SHADOW WERK WITH YOUR DREAMS

Whether or not you remember your dreams, I assure you that you dream every single night. When your consciousness leaves your body after you fall asleep, it heads into the astral realms and you have a dream experience.

Because of this, you’re able to have a front row seat into what’s going on in your subconscious, or the parts of you that you’re not always aware of. That’s why your dreams are such a valuable tool in Shadow Work, because they show you the truths that you may not be able to conclude on your own with your mind while you’re awake.

If you’d like to add this powerful tool to your Shadow Werk toolbox, I’ll teach you how to use it! The quick and dirty, step by step version, of course. ;)

BUT FIRST: WHAT ACTUALLY ARE DREAMS?

Like I said above, you leave your body every night and head to the astral realms. There are many ways to explore these astral realms, but for the purposes of Shadow Werk and developing your intuition, your dreams are a window into your subconscious.

There are huge amounts of symbolism, metaphor, and even literal information held within your dreams. The spiritual and non-physical realms make up the majority of the Universe, while your physical body and material experience only makes up a small percentage of reality.

With this understanding, you can conclude that your dreams are almost more true, or at least more honest than your waking life. The more Shadow Werk you do and the more you understand your dreams, this will start to shift. You’ll start to live more honestly and more true to who you really are in your waking life the more you use your dreams to assess what’s going on in your subconscious.

Your subconscious is basically all the parts of your operating system that you’re not fully aware of. The parts of you “in shadow” that still have the power to call the shots and co-create your reality. These are the memories and experiences that you have had that you don’t consciously remember, or don’t fully remember. These are your beliefs both limiting and supportive. Once you become aware of an aspect of your subconscious, it becomes conscious. Once you shine a light into the darkness and either embrace or heal what you see, you begin to have more conscious control over what you’re manifesting and bringing into your reality.

It’s so valuable and important to remember your dreams and take them seriously as clues for what’s going on with you. Dreams are a function of your clairvoyance, so that means that they’re metaphorical, symbolic, and sometimes literal. I’m definitely not saying to take your dreams literally or as prophecy, though some dreams may be just that.

For the purposes of Shadow Werk and developing your intuition, we’re going to operate on the premise that all of your dreams are mostly symbolic and slightly literal when it comes to things that you’ve faced or are facing in your life. Your dreams are your higher self trying to give you a leg up by showing you exactly what your problems are; the things that are holding you back.

Our dreams can be so “blunt” at times so it can be tough to accept responsibility for what you’re seeing. It can be very easy and even seductive to feel like you’re a victim in your dreams. I assure you that you’re co-creating your entire dream, and that everyone and everything that you encounter in your dreams is another aspect of you.

We’re going to operate from the premise that your dreams are just you exploring yourself. No one is coming to harm you. It’s only you, attacking yourself, by creating a reality in which you feel attacked. Your dreams are all about you and your true feelings about people and things.

How to Recall & Decode Your Dreams (in 5 steps)

1. INTENTION

The first step in recalling your dreams is the easiest one, setting the intention before you go to sleep. Before you go to sleep, write yourself a reminder on a sticky note that you leave by your bed where you can easily see it. Set your intention to have a meaningful dream, and to remember it when you wake up.

So it’s really a two-part intention. Part one is to set the intention to have a meaningful dream; maybe to give you insight on what you’re going through right now, or maybe just generally to let you know what’s going on with you. Part two is to set the intention to actually remember the dream when you wake up. Many times we have long and involved dreams, and then immediately upon waking up it slips away. Step two will help you hold on to your dream.

2. RECORD

Once you’ve set your intention, and have had the dream, it’s important to record the dream as close to immediately upon waking as you can. You can keep a journal next to your bed to quickly jot down a few bullet points that you remember; this will help you flesh out the dream once you’re more awake and can fill in the blanks.

I’m not going to recommend that you keep your phone next to your bed, but if you do you can also record a voice note immediately upon waking detailing all of the things you remember from your dream. Even if you get into the habit of running through the major bullet points of your dream in your head before you wake up, this is going to help you find themes and symbols and patterns that you can then apply meaning to and use to get your answers. Once you’ve recorded your dream, it’s time for review.

