Lucid Dream #9 – My Shadow Self is Chasing Me

February 6, 2023

‘The shadow is an archetype that represents hidden aspects of our personality’

In this lucid dream, I encounter my shadow self. An archetypal dream character. Often, I’m being chased or locked up by a man with the same distinguishing features. But he’s not someone I know or have known before. Sometimes it’s a woman or an animal, too. Anyhow, someone chasing me is a recurring dream sign, and I know many others have this recurring dream of being chased as well. I’ve been having these dreams for years, but last night, I decided to confront my chaser. What he told me was quite strange, but I knew exactly what he meant, and it was invaluable to me.

I’m just walking down a street in an unfamiliar city, enjoying the sunshine and minding my own business, when suddenly, I get a weird feeling. I look behind me, and I see a man running towards me. I start running away from him, as he scares me, but he’s getting closer and closer. I’m terrified and keep running through the city streets. But I can feel my energy starting to drain. Just when I think I can’t run anymore, I become lucid. It’s a dream! And I stop running immediately.

I turn around to face the man. He comes to a halt in front of me, and before he can say or do anything, I yell at him: “What do you want from me?” He looks at me with a sad expression on his face. “I just wanna be picked up for Christmas!” he says. The whole atmosphere changes completely. I’m confused. What does that even mean? I ask him what he means, but all I hear is gibberish coming out of his mouth when he answers. I can’t understand what he is saying, but I can feel the sadness in his voice. The answer is loud and clear. He is lonely.

My lucidity starts to fade, and the dream ends. I wake up feeling a bit disoriented. I had just faced a recurring dream sign, a nightmare even. A man chasing me. And in these dreams, I am always running away, but not this time. I stood my ground and tried to be brave. And the answer was totally unexpected. It was an adult man, but he acted like a small child who just needed some love. I can’t help feeling that he’s somehow a part of me that wants to be seen and acknowledged. It’s a shame I couldn’t speak with him as I could not make out what he was saying anymore, but the feeling I got was clear to me.

I have been thinking a lot about this recurring dream sign, as I’ve seen it in my dreams for a few years now. I feel like this dream sign is an archetypal figure. The shadow archetype, to be precise. Archetypes are universal symbols within the collective unconscious that appear in dreams across cultures and time periods. They represent the fundamental human experiences and emotions, such as birth, death, love, fear, joy and grief. They appear in our dreams as symbols that are accessible to our subconscious mind. There are many archetypes, and a lot of them are quite familiar to most of us. We see them all the time in movies and books. For example, think about the hero and the villain.

The shadow is an archetype that represents hidden aspects of our personality. It is the part of ourselves that we deny or reject, often because we feel ashamed or guilty about it. Think about anger, jealousy, selfishness, or other negative traits we don’t want to acknowledge. But in dreams, we can’t hide from them. And it can be really valuable to recognise and integrate our shadow because denying it can create inner conflict and projection of our own flaws upon others. When we learn to integrate and transform our negative traits, it can lead to personal growth and a more fulfilling life.

Dreams are a way to become familiar with your shadow. In a lucid dream, you can converse with any archetype you encounter, and ask what they represent. For me personally, it wasn’t so much what the man (my shadow) said, but more how I felt when he said it. It was as if I could feel his words and their meaning through the whole dream. And I felt loneliness. He was literally begging me for acknowledgement. That’s likely why he follows me and often entraps me as well. He never hurts me in my dreams, but he does lock me up against my will. Often in quite nice places, which means to me that he intends to care for me. He clearly wants something from me. He wants us to connect. And perhaps I should embrace it instead of running away or trying to escape.

I love how our dreams give us personal dreamsigns that only we can truly understand. We have to figure out what it means to us, as it’s never the same for two people. Our dreams will show us what we need to see, and if we have trouble understanding the interpretation, lucid dreaming is a great tool to find out. I love interacting with the dream. It will tell you what you need to hear, or not, but anyway you will get one step closer to your personal interpretation.

Curious to hear about your experience with archetypes in your dreams!