Exploring the Dark SHadow for Healing and Transformation
Now that we understand the symbolic language of nightmares, it’s time to move into truly exciting territory: that of transformation! When we work and play with our nightmares, we enable transformation in the form of healing, creative inspiration, and spiritual growth. We raise our lucid awareness of life, in all states of consciousness, from sleep to waking and from nightmares to moments of peace and beauty. Doing shadow work with a nightmare increases our compassion for ourselves and others, helps us to become whole and happy, and shows us where we are on our journey through the cosmos.
What Is the Shadow?
The shadow is everything within us that we repress, ignore, are unconscious of, or deny—and that doesn’t only mean feelings like anger, shame, and jealousy that nobody ever really wants to own up to. It includes unlived energies and desires. It includes memories we have pushed away, such as experiences or events from childhood that we didn’t have the resources to cope with at the time. We may also deny or repress our higher potential, our spiritual connection, and our talents. The shadow is all of the parts of us that are not yet embraced and illuminated. It’s shadowy simply because the light hasn’t entered yet. We can illuminate our shadow very effectively through working with nightmares, because they have such strong, clear shadow energy. The shadow is not “bad”; in fact, it has immense potential to help us transform our lives on every level. In this chapter, we’ll look at the dark shadow—this encompasses all the traits we view as negative or harmful, such as selfishness, spitefulness, or greed. At the end of the book, there’s a chapter on the luminous shadow, which explores the way that a single nightmare can simultaneously destroy unneeded parts of ourselves and bathe us in spiritual light. Although terrifying, such nightmares reinforce our connection with the divine and reveal our innate capacity for enlightenment.
The shadow can reach out via a nightmare to protect us by showing us the truth about a relationship or how we really feel about a situation. It can trigger astonishing creativity. It can switch the spotlight on something that needs urgent healing and push us into incredible transformation. When we illuminate the hidden, unconscious, or rejected parts of ourselves and work on integrating them into our hearts and our lives, we accept powerful gifts from our psyche.
The Shadow as Archetype
Archetypes are universal images, symbols, themes, and archaic mythical characters that appear in all cultures throughout time. They appear in myths, legends, fairy tales, and dreams, and they embody human experience and universal meanings. Archetypal figures that everyone recognises include the Hero, the Trickster, the Warrior, the Wise Old Woman, the Judge, and the Lover. Symbolic archetypes include Light, Dark, Spiral, Circle, and Fire. Archetypal settings include Home, the Mountain, and Wasteland. Archetypal stories include the Quest, the Battle of Good and Evil, and the Initiation. There are many more examples in each of these categories. When we work with nightmares, it can shed light on their meaning when we identify archetypes in the story, characters, and symbolic imagery.
The shadow archetype is famously represented in its most severe form in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1880s story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The respectable Dr. Jekyll transforms into a shadow side of his personality, an evil alter ego in the form of the murderous and unrepentant criminal Mr. Hyde. In the early 1900s, Carl Jung brought into public consciousness the concept of the shadow as a universal archetype. Since the dark shadow represents aspects of the self that are not socially or personally acceptable, such as envy, prejudice, and hate, it might appear in dreams, daydreams, and visions as a monster, a threatening person, or an aggressive animal.
These shadow aspects of ourselves emerge in nightmares and tend to plague us until we summon the courage to face them by working constructively with our nightmare to release its transformative potential. The archetype of the shadow manifests in our collective waking reality in the form of division, fighting, and war. The good news is that when we do our own personal shadow work, by resolving our nightmares and working with their transformative creative energy, we are helping to heal the collective psyche.
But shadow work isn’t always a barrel of laughs, as it tends to present us with unsavoury aspects of ourselves or show us the uncomfortable truth of our situation, and thus force us to take action and change our lives. And that sounds like work, right? Wouldn’t it be easier to just slam the lid on all that nightmare stuff and carry on sleepwalking through life? Jung said, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.” 6 One of the ways we avoid our soul is by forgetting our dreams and ignoring our nightmares. These inner worlds are direct expressions of our soul, and by working with them, we illuminate our soul and deepen the connection with ourselves and with the cosmos.
It was also Jung who said, “There is no birth of consciousness without pain.” 7 But we’re not wimps, are we? We won’t let that stop us! Anyway, it’s a good kind of pain, the sort of pain that indicates a shift to better health, like muscle aches after sport. When we do shadow work, we exercise our awareness muscle, we raise our consciousness, and we look at truths that may be hard to face but that ultimately liberate us from old patterns, fears, hang-ups, unhealthy obsessions, and attitudes that have been holding us back. We integrate lost or discarded parts of our self and learn to transcend fear. Yes, we sometimes need to be brave for this work, but it’s far more painful long term to lug around our unresolved traumas, our unhappiness, our frozen energy, and our damaging relationship patterns. And it’s a fantastic feeling to make a breakthrough and feel yourself soar towards new possibilities.
Let’s look at different ways in which the shadow archetype emerges in nightmares, what it can teach us, and how to work with the shadow for healing and integration.
The Shadow Emerges as a Threatening Animal Nightmare
Chris Hammond had the following scary lucid dream encounter with a goat that turned out to be the essence of his shadow self.
I step out of bed. My room is perfect, but there’s a dreamlike quality to it, so I know this is a lucid dream. I decide to open my bedroom door and explore the house. As soon as I open the door, I see it: a hideous goat staring up at me. Its wool dirty and matted, its eyes black and shrivelled. It resonates evil and malignancy. I am paralyzed by fear. There is something so innately repugnant about this goat. I do not know why. I am so shocked, awed, and utterly terrified by this hellish image that my very soul wants to flee. I wake up immediately.
Chris explains:
It took me some time to figure out the significance of the goat. The image had been so powerful that it would keep coming back to me for months afterwards. In fact, I was afraid to lucid dream again for some time. There were questions. Why had I been so repulsed by the goat? What was it about this creature that was so terrifying? It had not been the sight of the animal itself that was terrifying, but its presence.
I eventually realized that I was afraid to confront the goat because the goat was the part of myself that I was afraid to confront. It was a part of my shadow. It represented toxic ego and narcissism that had been subconsciously driving my behaviours in life. It was literally the devil. I am now grateful for this nightmare because it helped me to understand that I had been heading down a bad pathway in life and that I needed to open my heart more to love.
