I am related to the crown prince through marriage, and we are in the same room. Nazi WWII soldiers come and occupy the house we are in, and the town as well. I am passive in the dream, faced with a situation I don't seem to be able to do much about.

Well, this is a typical shadow dream, with the shadow taking the form of one of the favorite bad guys in European culture - WWII Nazi soldiers. Knowing that showed me that there are shadow elements in my life now that "wants" to be made conscious (not a big surprise) but didn't tell me much more, so I decided to use active imagination to explore it further.

I notice that I was relatively passive in the dream, but to engage with the soldiers I need to take on - and engage - with more strength. I talk to the soldiers, asking them who they are and why they are there. Initially, they don't answer, but one sits down and smokes a cigarette nearby. I notice the strength in him. After puffing a couple of times, he starts talking and says that he represents an active attitude to life - strength, activity and engagement. I take on these qualities myself, and as I do, the soldiers fade more into the background and the situation shifts into becoming far more manageable and workable.

The dream is showing me something I have noticed in my waking life, but not taken all that seriously... it is nudging me to pay more attention to it, and to take it more seriously.

My conscious interest lately has been in surrendering identification with the content of awareness, including the different aspects of this personality. In theory, and when it happens more fully, this allows the whole of the individual to be expressed more fully, including its strength and active engagement in life. But before that shift happens, there is a tendency to disown the active engagement in the process of surrendering.

There is a lack of differentiation between surrendering identification with any content, and of the content itself, so there is a disowning of aspects of the content - in this case the active attitude.

My job then is to allow more fully the active attitude, and also surrender identification with it. And in my daily life, noticing headlessness seems to be the easiest way to do that.

Additional notes

When something is disowned, it is because our conscious attitude does not fully allow it. It is seen as "bad" one way or another. So when it shows up in dreams, it takes on an image which our culture tends to view as "bad" as well, in this case Nazi soldiers. As the qualities they represent are more fully, wholeheartedly and consciously embraced, their form typically change into something more benevolent. (In this particular case of active imagination, I consciously took on their qualities, and they faded away.)

And I still need to explore the presence of the crown prince in the dream.

Labels: currently, dream, shadow