Thread: New, need some HELP regarding a shared dream.

Welcome to Dreamviews!

*I'm moving this to Beyond dreaming. Hopefully someone there will be able to provide any insight into this. Good luck to you.

It sounds to me like you should back off a bit with the paranormal stuff. Not everyone wants to think about this sort of thing. A couple of years ago a coworker was describing a 'many worlds' kind of paranormal experience to me, and another coworker overheard us and freaked out. It seems that its scary to her because its unknown and out of control. I think we should respect that.

Also, we are all tempted to sensationalize about such things in a way that even open people are uncomfortable with. My mom does this when she has a supernatural experience, and it annoys some other people in the family, even though we're not against having such experiences or talking about them. For example, when we found out we were going to have a third child, she was very excited that she had intuited that my wife was pregnant. This excitement with the psychic phenomena seemed to be more important in the moment than the actual pregnancy, which bugged me slightly. Maybe this doesn't apply to your situation, I'm just tossing a few thoughts out there and you can decide what's relevant.

As I experience it, almost all houses that have been lived in have strange presences in them. I don't think they're ghosts of dead people, its too common. I think they're more like feelings and frustrated desires connected to other people who have lived there. I don't think its healthy to obsess to much about it, sort of like how its not healthy to get too worked up about the fact that there are germs everywhere. If you fixate on it too much, you sensitize yourself to it so much that you make yourself sick for sure.

I think the key to successful relationships has mostly to do with being considerate of other people, recognizing that different people are different, and being able to look at one's own behavior critically. But even if you do everything the best you can, you can't always make every relationship ideal. Sometimes there are barriers there that you can't do anything about, and sometimes there are barriers that neither person can do anything about. Some things just don't mix well.

I don't see how your daughter (in-law) being haunted is an improvement over the house being haunted. Given how uncomfortable you seem to be with the idea of a haunted house, I could see that would make her uncomfortable since it implies you feel that way about her, since the experience is actually more attached to her. There are synergies between people and locations though, so I don't think its as simple as saying its her or the house.

Unfortunately I can't tell you what the shadow was. Many people have such experiences with shadow figures, and there have been many threads about it on this sub-forum, but I don't think other people really understand what they are either. Its some darkness that your daughter (in-law) struggles with apparently, but everybody has something like that, in one form or another. Maybe you can talk about such things here, which satisfies your need to do that, and takes some of that pressure off of them? I think its best to remember the important things though, like your grandchild, and not get too distracted by this other stuff. Its part of life, but its unhealthy if it becomes the focus. I think that all of us who are sensitive to these kinds of experiences struggle with this.

I hope that helps a little.

Thank you Shadowofmind for attempting to help. I am very grateful.

I'd like to clarify and say that I am a quiet person, very calm. I don't go around making scenes and I didn't in this case.

As I said I didn't even tell my future DIL until a year afterwards. I wanted to help her with the dreams she was having whatever they were. I researched this strange thing that happened, learned about shared dreams and lucid dreaming, so I told her about it in order to help her be in control of the dream, not sensationalize. I realized that it frightened her and never spoke about it again.

It is such an odd thing that happened to me that I still would like to understand it.

Thank you again.

OK, I hear what you're saying. I think a lot of what I said still applies though.

The content of the dream is being pulled by someone that you can feel but can't really see, and experiencing a weight. In waking life, you were trying to help her with the dream, in other words, pull her in the direction of understanding and dealing with it. And you did most of that in the shadows, so to speak, thinking about it and being concerned about it even though you weren't talking to her about it. But she didn't want that kind of involvement, and your attempt made her feel pretty much the same way that the dream felt. It seems to me you should probably leave it alone, not only outwardly, but turn your desire away from it also and leave her some psychic space. You can care about her, in a soft, radiating kind of way, but don't "want" in relation to her, that's the pulling, and she made it pretty clear that she doesn't want that.

I think you can still pursue the subject yourself though, if you can disconnect it in your mind from her. Pay attention to your dreams, read new age books, peruse several years of threads on this sub-forum, or whatever. My view here though is that almost everything you read in books is going to be made up, with at best an element of truth in it. So you can use it as food for thought, but you can't really trust any of it. The reason is that honest psychics know their limitations, and know that they can't really give much in the way of definite answers about these sort of things. That doesn't make a very compelling book. So the books that are on the shelf are written by people who weren't afraid to pass their intuitive guesses off as knowledge. I think that stuff in this sub-forum is probably better in the sense that you get a better idea what people really understand. If someone makes a wild claim, usually some skeptic will argue with them, then you'll see how well they can back it up.

Again, I hope that helps.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

OK, I hear what you're saying. I think a lot of what I said still applies though.