When we encounter the shadow in a lucid dream, we are given an even bigger gift because we illuminate the shadow with full conscious awareness and have an opportunity to work with it directly in that dream—as long as we don’t allow fear to get the better of us, which isn’t always easy! It can be terrifying to stand face-to-face with something so repugnant, because lucid dreaming can feel more real than waking reality.
The Shadow of Pretending to Be Someone We’re Not
Jan’s account below shows that when we manage to turn things around while lucid in a shadow dream, this can result in an epiphany of sorts.
In my dream I’m in a large crowd of people and acting rather bizarrely, but no one is really paying much attention to me. Then I become lucid and I’m standing outside of the crowd watching myself acting in a way I think is inappropriate and very embarrassing in front of all these people. I scream out loud to myself, “Stop it! Don’t you care how others are looking at you and what they’re thinking about you acting so crazy?”
Myself in the crowd yells back to me, “No, I don’t care at all anymore what people think. I’m going to be me and I just don’t care. I’m just so tired.”
I then woke up and sat up in bed and felt this rush of lightness and ease wash over me.
Jan explains:
I actually could feel what it would be like if I was no longer overly concerned about how I portrayed my image to other people. It felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Something inside of me had shifted. It was an epiphany of sorts. I have spent my entire life concerned about how I appear to others, worrying whether I was going to be accepted or liked. I have been a chameleon, changing my appearance to whatever would fit in with my current surroundings, never really feeling like myself.
But when I saw myself in that crowd not caring about how I appeared and saw that others didn’t really notice, I realised that I had been taking myself much too seriously, that other people had their own stuff to think about, that I could be myself and still be part of the crowd. I could fit in and stop sweating all the small stuff. I am now sixty-six years old. This has been many years of work and introspection. I was raised by an alcoholic mother who was never there, and if she was, she was always yelling at me about how stupid and crazy I was. Now I lead meditation classes for a cancer organization and I study constantly.
Having had my career in law enforcement as a deputy sheriff, I never let my insecurities show, always putting on a tough persona. I’ve spent my life looking for the “real” Jan, and who would have thought I would discover this courageous part of myself in my dream; but now for some reason I feel like I can do this!
The split between the shadow aspect of Jan and the rest of her is clearly represented by two Jans having a shouting match: the censorious one and the defiantly free one. Jan managed to change the dream story: instead of feeling ashamed and acquiescing to the part of her that wanted to inhibit her self-expression, she did whatever she liked for once! This is so beautiful and courageous, because Jan managed to liberate herself from damaging beliefs about “acting crazy” that were rooted in her mother’s verbal abuse, and the effects in her life were immediately felt.
Lucid Dreaming to Alleviate Depression
Darkness can seep into our hearts and minds in the form of depression, and it can become a constant struggle. When we illuminate a dream with lucid awareness, we are able to bring healing intent, love, and light into the dream state in a highly aware manner that can be beneficial. Simply becoming lucid in a dream can result in the instantaneous, spontaneous transformation of distressing dream imagery. The nightmares of people suffering from depression often reflect themes of destructiveness, hopelessness, or being badly treated. Psychiatrists Aaron Beck and Clyde Ward list these common depressive dream themes: “being deprived, disappointed, mistreated; being thwarted, exploited, disgraced; being rejected and abandoned; being blamed or criticized, ridiculed; being punished or injured; being lost or losing.” 8
Nightmares reflecting depression can be worked with using the practices in this chapter, and you can increase your healing and protective forces with Practice 28: Bring Soul Dreams and Healing Imagery into the Body and Practice 36: Invoke Protective Powers: Ball of Light. Lucid dream healing can also provide effective relief. In a conversation with me, psychologist Elliott Gish shared his story of using a mantra in a lucid dream in an attempt to heal his depression:
I’ve struggled with chronic depression for over ten years, trying many different treatments and experiencing little relief. Some of the most significant relief I’ve experienced came from using a mantra in a lucid dream (around a 30–50 percent decrease in symptoms overnight, lasting several weeks). I decided to try using a mantra within a lucid dream because other people have reported improving various ailments with this strategy. However, I should mention that I did not expect it to work for me, so I don’t feel like placebo was the primary reason for my results.
Lucid in his dream, Elliott repeated his mantra: “I will be depression-free for a month of three.” Here is his dream:
I put my hands over my head and close my eyes for a second. I recite the mantra out loud and feel a rush of energy hit my head, like a strong gust of wind from behind. I open my eyes and say it again and another wave of energy rushes into my head. I can feel it building. I say it again and another, stronger rush of energy hits. I say it two more times and two more waves hit me in the head, each one progressively stronger. By this time, I’m beaming with energy and feel ten times lighter and happier, so I put my hands down and stop reciting. It feels as if whatever I was doing was “complete.” I’m so full of energy that I have to move, so I start running around, feeling like a kid just having fun again.
Elliott reports:
Results were instantly noticeable when I awoke. The lightness and happiness I felt in the lucid dream certainly carried over into the waking state. It seemed like nothing could faze me for several weeks. This did not last for three months, but it did last for approximately three weeks, which is one of the longest and most significant periods of relief I’ve experienced since the depression’s inception.
We Don’t Have to Be Lucid to Create
Healing Change in Our Nightmares
Don’t worry if you rarely—or never—become lucid in your dreams. You really don’t need to get lucid to transform your nightmares in empowering and life-affirming ways. All you need are powerful tools you can work with while awake. I’m going to introduce you now to one of my core nightmare techniques. We’ll see the results it gives throughout the book as people share how they managed to transform different kinds of nightmares with it. The Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution (LINS) combines elements of Carl Jung’s active imagination, Barry Krakow’s imagery rehearsal therapy, and my own Lucid Writing technique.
The beauty of this technique is that although it was designed to be used the very moment we awaken from a nightmare, it can also be used while awake, when we begin by relaxing our bodies and our breathing, then close our eyes and mentally reenter the nightmare story. I’ve taught this technique in workshops with wonderfully transformative results, and it only takes a few minutes. When the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution is carried out intuitively, with an open mind and the hope of healing, the effects can be startling and long-lasting.
