Falling in Love with Death Dream
I had a dream I fell in love with the grim reaper (death). I was not scared of him and never felt threatened by his presence but we fell in love with each other!
This maybe one of the most extraordinary dreams I have ever read. You might have a tendency to think that it is a bit morbid to have a dream like this. After all, falling in love with death!! Sounds like Meet Joe Black, the film in which a young woman falls in love with Death, played as Brad Pitt. I guess if you are a woman and death is Brad Pitt, maybe death is someone you would really want to love.
My method of dream work relies heavily on the emotional content of the dreamer during the dream. Specifically if you are feeling really positive in a dream like this dreamer is, it means that death is a good thing. If you were in love with death, but you were, at the same time, full of negative feelings like fear, it would mean quite something else. So for the dreamer, death is like Brad Pitt.
The question that arises when death is a positive object rather than a fearful thing has to do with what the advantage of being in love with death is. For sure it is not about running down to the gun shop and committing suicide. Suicide is about negative depressive feelings. Loving death is a positive experience.
If you have read my postings about certain types of dreams in the past, you will know that I am for having a lot of self-discipline about not going for a literal interpretation of dreams. It is sort of the like the hype around the Mayans saying that 2012 is the end of the world and then everyone expecting the world to end on December 21st. Here we are. It is already the 24th. I am sure that the literal interpretation sold better, but the metaphoric interpretation of the world ending is just so much more exquisite.
The Republican Party in the United States experienced a kind of death in the last elections because their candidate didn’t win. The difference between the Party and this dreamer is the notion of love. Falling in love with death is a good thing if you know how to work with the metaphor, but if you read the Revelation of St. John in the Bible and think some scary sea monsters are going to appear in the world, you are just so in the wrong dimension. It is much more meaningful and helpful to work in the non-literal world of metaphor which dreams and prophecies are for the most part.
So what is so great about death as a metaphor? To understand this it is useful to realize that we have two selves, an ego, that is selfish and materially oriented, and a true self, that is full of positive potentialities that are beneficial for others. When you are in love with death, you are in love with dying to your ego.
Baha’u’llah in His book, The Four Valleys, describes it like this.
The story is told of a mystic knower, who went on a journey with a learned grammarian as his companion. They came to the shore of the Sea of Grandeur. The knower straightway flung himself into the waves, but the grammarian stood lost in his reasonings, which were as words that are written on water. The knower called out to him, “Why dost thou not follow?” The grammarian answered, “O Brother, I dare not advance. I must needs go back again.” Then the knower cried, “Forget what thou didst read in the books of Síbávayh and Qawlavayh, of Ibn-i-Hajíb and Ibn-i-Málik, and cross the water.”
The death of self is needed here, not rhetoric:
Be nothing, then, and walk upon the waves.
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a 
Dreams For Peace 
Last night I dreamt that I fell in love with a Grim Reaper that lived in an old abandoned house. I entered the house and it was boobytrapped with scary stuff but not one thing scared me. (The scary stuff where like snake slithering around and enormous weird animals.) Not even him. I adored and obeyed him. Followed him everywhere but now I notice that he could never leave his house. By the ending of the dream something happened that I couldn’t be with him anymore and I cried for him while leaving. I don’t remember who told me to leave but I think it was someone in my family. That relative was waiting for me on the porch of his house and walked me home. Once I got home I continued to cry and was trying to “summon” him but he never showed up. So I just left my house and started walking back to him. Once I got to his abandoned house I entered and all his boobytraps were “off”. Like if there were realistic turned off machines in a haunted house. When I got to him, I hugged him and kissed him, as soon as I did that all his beings became active again.
Dear Sabrina,
I really love this dream you have had a lot. Falling in love with the Grim Reaper means falling in love with the person who brings death. Death in real life in a metaphoric sense means death to the old worn out useless ways that no longer serve you. Being in love with this aspect of yourself means that you can easily let go of the past old habits and accept new ones that serve you better. Most people have a great deal of fear of the Grim Reaper and hold onto bad habits long after they have served in useful purpose. You do not. You cannot imagine how great your life is going to be because of this. it is going to be amazing.
Chelsea,
This dream is largely about your relationship with the Grim Reaper (death). What it is trying to teach you is that while we view death as a very negative thing as in a scary Halloween figure, really death is more like “a messenger of joy”.
To make it very useful in your present circumstance it would be helpful to view death as I have stated in the above post. What you need is a death to the ego. Usually the ego part that needs to die when you need a death to the ego is that part of you that follows what everyone has always done. it is like following your forefathers instead of following your heart. Forefathers are like voices in your head that say that you better do things this way or that way or else really bad will happen.
The dream teaches the opposite. When you just don’t listen to the past traditions, things become better and better for you. Having an abortion means that you have had to give up a new life that you would have nurtured. Now that soul is in the next world being nurtured. So the mother in you that nurtures who you really are needs to start taking over your life rather than being ruled by a vision of your life according to someone else.
You need to fall in love with dying to everything that is tradition bound for the next while so that you can open up to the unique person you are. Then when that self is open you can choose what traditions are useful and which need to be discarded. Right now you cannot tell.
I suppose I didn’t mention that I had an abortion 3 months ago.
I’ve been having dreams I’m In a drs office with my baby (sometimes a boy sometimes a girl) and the room change a lot to keep her from getting bored. And I know I am dreaming. And I am sitting with a man I call “grim” bc the first time I dreamed of him I knew he was the grim reaper//angel of death. He was stealing scary masks from costume shops. But he isn’t so bad and we are good friends now and I pick him up from American greeting card area and he always thinks I’m going the wrong way. He has such a horrible scar on his face I’m Afraid that the people in public will be afraid of him, especially my daughter. But she is distracted by the ever changing rooms and toys. Missie is always there–rolling her eyes at her comments and excitement. Grim always knows when it’s time to go and puts me to sleep. Everyone in the waiting room knows and loves him (always to my surprise bc of his appearance)–and there’s always a couple like me and grim–they have to leave each other bc they’re not supposed to know each other really. I still know it’s a dream and always remember to ask him a question. Last night I was picking him up and I knew he was only here to get a soul and let me visit my daughter//son//unborn child. I said, ” so you must have been alive at some point, right?”…
To my surprise he said no, and secretly wept at this statement. I was confused when everyone around him began to know him as if they lit up. This is death. He is surprisingly magnetic.
The bible only personifies death when Solomon interacts with him and he was emotionally distraught at taking the souls of two women. Or Solomon’s sentinels bc they were beautiful. In biblical history, women are also the reason he is cast out of heaven.
But in my dreams, I love him. He and I are both ashamed of the scar on his jaw, but it isn’t mine so I protect him. He says he has no free will whatsoever–he does what god says and it makes him angry. He has the emotional needs of humans, with more compassion. He isn’t evil and the more time he spends with humans, the more human he becomes, he says. This is true in my dreams. A few months ago he was a complete skeleton with a cloak. Now he is a disturbing looking man with a scar on his jaw. However, he doesn’t scare me and he brings my child to me. He//she is constantly putting other kids pacifiers in her//his mouth. He never speaks to it. There is an inexplicable sorrow within him but in some crazy way he is protecting me. Days go by in these dreams, but the last day is always most vivid bc we say goodbye. I know I will wake up in my be without him and I tell him that no matter what ill have someone to look forward to when I die and he looks kind of sad. And we go out wherever we planned last time and I wake up like I knew I would.