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Learning to Work with the Shadows

First published in Talking Total Health in August 2001

In Learning to Play in the Shadows, I revealed the attitude and commitment of people who call themselves Dreamers. Dreamers express Love of the Self in both themselves and others, with all its hidden and unlived possibilities, and even when no one is looking. Even in a Dreamer's night dreams, Love is the First Principle and all other principles bow to that.

In Learning to Dance in the Shadows, I distinguished between different ways of dreaming, namely, night dreams, day dreams, and waking dreams, and touched upon the lessons of discernment and accountability that are part of becoming a Dreamer. Dreamers know that night dreams are the least socially constructed expressions of their essence. In coming to understand the language of night dreams, Dreamers approach an understanding of the Spirit-Soul axis.

Learning to See in the Shadows explored the four phases involved in bringing dreams to consciousness and outlined the process of working with dreams. Night dreams are the most personal world of all, and the meaning of a particular image is always person-specific. Often the meaning presents in symbolic form or as puns and humour. For example, I dream of a woman called Anne Adderly Nieu, a farmer who has signed a cell phone contract. I have found her phone and contract, and now I want to find her so that I can return it to her. I pore over the signature in the dream. It is not until I notice that Nieu looks like the Mi of Michelle when I write in cursive that I understand the meaning of the dream: Not only do I need to connect with a more grounded and earthbound part of myself, but I should insist that people call me Michelle rather than Chelle. The energy of my name must not be diminished if I am to fulfill my destiny.

The personalised nature of dreaming does not ignore that there are particular ways of looking at dreams, or different keys that will unlock different and deeper meanings. Dreamers know that all perspectives have merit and that none is perfectly accurate. All views of the human condition are limited simply because human experience defies full understanding. Human being is multidimensional, and we are immersed in that multidimensional process even when trying to understand who we are and why we are here.

Freud and those who followed his teachings offer us insights into those aspects of the shared world that have been internalised. These are the props and people from the so-called real world that we use to enact the dramas within our inner worlds. These 'internalisations' are frameworks and patterns for relating in the world of time and space. We take these processes with us at night. Dreamers know that everything a human being has internalised reflects upon his or her relationship to Self. A car is not just a car, but a vehicle that carries our consciousness through time and space to different locations. A car is a means for motivating ourselves, as are all modes of transport, however humble. The presence of our mothers in a dream not only comments upon our own perceptions of mothering by our 'real' mothers, but also upon our more general perceptions of what mothering and being mothered mean. For some it is nourishing; for others, it is suffocating.

Jung and those who followed his teachings offer Dreamers insights into the potential ways in which psyche plays. Possible ways of being human, or blueprints and archetypes for the human condition that pertain to our particular circumstances emerge in dream series, by which I mean dreams recorded over a period of time. These reflect aspects of Self that we may or may not choose to bring into manifestation. The integration of these possibilities involves identification with the role or image, and leads to wholeness. Dreamers know that all of human existence is directed towards wholeness, whether we are conscious of this or not, but Dreamers seek to make this process conscious. Projection of these possibilities involves separating from the potential, or differentiating between what we prefer to be and what we would rather not, and disowning the part we do not prefer. This leads to relationships with others in our world as we attempt to relate to and integrate that which we have spilt off and projected onto them. Then there are aspects of ourselves that we choose not to bring into the world at all. We neither project nor integrate these potentials, but hold them still. These aspects are held in the Shadow. Whatever our choice--to integrate, project, or hold still, we are accountable for the choice.

Dreamers individuate by learning to discern between potentials they wish to integrate and potentials they wish to project. And they learn also which potentials are better held still within the shadows. Wholeness means becoming fully integrated, but becoming whole is a step-by-step process. Dreamers know this. Our shadow aspects can be large and powerful, and it would be silly to set off to war with them without adequate preparation and support.

Boss and those who followed his teachings offered an existential understanding of human being that gives us insight into the unlived possibilities for being that present with dreaming and in any particular dream. Dreamers choose to be authentic, to dream and then live their creative solutions. They take up their freedom to do it different. Dreamers ask: Why not? Then they walk through their fears.

Distilling the meaning of dreams is an alchemical process with many ingredients, and the process of appreciating the message is complicated by the ego and its fears. There are dreams we tell and dream we do not, and how we tell our dreams is often the most important. How does the ego hide us from our Self? What do we choose to leave out of the story when relating a dream to others? What aspects of our truth do we hide even from ourselves or simply not see because we are wearing our habitual blinkers?

The latter, of course, is the joy of sharing the dream--other people do not necesarily wear the same blinkers, and they might see what would release the meaning of the dream. In the end, it is only the dreamer of the dream who knows the true meaning of the dream, however. Dreams are intensely personal revelations of meaning, and Dreamers know this. They also know that it is in what we choose to tell, and how we choose to tell the dream, that we gather clues about our boundaries in relationship to ourselves and others and the tricks and illusions we use to maintain our separateness from others.

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