Recurring nightmares can be resolved and no longer need to keep ringing on our doorbell, and we can gain insight into the weirdest and least pleasant dreams. It’s an empowering practice that I hope will help you, too, as you dive into the luminous darkness of your nightmares.9
the lucid imaging nightmare solution (lins)
1. Attend to your body.
As soon as you wake up from a nightmare, do whatever you need to calm yourself and make yourself comfortable. Some nightmares result in hefty physical reactions, like a wildly beating heart or sweat-drenched pyjamas. Drink water if you need to, and take deep, calming breaths. Then lie comfortably, close your eyes, and breathe calmly. Ask yourself if you want to work with this nightmare now or not. If the answer is yes, remind yourself that you are relaxing safely in your bed and can stop the process whenever you want to, simply by opening your eyes and sitting up.
2. Reenter your nightmare.
Recall the dream imagery as far back as you can. What were you doing before the dream grew unpleasant? Knowing that you are now safe in your bed, allow the imagery to resurface in your mind’s eye. If you have difficulty summoning mental imagery, you can use the storyline of your nightmare as a way in. Notice any associations you have with the dream images and events, but don’t agonise or obsess about possible meanings. If at any point in this process you feel very frightened, upset, or unsafe, stop immediately. Some nightmares are simply too strong and disturbing to face alone.
3. Identify the “tipping point.”
Pinpoint the moment when feelings such as fear, guilt, or anxiety grew strong, or when the monster reared its ugly head. This moment is like the tipping point on a pair of scales. It is the moment that your dream turned into a nightmare. Your task now is to restore the balance. Decide where in the dream action you want to begin to change events or your attitude towards them. Beginning just before the tipping point usually works well.
4. Imagine this is a lucid dream.
Rerun the script to resolve the dream crisis. Watch the imagery as it unfolds and reacts responsively to your thoughts, questions, needs, and guidance. This is a highly creative state of consciousness because the mind is alert yet your body is relaxed and close to sleep. In lucid imaging, you can be a film director, rewinding the action and replaying different outcomes. Now that you are playing at being “lucid in this nightmare,” you have many options. You could ask a frightening dream figure why they are following you, or actively change the nightmare story so that something harmonious or amusing takes place; you could introduce help into the dream in the form of a strong friend, a magic tool, or a healing mantra. You could try passively reliving the nightmare free from fear and observe how this affects the imagery and events. The best nightmare solutions are not forced; allow the imagery to develop spontaneously in response to your initial guiding thought or question. You’ll know when you’ve found the right nightmare solution, because your tension around the dream will greatly diminish and you’ll feel safe and calm.
5. Programme yourself to get lucid.
When you are happy with your nightmare solution, you are ready to return to sleep. This is an excellent time to watch as your hypnagogic imagery builds up into a moving dream, and set a firm intention to fall asleep consciously. As you fall asleep, try repeating, “I am lucid, I am lucid …” or “The next thing I see will be a dream.” It’s useful to use this post-nightmare work to programme yourself to become lucid the next time you have a nightmare. Simply repeat, “The next time something bad happens, I’ll recognise that I’m dreaming.” When working with a recurrent nightmare, remind yourself that the next time you are confronted with its particular imagery, this will trigger lucidity.
Why Is It Helpful to Transform the Nightmare Story?
A lot of the nightmare solutions we’ll explore in this book involve engaging with the nightmare story from a fearless standpoint, claiming our power as the dreamer, utilising inner resources to react in empowering ways, and enabling the nightmare to fully reveal its healing and transformative gifts. It is extremely powerful to transform the nightmare story—but not in such a way that we attempt to force the narrative into something “healing.” Forcing unconscious imagery never works; we need to be intuitive, spontaneous, and open so that our unconscious produces the transformed nightmare story for us. Let’s explore why this works and how it’s done.
Psychologically, it can feel vital to know that we have options. There’s nothing worse than feeling that there is no way out and that we are helpless to act to change something. Sleep researcher Dr. Barry Krakow has worked with chronic nightmare sufferers and finds that rehearsing a happier nightmare outcome often has the effect of decreasing nightmare frequency.10 This is because when we work directly with the imagery of the nightmare, we are speaking to our unconscious mind in its own language, and when we change the nightmare story, we communicate the fact that there are other options. For example, we don’t have to put up with falling off a ski lift and breaking our leg every night! We can bring help into that nightmare scenario so that the accident never happens, or so that we do fall but land unhurt in the snow. We don’t have to rerun the same nightmare story again and again. When we rehearse a different ending, it’s like using the points on a railway to divert the train onto one track or another. We can divert a destructive nightmare into healing and empowering transformation by changing the story in intuitive ways that feel right to us.
In a 2006 pilot study by Dr. Victor Spoormaker and Jan van den Bout on the effects of lucid dreaming therapy on nightmares, participants created alternative endings to their nightmares.11 They were also taught techniques for becoming lucid in their dreams. Overall, the nightmares of the participants decreased, but in some cases no lucid dream was reported, so it wasn’t clear if the reason for the overall decrease in nightmares was due to lucidity or simply knowing that “bad dreams can be changed.” When we work with our nightmares, sometimes just the realisation that we have options can be enough to effect transformation, because we feel freer and less fearful and more empowered. When we become lucid in a nightmare or when we do waking dreamwork, we bring awareness to the nightmare story and can react to it fearlessly, knowing that we can choose how to react.
Different Imaginative Responses to Nightmares
There are so many different possible responses to nightmares when we bravely and fearlessly encounter them in the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution. For example, we might protect ourselves within an egg of light, or bring powerful allies into the nightmare scene with us. We might choose to send love and light to threatening dream figures, or give them a gift.
Many generous dreamers wrote to share their life-changing nightmares with me for this book. Let’s look at a beautiful and healing nightmare solution that Kristin shared with me. In this account, Kristin actually falls back to sleep as she does the dreamwork but without forgetting her aim to face her nightmare. Note how she wisely protects herself so that she feels safe before she faces the nightmare, and notice her flexibility as she allows the dream to unfold spontaneously without much guidance.