The content of the dream is being pulled by someone that you can feel but can't really see, and experiencing a weight. In waking life, you were trying to help her with the dream, in other words, pull her in the direction of understanding and dealing with it. And you did most of that in the shadows, so to speak, thinking about it and being concerned about it even though you weren't talking to her about it. But she didn't want that kind of involvement, and your attempt made her feel pretty much the same way that the dream felt. It seems to me you should probably leave it alone, not only outwardly, but turn your desire away from it also and leave her some psychic space. You can care about her, in a soft, radiating kind of way, but don't "want" in relation to her, that's the pulling, and she made it pretty clear that she doesn't want that.

From what you are describing here, it almost sounds like she was dreaming about this sequence of events that happened after the dream. IF what Einstein said about the past-present-future is true, then it is quite possible that she was dreaming about what was about to happen.

I also notice that people tend to "glorify" these type of "paranormal" events once they start happening. Taking it as an experience that is so grand, so powerful, that it couldn't actually happen. There are far more strange and weird things that happen like this. So just prepare yourself to experience extremely strange phenomenons, because if this is already happening to you, chances are that it will start to happen more often. Take it for what it is, instead of making it into something it is not. Look into it with clear eyes, find the meaning of the dream or event, and move on to the next. If you can't wrap your mind around it then just let it go, forcing the subject on yourself will not make anything make sense. If anything you will create an template in your mind, and your mind will FORCE IT to fit that template.

Sorry if this sounds blunt or rude, but I am in no way trying to offend you. I hope this helps in some way or another.
Much love!

Shadow, Thank you again for your input.

I do agree with you about 'trusting' various sources. I'm a 'doubting Thomas' by birth. It's quite hard to find what I feel is genuine info. I happened upon this site and thought maybe someone with experience might be of some help.

I have accepted the fact that DIL wants nothing to do with me, a hard thing. There will always be a glimmer of hope in me. It's harder for a woman to disconnect than for a man. We are emotional creatures after all.


Could you explain what you mean by giving her psychic space? I have forgiven her, harbor no ill feelings, still care for her. I am not obsessive about her. I don't try contacting her ever and never will. My other son, recently told me that she finds new things now to be mad at me for.

I am fairly new to this kind of thing, albeit I am old! 62 I've avoided supernatural all my life, I was always afraid. I have come to accept in myself some TEENY tiny bit of, for lack of a better word "psychic" ability. That's what I'm more concerned with. The what and why of that. This 'shared dream' was something I never even heard of, let alone experienced. I only speak of the paranormal aspect, to one of my friends who has also had experience.

System....what you just said is TRUTH. I am not offended. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Kattrinka

Could you explain what you mean by giving her psychic space?

Sounds like you were already trying to do what I was suggesting. Nothing more to do about it maybe. I'm sorry it hasn't gone better. I'm fortunate that my wife and mom get along well.

I think everyone has at least a bit of psychic ability. Like nearly everything else, some people have more of it than others. But its still very weak even in those people who have it the strongest.

The supernatural dream stuff really took off for me when I was about 40. Before that it happened rarely, but it got so that was happening pretty much every night. I still don't have much of an idea of what to do with it. Maybe its like learning violin, you have to practice for a long time before it sounds very much like music. And 'long time' in this case could be much longer than the span of a human life. I don't believe in reincarnation in the conventional way, but I think that we do inherit karma so to speak, so other people can eventually pick up where we left off.

I have a very hard time letting go of people. I'm still attached to classmates I knew as a child, even though I understand that its unhealthy. I think its getting better with age though. One thing that I've come to understand is that just being in my presence is unhealthy for some people, its not really what I'm doing so much as who I am, which interacts in an uncomfortable way with who they are.

I think you've given us a good conjecture of what "shadow people" are. They are tactile projections of what we feel about other people's desires in relation to ourselves. So the shadow people are real people, but they look like shadows because we're feeling their want, and there's no light or color to that. The time-warp thing, where some of the related events come after the dream, is pretty much to be expected. Everything at this level seems to work like that.

Most substantial book as food for thought that I've read is Thinking and Destiny by H. W. Percival. Its available for free here (http://thewordfoundation.com/PDF/T%26D_14th_ver01.pdf). Its at least half bullshit though, and it will make you nuts if you swallow it whole, so if you read it be careful.

I feel fear in relation to experiencing this 'spiritual' side of myself. I can't say how much it holds me back. I think sometimes fear is worth paying attention to, most things that we're afraid of are actually dangerous. Despite the fear, I have to pursue this stuff though, its part of life, and I feel like I'm suffocating otherwise. So here would be an opposite interpretation of the shadow figures, for you. They're all the people that want to hold you back because they're afraid of themselves, and you becoming more alive in yourself makes their own souls pull more strongly on them. Because of the way we are all in each other. So from that standpoint the shadows aren't trying to pull you into exploring the depths of your mind, they're trying to pull you away from it. But the shadows are also like all the people who advocate astral projection, trying to pull you out of your body. In my experience, all dreams have multiple contradictory interpretations like this, its built into the holistic/dyslexic way the mind works. A dream like this doesn't have one interpretation that does it justice.

