A sudden attack of sleep paralysis on my part these past few nights have brought up the memory of when it happened to me some years ago while I was still in the church. I was young, terrified, and since the church had me against my innactive mother at the time, I went to me bishop instead of her about it.

I described not being able to move, having an odd ringing in my ears, and feeling so afraid I tried to scream, but could not. I could have sworn I saw a shadowed figure right there at my bedside. The bishop looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, then said, "It was Satan." Then, of course, he did a blessing to ward off evil and suggested getting my house blessed, too.

That did horrible things to my mind. I thought the blessing had worked, though, because it never happened again. Not until very recently. Past few nights in a row I've been going through not being able to move, or scream, though the fear I felt was beyond extreme and when able to snap out of it, cry and then feel completely fine again.

For the first time ever I have looked up topics on sleep paralysis and have a better grasp on it now, and wish I could go back and kick that bishop. What an a**. I was convinced I was a horrible visit because SATAN HIMSELF came and gave me a visit!

I have also discovered my siblings and parent also have sleep paralysis. Either the devil loves us, or it really is genetic.

Correction:

I was convinced I was a horrible -person- because SATAN HIMSELF came and gave me a visit!

See my longer post below. When I was going through my stress, I went through exactly what you describe in detail. My eyes were opened, and I could not move. My brain created a shadowing image right in front of me, and it frightened me, and I couldn't move. Then when my conscious mind got connected, and I could move, it was actually the curtains in a certain shape that I could see my brain had turned into a shadowyh being of some kind. This happened after I left Mormonism. The shape and shadow is what I saw and converted it into something else. Unfortunately, after your woke up, your conscious brain misinterpretted what happened, applying it to the devil based on what others taught you.

Satan and I hang out all the time.

No big deal

Ahahaha!

Tell Satan to return all of the Black Sabbath CD's he borrowed from me. He is such a narcissist.

I had the same thing. I would even see my self walking into my parents' room and then realize I was still in bed. I didn't tell anyone. But I later found out my little sister had the same thing and my dad blessed the house. He said, "As I prayed, I felt the evil spirit literally drain from the house." Huh?

jong1064 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He said, "As
> I prayed, I felt the evil spirit literally drain
> from the house." Huh?

This brings up an interesting question. How did he know what
an evil spirit draining from a house felt like? Had he
experienced a lot of evil spirits draining from the house?
This goes further and ties into the whole idea of getting a
"testimony." We are supposed to say that the feelings came
from God. But how do we know what feelings from God are
like? Part of the missionary tactics is to tell the
investigator that the feelings he's having at the moment are
the Spirit telling him that it's true. If the missionaries
have to TELL you that, then that means you don't know what it
is yourself. And, maybe they are putting one over on you (and
they are!).

I don't know what makes life better--dumping the superstition that godalmighty watches me constantly and reads my thoughts and records every swear word I say, or dumping the satan superstition.

My dad is one of those over-the-top wacko TBMs who would come home with stories of casting the devil out of people when he was in the bishop prick. I laugh so hard to think of it today because the girl they supposedly exorcised was crazy and into drama. But he knew she was possessed because she had Taro cards. Scared me so badly I'd wake up feeling evil presences and feeling stiff (i.e. scared shitless).

Obviously it was power of suggestion and having had the fear of good ol Stan burned into me. Just another on my long list of abuses mormon children endure due to the power of the penishood.

What makes life great? Dump the satan supersition of demons hiding in every closet. Rejecting all "religions" and any idea that can't be confirmed in real life by the five senses. God will save everyone that doesn't want to dethrone him, and whatever goes on in the afterlife or things that we can't see in this life is His business, so leave it alone. Live life and be happy.

I don't think that sleep paralysis is uncommon. I've had it.

People who believe in OOBIES (out-of-body experiences, or astral travel) describe such an experience happening just before their spirit separates from their bodies. I've heard the sound, it's like an intense buzzing noise, or like a freight train. It's very loud. The OOBIE crowd thinks that the sound happens when your spirit is separating from your chakras. I have felt my astral body lifting away from my physical body as the noise is happening -- make of it what you will. For me it's nearly always feet first, pointing straight up. Some people on this board will just say it's a hypnogogic dream and some will say it is or might be real. I'm part of the latter group.

I wouldn't assume that a dark figure would be evil. I think we're more likely to be visited by friends and family. Sometimes as I've drifted off to sleep I've felt a hand grabbing my own as if a friend has come by to spirit me off to some nighttime adventures!

My favorite OOBIE book is William Buhlman's "Adventures Beyond the Body." Give it a whirl if you're interested.

I've never experienced astral projection . . . just half-astral projection.

You think you were visited by Satan; then you wonder why; then you either feel special or evil; sometimes both at the same time.

No matter what, it doesn't help with the actual situation.

