The dream this morning takes place on a ranch out in the American West. I see beef cattle out in an vast fenced in pasture. I am a ranch hand. I am wearing a cowboy hat and dirty denim clothes and boots. I am a hard working man. I am walking out from a barn that is about three hundred yards behind me. The cows are walking back toward a massive barn. They must be heading there for water or feed.
I pause to turn around, look back at the barn, and then my eyes scan around the area. I can dozens of more cows out beyond the fence. These are loose roaming cows that belong to my rancher boss and I quickly realize they need to gathered up and put inside the fence for the evening.
I get on a horse and head out to gather them up. Unfortunately, they have scattered by the time I reach their general area well beyond the fence. The task of rounding them up is going to be impossible as it is quickly getting too dark to see. The sun is on the horizon and all available light will be gone in a matter of seconds.
Suddenly, for some strange reason, I am wandering around in the dark, with out my horse. I am in a panic. This is not a good situation to find myself in. I am feeling my way around in the dark. I find I am standing in a dry irrigation ditch. I crouch down face first into the ditch. A dark figure of man on a dark horse is galloping toward me. My gut instinct immediately says to hide. My intuition is telling me that this man is up to no good. That dark cowboy is looking for trouble. His horse stamps the ground in a tight circle only inches away from my head. I believe the man knows I am close by and he is here to hunt me down. His intentions toward me are not for good. Who or what he is and why he wants to hunt me down is not clear. This is when I wake up. My heart is racing.
The cattle is the first primary symbol and the dark horseman is another. Cattle represent wealth. My master, the rancher, has a lot invested in all these cows. Everyone of them are worth a lot of money. As the servant in this dream I want to do good for my boss and make sure his cows are safe and accounted for him. My wages come out of his abundance.
Apparently, I am not performing my job all that well, as I was not able, to gather up the rancher's herd before nightfall. So is this dream simply a message about hard work and prosperity? I am not so sure. What should I make of the dark rider? Jung would probably say he represents my shadow self. It is the dark side of my personality. The dark rider is behind the mask I show to others and beneath the face I show to myself. It is a dark and mysterious part of me and in its image it is confronting me in my sleep. It is in pursuit of me and wants to be discovered. What it represents is my brute animal subconscious nature. It could be that if I let it catch me it could be a meeting of minds that might prove very cathartic. I might discover the unknown figure is my boss, the rancher, who, while he might be coming to scold me for being so careless, might also be coming to rescue me and take me home.
The dark horseman is also a classic mythic American archetype. That is a universal collective symbol. He wears a black hat. The cowboys of old Western films wore black hats to distinguish them as the outlaws or criminal types. Darth Vader of Star Wars is a more contemporary version of the same archetype. Star Wars is, after all, just an old Western story set in a galaxy long ago and far away.
This dark being, the devil in us, the unacknowledged one, inspires both fear and curiosity. He is the shadow of the substance that is you or I. The task I have before me is to explore why that this dark being affects me with such deep feeling. Why am I simultaneously fearful and attracted to him. Ultimately, I think, complete understanding is elusive, because my conscious self can not fully comprehend the totality of my true self. However, I can perhaps make some helpful and general conclusions about my dream encounter with my shadow.
I find I must return again to the example of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. These two literary characters are the best illustrations of the duality of the conscious and unconscious. Hyde is the hidden primal persona and Jekyll is the polite public persona. They are distinct from each other at the surface but if you look closely you begin to see Mr Hyde, the Shadow, is really the one in charge. The combination of these two parts is what constitutes our true self, and our conscious self is mostly along for the ride.
I have gone down this territory so much in other blogs. That it would be tiresome to repeat myself. So I think I will just get right to the bottom line this time in my dream analysis. The shadow wants to find me and share in the mystery that is it. It is like any other human being we need to get along with. Sometimes we need to comprise with to get anything done. He becomes hostile only when ignored. I think this is part of the reason I found myself afraid of him. I think because I restrain so much my negative thoughts and emotions in my conscious life that my unconscious has manifested my shadow as a ominous symbol in the form of a dark rider. He embodies the qualities I dislike most in other people. Namely someone that goes out of their way to find and accuse me of not doing my job. It is an ugly attitude and behaviour that I have found is very uncomfortable to deal with. It is seductive to become an ugly person in retaliation of become the object of their anger.
There is an inner pressure to give over to my passions. A collision of my conscious self and unconscious self has occurred in my dream. Perhaps, my unconscious is telling me to surrender to my passions and that it might not necessarily be a bad thing? I wonder if I need to vent some of my frustrations at my waking job in some way? I do repress a lot of my anger. That can't be healthy. This gives me much to think about. The dream is open ended as so often happens in my dream life. I am free to imagine any ending I so desire. I think a comprise is in order. I will believe the rancher boss has come to my rescue and I will politely, but passionately complain to the man about not getting the help and tools to do the best job for him. I get to vent and to be grateful. That would seem to me to be the best possible outcome for such a scenario. I wonder what the collective unconscious might say about that? I am sure this theme will surface again in another dream. Then maybe we will find out.
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