In a parking lot, I feel like someone is watching me. I see an old man with a wrinkled and ghostly white face peering at me. He scares me. I sense he is going to rape me. I yell at him to go away, but he starts to approach. I struggle to say something, but no sound comes out. I try to tell him he is not allowed near me, but he comes in to attack, his hand reaching for my throat. I try to scream, but again, no sound will come out. Then I wake up in total panic and fear.
Awake in bed now, I feel angry about being attacked in my dream and not being able to protect myself. I decide to reenter the dream and find the old man. I start by going into my imagination and forming a bubble around me that I start filling in with all the things I feel supported by: plant allies, objects, and symbols. I’m taking my time to really build this bubble up, but at some point, I’m back in the dream, still completing the task. At this point, filling in my bubble takes on a life of its own, and suddenly the bubble starts moving. I’m pleasantly surprised because I have never flown by bubble before!
I am travelling through the dreamscape in my bubble, and I see the creepy ghost man still in the parking lot. I began to move in as if I’m going to destroy him when I hear a voice saying, “Remember to do it with love!” I think, “Oh right, I am supposed to be working with love!” As I approach him, I see a look of shock on his face. Then I direct a bridge from my heart towards him. I tell him I am a being of light and invite him to step into love. I tell him this is the only way he can be with me. Then I watch as he begins to go from a ghostly ashen colour to white, then transparent, until he turns to dust and disappears all together. Bam!
When I woke up, I felt an incredible surge of energy and couldn’t believe how easy it was to transform this terrifying experience. It felt like I finally learned how to take my power back. I took this sense of empowerment into my waking life from that day on. It was one of the most powerful dreams I have had.
When we encounter the right nightmare solution, it resonates within us on an incredibly deep level and can be very therapeutic, enabling us to release unhelpful psychological patterns and behaviours that have been holding us back. The empowerment of the dreamwork remains with us, and we notice positive changes in our waking lives. It can be so simple and so quick to make real changes! The Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution can be helpful for any kind of nightmare. The following practice looks at the many different creative responses we can choose during nightmares, or afterwards, when we work with them while awake.
creative nightmare responses
Imagine you have a nightmare in which you are lost in the woods, surrounded by a pack of vicious wolves. Let’s replay this nightmare and see what might happen depending on the response we choose.
The more you practise this sort of imaginative nightmare reentry work, the more you are impressing upon your mind the fact that you have a choice of how to react in your dreams and nightmares. In any nightmare and in any waking dreamwork you do, the following creative responses (and many more besides) are always available for you to choose from. Anything can happen! See how your chosen response influences the nightmare.
1. Offer a gift. When we offer dream aggressors a gift, the energy of the nightmare changes. As the wolves circle you, snarling, you put your hand in your pocket with the intention of finding a gift for them there. You pull out … a glowing ball of light. When you place it on the ground, it expands and emits gentle heat, warming the wolves. They lie down and relax, watching the ball dreamily. The sense of contentment is palpable and you feel you are in a circle of friends.
2. Be an escape artist. Sometimes removing ourselves from danger seems urgent. You feel very unsafe and want to escape from the pack of wolves, so you turbo-fly into the sky, leaving their upturned faces in your wake.
3. Ask, “Do you have a message for me?” You smile bravely at the wolves as you ask this question, and their response comes fast. An old, gray wolf steps forward and looks at you intently from wise, golden eyes: “We are here to help you become your bravest self.”
4. The aggressive, fearful response. It can be psychologically freeing to defeat a nightmare aggressor. Having said that, a live dream friend is always better than a dead dream enemy! Still, sometimes we need to assert ourselves when facing threatening nightmare figures. You materialise a sword that glistens in the sunlight when you swing it in the air. Then you charge for the nearest wolf. The pack scatters, howling, their tails between their legs. You feel strong and free.
5. Be present to painful emotions or physical discomfort. Acknowledging our wounds and embracing our emotions can be psychologically freeing, as long as it is not too overwhelming. You decide not to change this nightmare but to be present to whatever the wolves have in store for you. One big wolf leaps up and knocks you right over, snarling in your face. Terror rises in you, but as it snarls and growls, you remain fully present to this terror and are able to identify it as your fear of death. As you explore this feeling, you sense this fear, which seemed so solid, dissolving away. Along with it, you feel old, unwanted patterns of behaviour being sloughed off. To your astonishment, when the wolf stops snarling and moves away, you feel like a new person—healthier, happier, and brighter.
6. Hug the monster. This can be a wonderful way of integrating shadow energy. You open your arms and seize the nearest wolf in a huge hug. After a moment of growling resistance, it cedes and your bodies buzz harmoniously together. In a flash of insight, you understand that these wolves symbolise the artistic talents that you have denied and rejected for years. No wonder they were acting aggressively! As the other wolves come forward for a joyful group hug, you vow to embrace your inner artist again. The very first thing you’ll draw will be this beautiful pack of wolves.
7. Call for help. We can call on anyone, anytime, both while the nightmare is happening and when doing dreamwork with it. As the wolves edge closer, you shout, “Help!” and to your relief, your power animal, a magnificent sabre-toothed tiger, bounds into the circle and roars at the top of its lungs. The wolves are gone in a flash. The sabre-toothed tiger raises its paw and you high-five.
8. Fearless surrender. When we reenter a nightmare free from fear, it can be enlightening to go with the flow and see what happens if we don’t struggle or flee but instead remain open to whatever is happening. In some shamanic cultures and tantric traditions, it is believed that allowing oneself (the ego self) to be destroyed in a dream is an important part of a spiritual journey. People commonly report surrendering to being torn to pieces by wild animals or eaten alive in a dream, only to experience transcendence or be presented with marvels. Consciousness explorer Karim Bou Said from Dubai dreamed he was attacked by a black dragon, and fighting him off wasn’t working. Fear triggered lucid awareness, and he allowed the dragon to swallow him up. Karim reports:
As he swallowed me, I was transported to his belly that looked like a treasure room filled with golden objects. And there I spoke to a voice that gave me some excellent advice. We need to get past our fears to reach the gold.
You decide not to fight off the wolves. If they want to tear you limb from limb, let them! You know you will emerge alive and safe from this dream experience. To your surprise, as soon as you relinquish the desire to fight, the wolves transform into beings of light. They are utterly breathtaking. As you watch in awe, they transmit cosmic wisdom to you, revealing to you the mysteries of the universe.
