From the journal, 4/12/1990:
I have been empowered and directed to act by Jesus. He gives me the power of flame, holy flame, that will consume any evil. Having this power and being directed by Jesus puts me into conflict with Satan, who plays a kind of cat and mouse game with me.
Satan stays one step ahead of me while I seek him out with the holy flame. I didn't see him for a time and then all of a sudden he just walks up and shakes my hand. When he does this, he pulls the holy flame out of me and into himself. I can actually feel it leaving me. I am really surprised because I didn't know he could do that. I thought the holy flame could consume all evil and had intended to use it against him, but now it turns out he can take it from me.
When he takes it I have a kind of flashback to all these scenes from my childhood where different people around me followed Satan's guidance to lead me into Atheism and a trust in what they called “Science” over God. I can literally see Satan invisibly encouraging my teachers, friends, and others around me to say certain things that collectively draw me away from God.
After Satan takes the gift of holy flame from me I feel like I've been banished to a tomb. Moreover, I wanted to hide there and was afraid to come out. Now I know Satan is actively looking for me and I no longer have the protection Jesus gave me. I feel like I am dead and alive at the same time, but the bodies around me are just dead. I will note here that the "tomb" is Earth, and the "bodies" around me seem to be spirits who are lost to God as opposed to literal dead bodies. They may have been alive physically but dead spiritually. In my case, I still had a chance at becoming wholly alive again, but I must recover the holy flame to do it.
Satan enters the tomb and seems to know I am not dead, but he doesn't pay attention to me either. Maybe he is ignoring me? He doesn't look so terrible or scary. He looks like a normal, almost average good-looking guy even though I know he's Satan despite his pleasant outward appearance.
Comments
At the time I had this dream, I thought of myself as an atheist. I had no knowledge of religion. I don’t know if I had ever heard the concept of a “holy flame” unless perhaps as a superpower in a comic book. After looking into this in recent years, I think it is fair to say that “holy flame” in a religious context represents truth, the Holy Spirit, and God.
In that context, this dream makes sense, providing we accept that atheism is false and God is real. Jesus gives me holy flame/truth/knowledge of God to protect me. I lose it due to external influences inspired by atheism/Satan/evil. I am condemned if I cannot recover the truth but may yet do so if I make an effort. At the same time, it must be done while assailed on all sides by the forces of atheism.
I dislike looking at any dream as symbolic but this dream does appear to have unambiguous symbolic content. I’ve written a paper on this, which you can find if you look at the links in my first post. One thing you’ll find there is my conclusion that most of my veridical dreams have no symbolic content at all. Spiritual dreams are more likely to have unambiguously symbolic content. Even so, symbolic content is uncommon in my dreams.
Readers of this substack will read many symbolic dreams. That is because I want to focus on those. They are, however, a minority of the dreams I have recorded. I don’t want their prevalence here to leave the wrong impression that they are routine. They are not.