I was in my local occult bookshop the other day and I overheard one of the customers talking to the lady behind the counter asking about how to deal with night terrors.  She continued relaying her, of what I could only believe was her son\’s, experiences to the employee which included things like seeing people standing in his bedroom upon waking.

The store worker, in true pagan fashion dealt out a few of the usual \”cures\” that one would expect… a few particular crystals in a pouch under the pillow; smudging the room with sage (in a clockwise direction, apparently is best); and also shaking out the negative energy that the bed\’s mattress has collected.

Personally speaking, as someone who has suffered from this particular thing and has learned to live with it… I think those particular suggestions are quite silly.  But, really, I would suggest them to someone if they had tried everything else first, because in the end, if it works… then it works.  Who cares how silly it is right?

Well… now I find that I\’m kicking myself because I didn\’t speak up and offer some advice to this lady and her son.  I wasn\’t about to contradict the advice given by the lady behind the counter, but I also wanted to provide an alternative solution that maybe she didn\’t or wouldn\’t have normally considered.

My suggestion would have been this… I believe that what we see upon waking are the last remnants of our time in the non-physical (in this case, Focus 2 oC).  These last remnants are bleeding through into this physical reality (Focus 1 oC) as we wake up, since while our minds are \”Here\” when we wake, there is also a small part of our consciousness still \”There\” as well.  I\’ve come to call this a \”Focus Overlay\” experience.  Now, obviously, I wouldn\’t go into this kind of detail explaining to someone else I just met in a bookstore.  hehe  I would have said that the moment her son comes awake, part of his mind is still connected to the dream world… and that can sometimes slip through into his waking vision from time to time.

I would have suggested that he started a dream journal trying to identify and work through what the subject of the \”night terrors\” are.  Get at the root of the problem and not just attack the symptoms of them with \”crystals\” or \”smudging\”. Also, learning how to have lucid dreams in an effort to confront that which is terrorizing you is another great result of keeping a dream journal.

I mean, I should also probably be doing the same with my own particular \”hypnopompic visitor\”… LoL

On a side note, while I was there, I did pick up a book called \”Astral Projection and the Nature of Reality\”, by John Magnus, referred to me highly by Personalreality of the Astral Pulse forums… so far it\’s turning out to be a VERY good read. I find that his ideas of astral projection really resonate with my own. I\’ll have to write a review for it sometime soon after I finish it.  🙂