9. Develop magical powers. Anything is possible, so why not gift yourself with superpowers? You could turn invisible, become telepathic, shapeshift into any animal, person, or object, or grab a magic sword and wield it to set yourself free. You decide to turn yourself into an ant and chuckle from a blade of grass as you watch the wolves’ astonishment at your disappearance. They sniff around disconsolately for a few moments before heading back into the woods. With great glee, you turn yourself into a hummingbird and zoom skywards for an aerial view of their retreat.
10. Send love and light. Dreams and nightmares are thought-responsive environments, so this can change everything. You face the wolves and summon a feeling of love for these tired, hungry animals, understanding that they may represent neglected aspects of yourself. From your heart, you beam out love and light, and this actually becomes visible on the air as a glittering stream that envelops the wolves. As they feel it hit them, they purr like big cats and lie down, peering up at you with gratitude in their eyes. You feel a surge of euphoria as you realise how easy it is to transform their attitude simply by changing your own.
11. Protective shield. Never hesitate to procure protection for yourself when working with a nightmare. If you become lucid during a nightmare, any of the previous responses can be implemented directly within the dream, and any protections can be summoned. As the wolves crouch and snarl, you pull a protective circle of white light around you. The light shield removes your terror, and now you see that the wolves are not aggressively poised to attack you—they are scared of you! It was your fear that made them look so scary. They are like harmless puppies. Laughing, you crouch down and extend a hand, and allow these gorgeous wolves to come up and lick you.
12. Ask for a gift. When you ask the wolves for a gift, they amaze you by presenting you with an amber amulet. They convey that this amulet will protect you from danger in dreams and in waking life.
You may well find that as you engage in this type of imaginative nightmare work, quite naturally your habitual, fearful responses to frightening nightmare figures and situations will change, becoming more flexible, less fear-based, and more compassionate. This change of attitude will transform your dream life and positively impact your waking life, too. It may also give you some wonderful creative ideas for fiction and artwork. The essential thing to remember is that you can change your response to your nightmares. When we do Lucid Dreamplay to experiment with different responses, we train the brain to recognise that fear is not the only possible response. We gift ourselves with creative resources. We open ourselves up to real change!
Nightmares Help When the Shadow Manifests in Our Lives
When the shadow manifests in waking life in the form of abusive, draining, or unpleasant people, it can be difficult to know how to act to protect ourselves. Have you ever heard the term energy vampire? It’s not a pleasant term, but it paints a clear picture. Now and then, there will be people in our lives who suck our energy. This is usually an involuntary, unconscious act on their part, and so blaming them isn’t really fair. They may not intend to be vampire-like; often they are desperate and are not grounded enough to receive the energy they need from other sources, so they seek a person who gives them energy in the form of kindness, sympathy, or whatever type of attention they need. But whether or not it’s intentional, when we have an insatiable person like this in our lives, we need to set boundaries and protect ourselves, or else things can get out of control.
The easy way to tell if a person is sucking your energy is to gauge how you feel after spending time with them. Exhausted and drained? Then that person has sapped your energy. Of course, if a friend is going through a tough time and needs to talk about it, we may feel tired on occasion after listening to them and trying to help, but with an energy vampire, we always feel drained or less happy after spending time with them.
Sometimes nightmares come to show us the unhealthy truth about a friendship or relationship. Many years ago, I had this nightmare:
I walk into the bathroom and to my horror, I see X lying in the bath, covered in blood! In a panic, I rush to her and try to help her. She is almost unconscious and must be bleeding to death. I am desperately worried, but as I help her out of the bath, I realise she is strong enough to stand alone and I suddenly notice that the “blood” is in fact tomato ketchup! I’m deeply shocked—why would she cover herself in fake blood and pretend to be dying?
I woke from this nightmare feeling confused and tricked. But within moments of mentally replaying the dream movie, I understood what it was telling me. For several years, this person had been lurching from one crisis to the next in her life with an attitude of martyrdom, and I was one of the main people she turned to for support. The lengthy long-distance phone calls and discussions where I listened to her grievances and tried to help her feel better about her life had become draining for me, but I cared deeply about her and wanted to help.
My nightmare enabled me to understand the unconscious manipulation behind this person’s behaviour: she wanted my undivided attention. Creating drama to lead me to believe that she was in dire straits was her guaranteed way of securing it, as it made me feel so worried about her. Until the nightmare came along and opened my eyes to the truth, I hadn’t understood the extent of her unconscious emotional manipulation. I also had two further insights: first, I realized that I needed to take steps to protect myself from this person whose needs were exhausting me; and second, I grasped on a deep level that I cannot create another person’s happiness—they have to do that for themselves.
I acted on this nightmare by purposefully becoming less available to her and I switched my tactics: instead of providing an endless pool of sympathy whenever she bewailed her life, I remained kind but said things like, “Take charge of your life. Nobody else can do that but you. Only you can create your happiness. Stop looking for validation from the outside—look within. Get in touch with the deepest part of yourself and align yourself with that part. Then everything in your life will flow in the direction you hope for. You are the only one who can change your life!” This no-nonsense attitude, combined with my new protective boundaries, changed things fast. As the nightmare had shown, this person was in fact strong enough to stand alone and no longer needed me as an emotional crutch. She began to get her act together and her life finally changed for the better. Once I began to actively protect myself from being sapped by her neediness, our relationship became healthier, and we both benefited from this. In the end, we became even closer.
Now let’s suss out the nature of our own personal shadow. Here’s a simple practice to help you do this.
how to identify your shadow selves
Who are you? How well do you actually know yourself and how honestly can you assess your own shadow? Sometimes we are not the least bit aware of a shadow aspect of ourselves, while other aspects will be blindingly obvious to us. This is a writing exercise, so grab a notebook and pen.
1. How do you like the world to see you? Write down your own character traits that you identify with positively.
2. Which parts of you would you prefer the world not to see? Write down any negative character traits that you know are part of you.
3. Who are you definitely not? These can be both positive or negative traits (not a leader, not a coward, etc.). Write these down.
4. Jot down the character traits that you particularly revile in others—what really winds you up? (People usually find this the easiest part of this exercise!)
