Last night I had another one of those intensely emotional dreams- I will not get into the theme, since it's personal, but I can report that I have had two dreams in my life in which the emotional pain felt is completely different and more intense and deep than anything I've felt in waking life. In the first one I received a 'ROTE' that impacted me so intensely that I 'drank in' the melancholy from a character and the pain was almost exquisite- and as I awoke, 'normal' waking consciousness slowly layered itself on top of the feeling to the point that by the time I was awake the feeling was just a memory- only a surface taste of the pain remained. The same thing happened to me last night (or early morning)- the emotional grief I was in was unreal- so terrible that I contemplated that if I were in that much pain in waking consciousness I could not survive it. Again, as I slowly awoke consciousness acted as a 'numbing' layer, and as I surfaced from the intensity of this emotion, I hoped and prayed that this wasn't anything like what the recently dead go through when they do a life review and go through purging of their 'karma' (or whatever they call it) because I can see how they can get stuck in this terrible reality. As I woke up only the feel of the recent pain remained- and it made me hope it's really not like that, because it is not bearable.
I usually have no emotional dreams that I can remember, and even if upsetting things happen in them, the grogginess in my nervous system cushions the feeling. But every once in a while, this 'different' type of experience, this inner pain that is almost too much rears up and gets me at the core. And it's unbelievably intense, way deep down in a place that doesn't come up too often.