A disturbing dream could mean you are plagued by internal doubt, or
that you feel as though you are living against the codes you purportedly
follow.
Depending on your beliefs, you could be the victim of demonic possession, suffering from indigestion, or the honored recipient of a sacred gift. It all depends on the symbols arrayed throughout the dream, and, most importantly, the quality of your reaction when you wake up.
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Religion and Dreams:
In a religious context, a disturbing dream is a message letting you know that something is inconsistent between you and whatever your religion assumes is the correct mode of being.
What you consider to be your 'correct mode of being' is whatever precepts you think it beneficial to follow in your spiritual and temporal life. 'The Right' can range from a set of meditative principals to an established set of laws or a moral structure.
Can Dreams be Prophetic?
No theology or philosophy is entirely bereft of some interpretive framework for dreams. A problem preoccupying Western dream thinkers has been the task of deciding whether or not a specific dream is of divine or mundane origin. Artemidorus Daldus, author of the Oneirocriticon, a second-century masterwork on the interpretation of dreams, distinguishes between oneiri, dreams which have cosmic signification, and enhypnioni, which lose their cosmic signification when the dreamer awakens. The reason this kind of distinction was required was that religious authorities were very interested in keeping tabs on who was having (or claiming to have) divinely-inspired prophetic dream visions. Cicero, Macrobius, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas all lent their pens to the concept of dreaming, but from their writings it is clear that they were more interested in stamping out religious/political uprisings than exploring dreaming itself. Meanwhile, however, there is ample evidence that outside of the castles and cathedrals there was a popular culture very interested in interpreting dreams. No doubt Artemidorus, one of many professional dream interpreters of his time, spent the bulk of his time interpreting the enhypnioni, for while they were insignificant cosmologically, they were certainly of great importance to the dreamer him/herself.
The interpretations on this site will not hold to strict divides between 'mystical' and 'temporal' dreams. Why? We feel that those categories are useless constructs borne of our modern age, in which anything external from the mind and body is considered a foreign substance. The divide between the self and the world is a false one. Yes, the world is mediated through your senses, and you may not be able to cast about your consciousness at will, or use your mental powers to fortell the future, or commune with denizens of the spirit realm, but some people (perhaps yourself, gentle reader) perceive themselves to be doing just that. And we will not gainsay them. Consider this site a safe haven for those of us who realize we do not know the answers.
If you believe your dream to be a prophecy of the future, then it is just that--a prophecy of the future--and it is still important to see how its symbols are deployed in terms of your everyday life--and vice versa. We are not here to answer ineffable questions about life, the universe, and everything, but we can still observe dreams while keeping our minds open to all possibilities. (continue)