Shade Shadow
Feelings of being in the shade, or obscured by somebody else. It may be wife, husband, or parents who make us feel inferior, and in their shadow. Usually something is standing in our way, in the sense of not enabling us to see the light, or gain understanding. A shadow is also a symbol for the unconscious activities that sometimes control actions. So a shadow can depict inner feelings seldom expressed. A shadow can also be a sign of coming events, the shadows cast from the future. This is because we often see someone’s shadow before we see them.
Idioms: Afraid of one’s shadow; shades of; shadow of one’s former self; worn to a shadow. See Archetype of the Shadow – Shadowy Figure
Comments
Dreamt I was told I was a ghost. But I saw my shadow and knew I was still alive and not a ghost.
Just a quick question, found this site looking for answers to a dream that I had last night. But before I get to the dream I should say that I have been seeing a dark figure in my everyday life wether it be at work or at home I’ve seen it probably 20-30 times over a 4 year period. I was out to dinner last night with some friends and we all started sharing things we have seen or that have happened to us in are life’s we can’t explain and I told everyone that I had been seeing a dark figure and that was the end of the conversation. Now to the dream. I went to bed around 12pm, and in my dream I was standing in a void with the same shadow figure behind me lightly shoving me and I didn’t wanna show fear so I stayed and didn’t move. After that the figure started yelling at me to leave saying “YOU CANT BE HERE… YOU NEED TO LEAVE” and I got a extremely hard shove to the back, and I woke up to my head hitting the floor at the opposite end on my bed. When I went back to bed I didn’t dream at all. All of this happened in a 4 hour span.
Any answers would be greatly appreciated I’m just not sure what any of it means.
Thanks.
Josh – The dark figures you see mean that you have the ability to be aware of what are for most people dream figures. While asleep we can create full sensory, vocal, motor and emotional experience in our dream. While dreaming we usually accept what we experience as real. A hallucination is an experience of a ‘dream’ occurring while we have our eyes open. The voices heard, people seen, smells smelt, although appearing to be outside of us, are no more exterior than the things and images of our dreams. With this information one can understand that much classed as psychic phenomena and religious experience is an encounter with the dream process. That does not, of course, deny its importance.
That is nothing to be scared of; in fact it is now acknowledged to be an advantage. Having had many such experiences I have used them to find meaning and creativity. But in a sense they or simply half way messages, and attempt from a very deep part of us to communicate something important, because dreams arise and are experienced by a level of your mind or awareness that very few people have any concept or experience of – usually called the unconscious. Life dreamt in its creatures millions of years before even humankind awoke and developed self awareness or language. So to understand dreams we need to leave our thinking minds behind and go into our feelings and reactions – a much older level of awareness.
The dark figures are ways of trying to clarify things that are in fact not yet clear, but can become clear ones we use our questioning mind to dive in – for instance by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
They may feel scary, but that is because we do not or have not explored them. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/integration-meeting-oneself/#NextStep
The last part of your dream, standing in a void shows that you have experienced a very deep level of human awareness, but it sounds like you are not experienced in it, so the shoving and person doing it may again be your own anxiety telling you to go. But the void is what we experience every time we go to sleep – we exist without bodily form, no bodily senses and without our personality – we return to our real self. But most people lose personal awareness of what happens in sleep; and in dreams we have to return almost to waking, so are in a half way state between our core self and our waking personality.
Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self and enter sleep without dream images feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/lucidity/
Tony
Tony i am trying to interpret my dreams on my own i have been successful until now. i am going to tell my dream until the part of the shadow which is the part i didnt understand. it started on a restaurant for all i can remember i went to see what desserts they had in the restaurant and since it was all about chocolates and sugar i didnt want to eat until i yelled NO!, when i did that everyone disappeared with the exception of me and my sister and i could sense that we were in danger i could feel the dangerous thing getting closer and closer until i saw a shadow, I ran in the direction of the shadow and I broke the glass door in which the shadow had appeared, the dream continued but I could understand the rest. After I woke up I started memorizing my dream I realized that the shadow was a shadow of an old man(i dont know who he is) and before I broke the door the shadow looked at me and that is what I need help with. Why a shadow and not a normal person?, Who that old man could be?, Why it/he looked at me and appeared to be dangerous?
and i forgot to tell after i broke the door the shadow disappeared too.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Ivan – You have to realise that while dreaming you have left the world of the body with its fears, demands and ideas behind, and are experiencing a completely different set up.
In dreams there is never such a thing as a ‘normal’ person. All the people, animals, places you see in your dreams, are simply your own feelings, fears, hopes and wonder projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind as images. So, it makes sense to take the image of your dream person, thing or animal back into you and own it. In that way, you are meeting and dealing with the things about yourself you are not owning or conscious of. That is why dreams are often difficult to understand, because we are hiding things from ourselves.
In the dream you were looking for the nice things in life – but what is often seen as fun or nice in life you recognised as rubbish – life experience that is false and not satisfying to our real nature. The “NO” was a powerful statement. It shut out all the fantasy things most people take as ‘life’s enjoyments’ and put you in touch with your own inner truth – the shadow man.
I want to explain what happened to you, what enormous change you brought about by your ‘no’ statement. To understand it you must understand that you as a personality – as any personality – is rather like someone who only lives and are aware of the very surface of life, beneath which are enormous depths that you are unaware of. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dimensions-of-human-experience/ – http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/the-unconscious-2/ – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/going-beyond/
Even if you read all three of those links, it only deals with hints of the enormity that you have under the surface of your personal awareness. For just under the surface are tricky levels – first of all the basement of your personal existence, and beneath that your personal sewage connection – both of which hold and deal with all the traumas we have experienced and not met, all the fears we have not faced, and of course all the things that to you appear to be dangerous. The shadow is a symbolic image of all of those things. They all need to be met before travelling on.
But beyond that is a world of wonder – illumination. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/