5. Who do you aspire to be? Write down the characteristics or talents you would love to have or feel envious of in others.
6. And now I ask again: Who are you? The answer is, you are all of these things, dark and unpleasant sides, hidden and luminous sides, and aspirational qualities waiting to be brought into the light.
7. Review all of these different traits and see which ones have a particular charge for you. Circle three positives and the same number of negatives. These may be the qualities to focus on illuminating (in the case of positive hidden qualities and talents) or integrating (in the case of unwanted parts of the self) at this point in your life.
The purpose of this practice is definitely not to depress ourselves with how many “negative” qualities seem to be part of us! Take it lightly, playfully. It’s just designed to give you an idea of possible shadow aspects, that’s all. Send loving compassion to all of the varied parts of yourself and trust your dreams and nightmares to help you explore, integrate, and heal.
Shadow work is about bringing our awareness to the hidden and unexpressed parts of ourselves. No matter how in tune with ourselves we are, life is filled with unexpected challenges that can throw us off balance and cause an internal split. Nightmares can direct us to what needs healing within us by bringing us straight to the shocking core of a shadow side. In the following section, I describe a nightmare I had in which I encountered a rejected part of myself during a difficult time in my life.
Shadow Sides Revealed: Rejected Parts of Ourselves
Who are you? Me, I’m an optimist, full of hope. I see kindness and beauty all around. I’m playful, empathetic, joyful, strong. I’m at ease dreaming up creative solutions to any problems that happen along, and I wake up happy every day. Pretty cool, huh? Well, it’s all true … but it’s not the full story. How could it be? We all have shadow sides. I’m just as flawed as the next person: impatient, emotional, impulsive, with a rebellious streak and a hot temper. (I like to blame the temper on my red hair—surely it can’t be my own fault?!) Seriously, though, how in touch are we with the parts of us that we’d rather not own? And what happens when we suppress and ignore them?
One hard winter, during a very challenging time in my life, a nightmare burst through to force me to pay attention to a part of myself that I had neglected. My default mode of optimist had been wearing thinner than I knew. My little girl had been diagnosed with a serious disease, and although we were following the treatment plan, there were no signs of improvement yet. On top of that, since her immune system was compromised, she had bronchitis and the doctors said it looked as if it was developing into pneumonia again. Do you know who the least interesting person in my life was at that time? It was me. I barely existed for myself. I was 100 percent focused on my five-year-old, who had always been so bright, energised, and joyful but now was asking me why her bones hurt and why she had no breath left after climbing a few stairs. All of my energy went into taking care of her and pouring love and smiles and fun her way, and that felt right.
Then I had the following nightmare.
In a big public building, I find the bathroom, but when I open a cubicle door, I see a woman sitting slumped over on the toilet. She has been completely squashed by the lid and her face is forced down into the toilet bowl. Her long blond hair and her arms dangle to the ground.
In horror, I realise this woman has drowned in the toilet!
Instinctively, I back out of the cubicle fast and dash into the next-door one. My heart is going crazy. I’m so shocked that I become lucid. As I stand there trying to calm down, I know I should return to the disturbing dream scene I just witnessed, to discover what it means. But I’m aware of a deep reluctance to go and face it. I wake up.
I’ve had thousands of lucid dreams in my lifetime, and due to my early “baptism by fire” into nightmares and sleep paralysis, and all the work I’ve done on releasing fear, I’m usually pretty brave when I come across an upsetting image in a dream. So, when I woke up, I was struck by my reluctance to face the drowned woman. This told me that I absolutely had to work with this nightmare to discover its message. I was sleep-deprived, and to be honest, I didn’t feel like doing any dreamwork right then, but I made myself do it. I used my Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution and imaginatively reentered the dream just before the tipping point when I first saw the woman. Here’s what happened in that imaginal space:
I lift the woman off the toilet and lay her gently on the floor. Next to me is a healing salve, and I apply it to her neck and mouth. Somehow this revives her and she comes back to life. I realise she hasn’t died; she only fainted. She sits up and we hug. I help her to stand up and as I do, my gaze falls on a speck of blue light inside the toilet. It’s a piece of jewellery—a ring. I pick it out and wash both it and my hands in the sink, then I hand it to the woman. She had lost it down the toilet and had been looking for it when she lost consciousness. We leave the cubicle and the building together and cross the road into a green park. I look at the bright, beautiful ring, which she is wearing again now. I ask her what it means to her.
She answers, “Hope.”
I think, “Oh! She lost her hope down the toilet!”
Suddenly, the meaning of the nightmare is so clear to me. In these past months of serious health issues with my daughter, part of me had lost hope and had almost drowned or got shut down or trapped from the loss of hope. In this dreamwork, I have rescued that unacknowledged part of me and recovered my hope.
There was only a time span of a few minutes between waking from my nightmare and finding healing resolution through the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution. Yet this was deep work; it felt huge to finally accept the toll that the previous months had taken on me and acknowledge my unwanted and unexpressed feelings of hopelessness. No optimist likes to admit that there isn’t always a solution in sight! My dreaming mind was being very blunt with me. It was saying, “Hey! Just look at the state of you! Stop pretending you can cope with this—you actually feel as if you’ve drowned down a toilet. It’s not healthy, Clare, so sort it out!”
It’s not easy to acknowledge the hopeless, trapped part of myself. Who wants to admit to an uninspiring shadow part of the self? I’d much rather be Supermum, able to heal all illness with a flick of my sequinned cape and cope with strength and resilience in any situation. But when we ignore our true feelings, we actually lose resilience because of the tension of suppressing how we really feel. We end up at a breaking point. Nightmares are powerful gifts that smash through our inner walls to show us where healing is urgently needed. When we do dreamwork to enable nightmare imagery to change spontaneously into a new story, we can resolve deep issues with amazing speed.
What I loved about my nightmare solution was the spontaneous appearance of the sparkling blue ring of hope. When new symbols arise in a nightmare reentry, it’s always fascinating to see what insights they bring to the story. I had rejected my pitiful, hopeless shadow self so determinedly that the poor thing drowned in a dream toilet, but now I had a healing symbol to remind me to take care of that part of me that had lost hope. The symbolic ring also showed me how vital it was to recover my hope and learn to trust that my child would respond to the treatment and get well again, which thankfully she soon did!
