Shadow Work

These 10 shadow dreams happened between 2019 and 2023. As I look back across them I notice the pace of the Shadow dreams. It all takes time but affirms the changes like markers or indicators of growth. I also notice how being lucid and drawing allowed the Shadow to come forward and deliver its beneficial message. Shadow ends up being my guide to the Self.

6/3/19 I’m looking into the open end of a tractor trailer truck. It’s empty except for a man standing in the dark. Shadows fill the space. Precious cargo has arrived.

8/14/20 There’s a large black spider on my back, alive but still and calm. I can feel its weight on me. The spider is there to help prepare me (for what exactly?). She’s got my back.

1/12/21 Four shadows, foreshadow.

In my living room is a bookshelf full of handmade black women dolls that my grandmother brought back from Africa. A tall black man with scars on his face silently looks at them with disgust. Another black man hides behind him. “Are they offensive to you,” I ask. I proceed to remove all the dolls. I’m now sitting next to a small black boy. I tell him, “You know I love you.”

Note: For this dream I sought out advice from a Jungian dream group on Reddit. Basically, I was coached that three of the shadows – dolls, scar man, and boy – were resolved but that the black man hiding in the back was being blocked, thus blocking my integration of the Shadow.

So, I asked that shadow guy in the back to come forward. Over and over again in my thinking I asked it to come forward. A month later I was answered.

2/10/21 I try to coax the spider out of the back of the mailbox but it won’t budge. I try to move it with my thoughts, “Move it!”. I want to scoot it away with my hand but I’m paralyzed. The Shadow has been delivered.

Shadow5_CaveGuide

2/8/22 The shadow figure (now a guide) leads the way to a new school. We’re taken deep, deep, deep into the earth for shop class. The class assignment is to draw and cut out the shape of a wedding dress. To shape it fully you have to take it into the deepest, deep, deep cave chamber. My white wedding dress is so deep in there that I can’t see it for all of the darkness. A giant Mattie dog is waiting at the entrance to accompany me. The cutout dress fits like a key into the dress in the back of the cave.
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Notes: This is no. 48 in the wedding dress series. The wedding dress is a symbol, marker, indicator of the process of wedding the self.

8/24/22 The spider is on my face, alive and calm. I’m face to face and seeing eye to eye with the shadow archetype. There’s no denying it now. In the dream it’s not scary, but rather I’m thinking, “This is right. This is supposed to be happening and it’s happening now.” As I feel the spider on me I am aware that this is a peak moment.

8/27/22 The compound eyes of the spider are made up of ancestors looking back at me. It’s the collective unconscious staring at me.They’ve arrived here via the Shadow. We’ve become joined in a compound in this space of consciousness.

12/10/22 I’m on a hovering bridge to nowhere (now here). Buildings and structures are being demolished around me (old structures and ways of being). I’ve been ticketed by the police. Shadow figure, little girl me, and my dog Mattie (intuition) round out our foursome Self.

12/28/22 I’m walking down the sidewalk when I see the wise-old-woman-of-the-forest sitting in a lawn chair on the corner of an intersection. “What are you doing here?” I ask. I look back at her and in response she is now a black woman. My guide has become the Shadow. I go for coffee.

1/16/23 My spirit guide, The-Wise-Old-Woman-of-the-Forest, is standing on the point at Conimicut Point Beach (RI). She is aligned with the light house and its beacon and she’s looking at me. Drawing the dream reveals the Shadow. The Shadow has made landfall and come ashore at last. Our integrated foursome is an aligned continuum.

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It is so beneficial that you are kindly sharing your inner/outer journey this way. I feel a connection to the way you and others who use art and verbal images to express your experiences and growth in dreams, and with those verbalizing experiences and non-experiences in the dream groups, as well. I find that it has been helping me to venture along a similar though different path with increasing lucidity and realize how fortunate I have been this lifetime.

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Love it! That made me lol. :slightly_smiling_face: So true!

I mentioned spiders being sacred to many NA tribes in another post. I think that ties into this dream as well. Might be connecting you to yoir shadow elements, might be showing you deep sight to invisible webs that tie us all together, might be both.

What is this group called? @_Barry said he was part of a LD group there which had over half a million users! I am curious to check these groups out.

This is so cool, absolutely love this symbolism! The infinite invisible silk ties that web us to the past, present, and future in the collective. So cool!

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There’s a group called Jung and one called Lucid Dreamers .

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