3. REVIEW

Review the bullet points that you’ve written down or the voice note that you’ve recorded on your phone. Add any details that you remember as you jog your memory with your bullet points. You may already start seeing some patterns, symbols or themes popping out. In this step it’s important to write down any common symbols or aspects of your dream that you could use to apply meaning to. I’ll give you some ideas on common symbols once we get through step four, which is to develop your own dream symbols.

4. YOUR SYMBOLS

This is super important, because your dream symbols will be directly related to your life, and the ways in which you understand the world. Spirit will always speak your language, so that you can easily understand. What this means is: whatever your interests are, whatever pop culture references you enjoy or resonate with, whatever music or movie themes or artists or actors you are familiar with will be the things that appear in your dreams.

This also includes favorite colors or animals. It’s important to develop your own dream symbols so that you can accurately assess what is happening in your dream, and what it means. Dream symbol books are useful when you’re first starting out, but you have to remember that the symbols in those books are the dream symbols of the person who wrote the book. They may have different interests and pop culture references and ways in which they understand the world, so their dream symbols may not be totally accurate for you, your dreams, and your life.

As you put more intention and focus on your dreams and dreamwork, you’ll start to see common symbols repeating and showing up for you. Now I’ll share some common dream symbols that you can look out for and begin to make your own meaning for them.

Common Dream Symbols

Colors

All colors have a psychological and emotional meaning. Many times when you’re first starting to recall your dreams, colors are easy to remember. You can even set the intention to remember a certain most important color before falling asleep. Colors do have psychological meanings as I mentioned, and they also correspond with the chakras. It would be helpful to write down in your dream journal all of the colors of the rainbow, as well as brown black and white, and then write your associated meaning with those colors.

Feelings

This one will definitely come up in your dreams, especially if you’re primarily clairsentient or identify as an empath. Sometimes this will be the only part of a dream you remember. Pay attention to the feelings you experience in the dream, and give attention to the overall feeling you had in the dream. These feelings will point to clues that tell you what’s going on in your subconscious, and what could be blocking you.

Animals

Animals are an important part of our human life, so of course they’re going to show up in your dreams. Some people, like me, are really into spirit animals and animal totems. f you ever have an animal show up in your dream, you can look up what that animal means spiritually and symbolically, and this will give you more answers and ways to apply meaning to your dream.

People

This one is layered and also very important. There will always be people in your dreams, and it’s important to start noticing which people show up in your dreams and what feelings you may associate with those people. It could be people that you know or knew in the past, and those people could literally represent the person they’re showing up as, or they could represent a theme or aspect of you and traits or limiting beliefs you’ve taken on as a result of your relationship with them. As you’re doing your dream recording and reviewing, write down any people you recognize in your dream, and what those people mean to you. This will give you huge insight.

Places

The places you encounter (or are in) during your dream are another important symbol to pay attention to. Oftentimes, the places we encounter in our dreams are made up places that are an amalgamation of places we’ve been, places we’ve seen in movies, or even places we wish we could go. Think of the place you’re in during your dream as the “container” for the dream. What are your surroundings? Are they cluttered or clear, are you inside or outside, are you in your childhood home or a haunted house? The location of your dream is significant and will help you apply meaning.

5. APPLY MEANING

Now that you’re more familiar with common symbols, and are starting to create the practice of intending, recording, and reviewing your dreams, you’ll be able to use that information to apply meaning to your day-to-day life. Many people second-guess themselves and get tripped up when it comes to applying meaning to their dreams or their intuition, since your dreams are a function of your intuition it is important to move forward confidently with the understanding that you are developing your intuition, it’s getting stronger every day, and that deep down you always know: what’s going on with you, what’s best for you, and how to move forward, even if it scares you.

I hope you have hella fun implementing these steps, and start decoding your dreams, so you can clear your shadows and manifest everything you want much faster! Girl, you betta Shadow WERK!