The Shadow as the Rigid, Controlling Part of the Personality
This nightmare and the healing work that resolved it was shared by Charmaine, a young woman I met at an IASD dream conference.
A throng of women in grey combat uniforms barge into the condo and order us to sit in a circle and hold hands. The bulky leader of the pack eyes us like an eagle. Suddenly, she thrashes the butt of the gun into my head. I collapse, letting go of the other hands. Then I’m on my knees facing a window ledge, with my hands tied behind my back, as if I’m the victim of a terrorist beheading video. The leader yanks my head towards her and sticks the gun muzzle at my nape. She pulls the trigger. What felt like a bullet was actually a blast of compressed air. She plucks my limp body back up, thrusts the muzzle into the same spot, and hisses, “This is what it feels like to die.” She shoots again. I see my lifeless body floating in a bathtub of blood from above.
Charmaine explains:
The nightmare emerged during a period when I was incredibly anxious about my future and experiencing inner conflicts. I felt stuck, alienated, and terribly unhappy in my job. I kept thinking about moving from Toronto to Berlin, where I felt freer and more comfortable in my own skin than ever. After waking up from the nightmare in a fit of sobs, the terror from the dream followed me everywhere that day.
Some weeks later, with the remnants of the nightmare still lingering, I was still determined that a change needed to happen in my life, and so I booked a one-way flight to Berlin and made it my new home. During Clare’s Transformative Lucidity workshop, while entering into this nightmare again in my mind’s eye, I decided to turn toward the woman in the grey uniform and face her. I realized that throughout my nightmare, this woman, this person embodying terror, was always situated behind me. I had always felt her presence hovering over my shoulders and the terror she evoked, but I had never seen her.
The act of turning toward her, facing her head-on, seeing her human face, somehow relinquished her power over me. It seemed to me that she might embody the rigid and controlling side of me that was immensely afraid of uncertainty and the unknown. The fact that I could turn toward her during the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution experience made me aware of how I’ve grown to become more comfortable with uncertainty, and seeing her face reminded me that my desire to control is natural and part of the human experience. The increased awareness of this side of myself and the acceptance of it felt new and profound to me.
I love Charmaine’s brave example because it shows in a very literal way that the simple (yet at times terrifying) act of turning to face our fears can instantaneously reduce their power. Nightmare work can help us identify the shadow sides of ourselves that we sublimate so expertly that we barely recognise them as part of ourselves until they burst into consciousness in the form of a terrifying dream.
Next, an artist friend of mine, Walter, shares what happened when he worked with a nightmare in which Adolf Hitler tried to force him into sex.
I am living with a beautiful, caring woman in the very center of Berlin, Germany. It is after World War II and everything around us is burned out and destroyed. We have a pretty isolated but good life. The one huge difficulty is that Adolf Hitler is living with us. It is a secret that Hitler lives here, and neither of us is happy about it, but hell, he is the Führer after all and he does what he wants.
Hitler declares that he will have sex with me.
Yikes. Gulp. I consult with my companion and she tells me I better do it. One call from Hitler and both of us are dead.
Holy hell, I have no choice. I am resolved that I will have to do this, climb in bed with Hitler and kiss him and make love with him. Yuck. I go into our bedroom and take my clothes off and prepare myself mentally for this horrid event.
Hanging over the bed is a giant piece of art that is rough black paint on the left side and rough white paint on the right. Maybe I can use this to concentrate on as Hitler has sex with me. Hitler enters. He is naked and menacing. I start to sweat and panic. He climbs on the bed and crawls towards me, baring his teeth like a wolf. He is about to enter me and I just can’t do it! I start to fight him, knowing this will mean the death of me, but I can’t! He grips me firmly and I hit him. I scream and wake up on the floor with the covers strewn everywhere and my heart racing.
Walter’s dreamwork experience with the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution:
In Clare’s workshop, she had us reenter the dream. As I sat inside the dream, a thought came to me: “Wait a minute. If it is after the war and the Allies have won, my god, Hitler has no power here. He is a fugitive!” And with that knowledge I entered the bedroom scene and confronted Hitler. As he approached, I stood up and told him I would have none of this. “This is my home and my body and you have no power over me. You can go fuck yourself.” That enraged him, but I was taller and stronger than him and threw him up against the black-and-white painting. He suddenly realized I was right and settled down onto the bed in a funk.
“Could we still have sex, please?” he asked in a sheepish voice.
“Maybe,” I replied. “But it will be on my terms and my companion will be present.”
“Agreed,” he said, and we shook on it.
Walter’s insights after the LINS dream reentry:
None of these are thoughts I had until after I did the Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution. I think this dream taught me more about my relationship to the shadow part of my soul. I tend to be very optimistic and avoid conflict to a fault. I think Hitler represents that angry, controlling, dark part of me that I sublimate so well. What if I face that part and not just succumb to it but expose it to the light of day outside the confined apartment of my soul and have a relationship with it that is of equal footing? The Hitler in me will always exist but now can play a smaller and more integrated part in my journey.
If you want to take one step further and actually become the shadow figure in your dream to gain insight into their motivations, their perspective, and their vulnerability, here’s a practice showing how it can be done.
become the monster
When we reenter a dream in our imagination, the possibilities for action within that imaginative space are many. This “become the monster” technique is based on Gestalt therapy, which was developed by Fritz Perls in the 1950s. The idea behind it was that we are the makers of our own dreams, so every element of the dream is a part of us. The method was for the dreamer to speak with the voice of that dream element, moving from his own chair into an empty one to do so, and creating an entire conversation between himself and this dream element. The dreamer might “become” his deceased father and speak from his father’s perspective. He might “become” a dream frying pan and speak with its voice. This therapeutic dreamwork technique was developed to help people to become whole and integrated.
My variation can be done on your own if you’re curious about the dream figures or imagery in a dream or nightmare and want to discover more, but if you have a seriously disturbing nightmare, it’s better not to work on it alone—ask a friend or see a therapist who is trained in dreamwork. I refer playfully to “the monster” here, but you can illuminate any element of your nightmare with this method, from objects to landscapes to dream people and animals.