The subconscious mind has power to react to danger in the environment. I not a doctor, but I have learned the following from my own experience with dreams. The subconscious is designed to register a fight of flight response to deal with threats. It's better designed for the jungle against lions and tigers that are physical dangers, not mental ones. In modern times, all of the complex human things cause all kinds of wacky emotional and mental we need to handle with reason.

The subconscious mind is not designed for human confrontation or to produce "rational thoughts" in our current "complicated" modern society. The job of the subconscious is to keep you safe, and it's moronic ability does not have the power to deal with modern society very well. Ask yourself if there is anything threatening you right now. A loss of job, friendship, family, the LDS Church, or some other "relationship" or monetary thing? That is likely causing the dreams.

When the LDS bishop gave you a blessing, it wasn't about your the blessing. Your subconscious could see the huge massive LDS organization and very powerful support group that is a great survival resource of human beings that caused your subconscious mind to shut up, once the bishop touched you and you connected to him.

The devil had nothing to do with it. The subconscious mind does not process LDS theology. It's not into "thoughts". It doesn't care about the afterlife. It cares only about what you can see and feel see *now* with the five senses. It reacts to immediate threats.

Unfortunately, if there is no way to remove your current stress, whatever is causing the bad dreams, you just need to use reason to cope. The dream can't harm you. It's only trying to help you. The dreams are design to assist you to get away from any threat (flight) or remove the threat (fight). Try to find a group of friends or a safe organization with good people to connect to give your subconscious mind plenty of "success and security" to divert your emotions from the stress, whatever it is, and that should help. If it has anything to do with the LDS Church, simply separate the "theology" from the "people", realizing there a many "good" people in the Church, and those social relationships have value. Use reason in dealing with it, without reacting.

In short, the subconscious mind works better with lions and tigers (who don't reason), which requires an *immediate response* to survive. It's not designed to deal with human conflicts that requires intelligence. That's the job of the conscious mind. Use reason to resolve the human threats, and the dreams will cease.

I've learned this from my own fears and threats in this world which started causing moronic bad dreams...especially after leaving the LDS church, since it has a lot of power and energy flowing through it. Once I realized what was going on, I just ignored the dreams until I was safe again.

If you are married, and you have a bad dream, immediately when you wake up look at your spouse in his or her face, focusing on someone that loves you, and it will make the negative feelings disappear. If you are single, find your parents or someone to took at in the face, and exchange the love, and it really will help discharge the reactive mine. Hugs discharge the feelings as well.

Hope that helps.

I'm still waiting for a Jane Seymour sleep paralysis visitation.

just relax and go w/ it. OBEs are fun.

Read up on "Shadow People". If you can see them, you are glimpsing into the spiritual realm. They're dark spirits, and you have power over them. Just command them to leave and they will leave.

Many people have seen them as you will discover, but they don't know what to do about them. YOU do.

Peace.

Wow. I've certainly got an interesting mix of replies here. Thanks everyone :)

Parasomnias tend to run in families. One of my brothers use to have some very strange "seizures" a little bit after falling asleep, I don't know how to explain them other than he would thrash and bang his head on the pillow so hard, our mom had to restrain him from hurting himself. Good thing he mostly outgrew it when he broke his neck.

My oldest sister and I are both insomniacs and have horrible nightmares and are both prone to night terrors.(Yes, we're both survivors of trauma). Her daughter has night terrors and sleepwalks as I do.

I sleepwalk, talk, have both vivid and lucid dreaming and can't sleep without taking at least 1 Benadryl.

http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/ask-the-expert/sleep-and-parasomnias

OMG
If you're a female did you make sure you didn't get pregnant?
If you're a male, did you make sure satan didnt leave with any sperm?

I love sleep paralysis! It was terrifying at first (it was the 90's, so it was more alien-inspired than demon inspired...one of the things I'm interested in is how the hallucinations relate to trends in pop-culture.

Now, though, I can just sort of chill and turn it into a lucid dream. It's taken me 17 years to get to this point, and I'm still not very good at it. It is incredibly hard to walk the line between being free in your dream and being stuck in your body in bed. Concentrate too much and you're awake, lose concentration and you fall asleep completely.

But ANYWAY, what I wanted to say is, I belong to two sleep-paralysis groups on Facebook, and mose people are pretty rational, and are interested in understanding the science behind it and all, but there are always a couple people who insist it is demonic attack and won't hear any other possibilities. It drives me crazy, because I can't imagine how that would affect a strongly religious person who had just had this scary experience and was looking for answers, only to be told they were possessed or something.

So I feel for you. It's probably a good thing the experiences stopped for a while, because I can't imagine going through that again and again sincerely believing something evil had a hold on me. Maybe the bishop's blessing or whatver had some kind of placebo effect? Interestin post though! Thanks for sharing!

not sure about probing though ;D

Some people experience sleep paralysis as alien abduction, apparently.