of the emotional situation that my character faced in the dream.
There was a brief moment that I thought of the name of my goddess, but for whatever reason my dream self chose to revert to my mother’s religion. I would like to think that I wouldn’t be such a kid in real life (though I was a child in the dream). In the dream I was so over come with fear that I decided that I had better not test my pagan ideals (wha..?) and “went to a safe place” in the form of my mother’s religion.
It was a security blanket of sorts.
To be honest it bothers me that some part of my mind would do that; that it would choose to hide behind something from my childhood that today I see as nonsensical and full of holes. I also have to admit that there’s a twinge of guilt that some part of my subconsciousness would make that kind of decision.
Anyway, I thought that the questions that this brings to light would be interesting to think over:
- Have you abandoned your childhood religion?
- If so, have you ever been placed in a situation where you reflexively returned to it?
- Is there a part of our subconscious that we’re not aware of that still clings to the (sometimes silly) notions taught to us by our parents when we were very young?
- How do you reconcile the situation with what you believe today?
I have to go for the day. My apologies that this post isn’t as thoughtful as I try to make posts to Shadows In Motion, but I have 10 minutes before I have to hit the shower.
~Steph
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Topics: Musings |
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