1. Sit and relax with your eyes closed. Calm your thoughts. After a few deep breaths, bring your nightmare into your mind’s eye. Conjure up the nightmare as vividly as possible, and experience the emotions and imagery anew, knowing that you are safe and can stop this process whenever you need to.
2. Try “becoming” the main nightmare image or the threatening or disturbing figure by speaking from the point of view of your personal monster. You may want to try Perls’s technique of moving to an empty chair to do this, but it’s not necessary. All you need is imagination and empathy. Begin with “I feel …” or “I want to …” This can have surprising results—perhaps the terrifying figure is itself terrified … of what? Speak without judgment or expectation, and find out. You can speak aloud or silently in your head.
3. Now reply to the monster as yourself. Ask it any questions you wish: “Why are you in my nightmare?” “Do you have a message for me?” “How can I help you?” “What is your greatest fear?” “Why did you turn into a flying horse at the end of the nightmare?” Each time, to receive a response, mentally inhabit the monster and speak with its voice. Keeping your eyes closed throughout allows you to observe the way the monster and the nightmare imagery morph and change in response to your inner conversation.
4. You can do this with as many nightmare elements as you wish. It can be fascinating to gain insight into geographical features in nightmares, such as raging rivers or frozen mountains.
5. Remember, you are totally free to engage imaginatively with the nightmare, and its story is not set in stone! Roles are fluid and anything can change during this process—it might help to think of it as improvised theatre. It can be revealing and enlightening to gain a deeper understanding of the elements of your nightmare, and this technique often yields surprising results as we grasp how our nightmare monster really feels!
Sometimes people find it hard to do this imaginative roleplay work. They say, “But aren’t I just making it all up?” They doubt their inner experiences because they can’t classify them neatly as “a dream” or “a nightmare.” Yet we are the co-creators of our nightly dreams! Since dreams are thought-responsive environments, they reflect our beliefs, expectations, and thoughts. Think of it like this: everything we imagine emerges from our psyche. Our imagination is born from the same place where dreams are created, so when we engage imaginatively and intuitively with unconscious imagery, we co-create new imagery hand in hand with our unconscious mind. We become lucid dreamers while awake. This mix of awareness with unconscious imagery is a fantastically creative state of consciousness, one that fuels writers and artists all over the globe. Would an artist look at her fabulous sculpture and think, “Well, I just made it up, so it means nothing and can have no impact”? No—she would understand that this creation emerged from the intuitive symbiosis between her unconscious and her conscious mind. During this emergence, the creation took on its own unique energy and power.
The litmus test for any kind of imaginal dream reentry work is to ask yourself, “How does it feel?” If it feels wrong, forced, unimportant, false, or uninspiring, then the process has not been helpful. If it feels emotionally real, liberating, profound, surprising, or healing, then you have done some deep work. The best advice I can give is this: Don’t worry too much about who or what is doing the creating, and resist the urge to analyse and judge. Just dive in and go with the flow. Listen and react intuitively. Trust that you have the ability to reach the deeper, wiser part of yourself anytime. It is not under lock and key; it is an intrinsic part of you!
Here’s a technique that uses imaginative responses to bring you quickly to the beating red heart of your nightmare.
the nightmare transformation technique
This quick technique helps you to understand and transform your nightmare and then find a way to take action in your life to honour its message. You can do this in just a few minutes while waiting for your morning coffee to brew. It combines asking key questions with the serious play of changing the nightmare script, then taking concrete action in waking life.
1. Replay the nightmare movie. Bring your nightmare clearly into your mind’s eye and allow it to play like a movie. Fast-forward to the core image or place of deepest emotion. This might be the moment the monster bit your head off, or the moment you realised your car was spinning out of control.
2. Label the core emotion. Is it fear, loss, a sense of being tricked, anger, guilt, despair? Remember, the most intense emotions may not belong to your dream self, but to another dream person or animal. You might dream of a sad, neglected owl sitting in a cage, in which case, you might focus on the owl’s sadness and sense of being trapped. It can be helpful to view every part of the dream or nightmare as representative of part of ourselves.
3. Bridge to waking life. When did you last feel this emotion in your life? Does this nightmare seem linked to any life situation, past, present, or future? Some insight might arise, but if not, continue to the next step anyway.
4. Play with the nightmare. Now close your eyes and step back into your nightmare movie in the role of film director (one who enjoys improvisation and surprises), armed with tools such as a powerful animal to protect you, a magic sword, or the ability to fly. Replay the nightmare with a different outcome, experimenting with different responses until you find one that resonates with you and feels satisfying or healing. (You open the owl’s cage and it flies free; you befriend the monster before it bites your head off.) Never force a “positive” ending. This isn’t about forcing the nightmare to play out as you wish; it’s about empowering your dream-self to try out different responses, and seeing what comes up spontaneously. Practice 14: Creative Nightmare Responses earlier in this chapter shares an exciting array of possible responses.
5. Take action in your waking life. Perhaps when you played film director with your nightmare, you realised the monster bit your head off because you are separating your head from your heart too much with regard to a particular situation. Action to take might be to bring more heart and compassion into that situation. In the car crash nightmare, perhaps the message was to slow down your workload or put the brakes on an unhealthy relationship before it spins out of control. When nightmares come to warn us of unhelpful behaviours or poisonous situations, taking action based on their message can help to turn our life situation around. Action can also be something comparatively small, such as dreaming of a jewel-eyed snake and drawing a picture of it to honour its power and bring it into our waking lives.
In this chapter, we’ve begun the exciting process of transforming nightmares. We’ve looked at archetypes and examined our own shadow aspects. We’ve explored the healing value of changing the nightmare story, and we’ve heard the nightmares and resolution process of several dreamers. I’ve shared my Lucid Imaging Nightmare Solution as a key transformative technique that can be used either while lying in bed directly after a nightmare or while awake. In the next chapter, we’ll explore the fascinating and creative realm of childhood nightmares and mythical dreams.
6. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 99.
7. Jung, “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship.”
8. Beck and Ward, “Dreams of Depressed Patients.”
9. The material in practice 13 previously appeared in Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Lucid Dreaming.
10. Krakow et al., “Imagery Rehearsal Treatment for Chronic Nightmares.”
11. Spoormaker and van den Bout, “Lucid Dreaming Treatment for Nightmares.”