I woke
up during the night because I felt an odd sort of external presence around
me, an eerie presence, like evil and seductive, that felt like it was smothering
me, and I couldn’t move or protect myself because my body felt completely
paralyzed. Can you explain what this was all about?
 odern scientific research attributes
the physiological mechanism of sleep
paralysis to a natural protective function of the brain that prevents
the body from thrashing around during periods of deep Rapid Eye Movement
(REM) sleep when dreams occur. Nevertheless, this mechanism cannot explain
the psychological meaning of why a person wakes up precisely during
a moment of such paralysis and what the entire experience means
psychologically to that person at that particular time of the person’s
life.
In medieval times, this experience
was attributed to an incubus, a demon thought to lie on and seduce
sleeping persons, especially women. (In medieval folklore, a demon causing
a corresponding experience for a man was sometimes called a
succubus.)
Therefore, to get to the
psychological meaning of these experiences, let’s begin with a close
look at the words seduction and smothering.
Envelopment and
Seduction
Consider how every human infant,
being completely helpless at birth, needs to be nursed and protected in order
to survive. The infant needs to be enveloped, so to speak, in a
mother’s love—and this whole experience can have the quality of
an idyllic, intoxicating bliss. Nevertheless, every infant is destined to
become an independently functioning adult, and to achieve this independence
the growing child must be separated psychologically from the mother through
the influence of the father. So right here we have
a fundamental tension: the bliss of envelopment in another, if it isn’t
eventually stopped, can actually stifle the attainment of
independence.
As adults—especially if
we have been forced into independence rather than initiated into it through
proper guidance—we can feel a nostalgic yearning
for the bliss of an infantile envelopment in a mother. And so we will create
intoxicating fantasies of being
“enveloped” by another person. But because contemporary culture
invariably confuses sexuality with love, these fantasies
of envelopment become fantasies of sexual seduction.
Smothering
Now here’s where things
get psychologically complicated. Just as infantile envelopment in
a mother can also be stifling, adult seduction has its own
dark side: smothering. Sexual seduction, at its psychological core,
really is a matter of manipulation by the desire
of another. And when seen in its raw reality, manipulation is far from being
blissful. In fact, it’s downright terrifying.
The
Demonic
Imagine a place where there is
no justice and no truth, only unbridled hedonism, a preoccupation with personal
satisfaction even to the point of causing pain to others. Imagine being
vulnerable to being seized and used by any other
being who stumbles upon you. Scream all you want, but no one will hear you
because everyone else is screaming too. So you can’t really scream at
all.
Well, this is the place of the
demonic.
Therefore, when you
unconsciously
direct your life desire to being seduced, you
enter the place of the demonic. At first it might seem exciting and intoxicating.
But sooner or later, before you’re totally lost, your unconscious might
wake you up to the sheer terror of the paralyzing danger in which you have
placed yourself.
Will you listen?
Fighting Off
the Demonic
If you do listen, how do you
fight off the demonic? You change your attitude.
Turn away from the intoxicating abandonment into self-serving
illusions of ecstasy and learn how to
sacrifice yourself in service to others through
real love. It’s that simple.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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