About 15 years ago I had an experience where I 'found' another suppressed part of myself, by allowing myself to feel and express that part. This part was and is in a lot of pain, having been condemned to darkness for a very long time, so to speak. When this door opened a little bit, and I gave voice to that aspect of myself, experiencing myself as her, it was like a huge weight was lifted off of me. I felt this as a literal lifting of a weight from my chest, as if I could breathe for the first time. The weight had become so familiar that I didn't even notice it was there. Similarly, from that standpoint I feel the pressure of my personality almost like a literal mask around my eyes.

This ability to 'move' my identity and become someone more is to some extent something I learned from reading this book: http://www.beasyouare.info/beasyouare.pdf. I don't believe their theology, in other words, I don't think their "who am I" line of questioning leads to nirvana and liberation from nature. And I think that a lot of the mental layers that you go through which the brush off as an illusory distraction are actually worth looking at and understanding. However, I think the process is valuable. I never practiced meditation that way, but it happened to some extent just from reading about it.

For myself, another aspect of this is just empathetic. When I meet a new person, and feel something of who they are, that awakens an awareness of something similar in myself. So I grow and become more alive that way. But it remains a part of them also. All of my premonitory and 'shared' dreaming experience comes out of this I guess.

Another trick I used to use, is if I'm upset about something, I look at what it is that seems to be violated that I'm concerned about. Looking at that, my awareness of that something becomes stronger. As a hypothetical example, if I were afraid of dying, I'd look at the part of me that wants to live. As I hold my attention on that, and feel what it is, and why I want it, my awareness of that part grows. And a characteristic it seems to have is that it does not die. So then the fear is greatly weakened, and I have discovered something that was the opposite of what I was afraid of. I think a lot of my 'growth' came this way also.

I think a common fallacy to watch out for is the assumption that a spiritual intuition has authority of truth on account of having been obtained psychically. Actually, almost all of what we tap into internally is other people's thoughts about stuff, and just because an insight comes with an accurate premonition or even an overt miracle really doesn't mean squat in terms of how trustworthy it is. In the same way that the human world doesn't divide into 'good' people and 'bad' people, the spirit world doesn't divide neatly into benevolent angels and evil spirits. Its a lot messier than that. Everyone gets caught by this to varying degrees, since we're all confused about who we are and what we can trust. When you look to a spiritual source as an authority, you're abandoning the negative feedback that's needed to correct mistakes in that part of us. Its like people collectively chasing their own tail, the tail follows us and can't tell us where to go. Thinking for ourselves is a crucial part of our growth. Likewise for learning from experience. There are limits to what can be gained through intuition and mental focus, which is where I disagree with raja yoga and other similar teachings.

Another tool I've used that has probably helped some is relating things in terms of complementary principles like male/female, light/dark, electric/magnetic, outside/inside, matter/spirit, desire/feeling, reason/conscience, conscious/subconscious, sun/moon etc. Often awareness of one side is suppressed more than the other, so you can exercise it just by thinking about it in relation to its counterpart. These dichotomies start to break down for me eventually though. So for instance the male/female division inside of myself is less meaningful to me now than it seemed to be years ago when I was first discovering it.

Here's my favorite Tao Te Ching translation: Tao Te Ching, English by Lin Yutang, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)

And my favorite I Ching translation: I Ching Wilhelm Translation

Any translation by Cleary is pretty good too I think.

I think most of this stuff is going to be useless to you, I'm just telling you about it in case it helps, because some of it is not easy to find. And in my view these books are a higher caliber than most books at least in terms of depth and intelligence, even if they are not quite what they pretend to be either.

James Allen was sort of a Buddhist with an emphasis on character development: As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. His other books are of comparable quality

Once upon a time, A Course in Miracles was one of my two favorite books, along with Thinking and Destiny. I take a fairly dim view of it now though, it really only has an inspired but distorted grasp of one part of the puzzle, and over-reaches. By teaching that all problems can be easily undone by thinking in a guilt-free way, it creates guilt by making you implicitly responsible for failing to resolve things you can't actually resolve. Its appropriate that their foundation has spiraled into a mess of self-righteousness, lawsuits, and profiteering. The book is strong medicine though, and could be transformative in a positive way if you don't take it too seriously. Here's a free version: A Course In Miracles ~ Free Searchable Urtext Version | Home

Gospel of Thomas is by far my favorite gospel: Gospel of Thomas (Lambdin Translation) -- The Nag Hammadi Library. I doubt that the sayings are all really by Jesus, the historical character. Back then people were plagiarizing texts left and right, and attributing stuff to Jesus as a way of getting credibility, sort of a fraudulent appeal to authority. It has truth in it though, in my opinion, even though its a bit cryptic.

Anyway, I hope something there gives you something to think about.

Wow Shadow, you have given me very deep stuff here I may be able to understand some of it! Thank you so much for your deep effort in trying to teach me. I am very grateful. We are like minded in more than a few ways that I can see in your response above and it will take me some time to digest it.