The
unconscious and less-known aspects of self
Quoting
from Carl Jung,
Everyone
carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the
individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At
all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant
intentions.
(Rebeca Eigen, 2000,
http://www.shadowdance.com/shadow/theshadow.html)
As
our awareness expands through spiritual practices (including dream
interpretation), we are often confronted with
previously-unknown aspects of ourselves. These aspects are our hidden
unconscious aspects. Very often, these unconscious aspects will appear
in our dreams as distinct characters. If we can recognise them, we can
'integrate' them. Recognising them could mean understanding how it
feels like when we are as these characters.
These
characters can sometimes take on the form of somebody we know or they
can also appear as total strangers in the dream. When they take the
form of somebody we know, they sometimes are mirroring qualities in us
that are reflected as that somebody we know. Again, there's no hard and
fast rules, and here's when intuition comes in handy in getting
accurate interpretations.
Dream interpretation and journaling
software