I did a search and couldn't find any thread about dreams so maybe this can be used as a catch-all thread for anything dream related, including lucid dreams.

I had a dream while napping today that stands out from pretty much every other dream I've had in terms of its sheer power and the discomfort it resulted in. I actually had forgotten about it and now eight hours later I remember it and am wondering if anyone who is interested in spiritual matters has experienced something similar. In case it matters, I've dabbled in lucid dreaming, but not for many years and never with much success beyond increasing my dream recall skills.

In the dream I was in an empty space, as if I was meditating or contemplating. There was no body but only a void of space and internal thoughts and I had a sense that whatever I asked to be shown would be shown to me. I remember asking to be shown "the truth" and suddenly a monstrous ball of fiery light filled the scope of my vision. It was overwhelming in its power, as if it was exerting some incredibly heavy weight on my mind, and while there was nothing I could make out in its form and nothing it transmitted to me as far as thoughts, I sensed that there was a massive amount of knowledge, information, and form contained in it; far too much to sort through with my mind. It was unbearable for even a few seconds. I felt like it was slowly crushing me, and I had an intuition that if I kept staring into it I would be annihilated or, in some unknown way, permanently transformed by it. I almost immediately took back my question and asked for it to either go away or I apologized in some sense for asking for more than I could handle. As soon as I requested this or thought this, the light disappeared and I remember feeling extremely relieved, as if I had dodged a bullet.

The strange aspect of the dream is that I have never, to my knowledge, had a dream that was non-visual in nature, for even a bit of it, and also that the sensation of danger felt real. I remember consciously believing that this thing could do something real to me, whereas I have always in the past experienced a disconnection from the action of dreams, where I am more or less a member of the audience, viewing my dream and enjoying the ride, rather than having a real stake in it. Even where pain or death occurred to me in dreams, I never really believed in it and always felt some distance from it.

Any comments or attempts to explain/understand this would be welcome. Anyone have a similar experience while dreaming?