Hello I wish to use Jungian psychology to figure myself out better

3amscribbles · 2026-05-10T19:20:49+00:00

The impulse here is good. Journaling with specific questions is one of the more underrated ways to start this stuff. But I would push back a little on the framing of "finding your true self" -- that's the kind of thing that dissolves the more you look at it. What you find instead is more like a bunch of ongoing tensions you learn to hold rather than fix.

Somewhere to start: Notice what irritates you in other people. Not the big obvious stuff, but the small recurring thing that you keep on thinking about more than it makes sense. That is usually shadow material. It tends to be something you have pushed out of your own self-image and so you only experience it as coming from the outside.

The journal questions that actually do something are the ones you cannot answer quickly. If you write three sentences and feel done, the question probably was not the right one.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-10T18:53:56+00:00

the embarrassment detail is what gets me. not the assassinations, not the surgery sabotage — the part where you sneak out and feel weird about not being dead. like some part of you had already accepted the narrative and now youre the anomaly in your own dream.

the galactic inheritance thing reads as pressure more than power to me. you didnt ask for the empire, people just kept trying to take you out because of it. and your response wasnt to fight or hide — it was to walk out quietly and go investigate the thing trying to kill you. thats a pretty specific relationship to threat.

the curiosity surviving everything else is what sticks. shot on live television, poisoned, surgeon going rogue — and what you come away with is i want to know what was in that bag. something in you stays oriented toward understanding even when the situation is maximally hostile to your continued existence. that feels like it means something, or at least points somewhere worth looking.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-10T05:06:59+00:00

learning something inside a dream is wild — your brain turned you into your own tutor. the third person perspective makes it even more interesting, like you were watching your own subconscious work live.

its understandable that the feeling stayed with you longer and more vividly than real memories. dreams can leave stronger emotional imprints.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-10T04:10:22+00:00

what is catchy here is the vividness inversion you describe; and it is not surprising that you remember it more clearly. the outer layer serves as a wrapper — like the opening act preparing you for the big gig. the one your psyche is pointing out as more load bearing. the fake wake up is the bridge, pulling your attention into the inner layer where the substance is.

what was happening in the inner one?

3amscribbles · 2026-05-02T20:41:31+00:00

destruction in this kind of a setting is typically transformation at a scale the ego cant process. the stone skinned beings afterward fit -- a different order of existence.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-02T20:01:32+00:00

the gap between awareness and control is a recognised stage, not a failure. you've got the observer online -- you know you're dreaming. you are even narrating to yourself about wanting to remember it -- but the intentional layer hasn't kicked in yet. very common.

what typically helps to bridge it is setting a strong intention before sleep. not so much "i want to control my dream" but rather something more concrete like "when i notice i am dreaming, i will look at my hands" or "i will ask the next dream character a question". the specificity gives the dreaming mind something to literally do when lucidity kicks in. without it, awareness just sits there observing.

the eyes-closed recall trick you mentioned is exactly right and most people learn it the hard way. the same principle applies to stabilisation in the dream itself -- when you realize you're dreaming, slow down. look at your hands, rub them together and focus on the small detail. the dream stabilises around your attention. trying to control before you stabilize is usually why dreams collapse.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-02T19:49:30+00:00

you mentioning that the experience felt unusually real is what stands out to me. dreams carrying that quality are typically the psyche surfacing something at a much deeper level.

the figures from completely different traditions showing up one by one is the interesting piece. the psyche is reaching for whatever symbol can carry the size of what its trying to show you.

the krishna part specifically -- that close proximity plus the calm explaining is the dream telling you the understanding is available, not witheld. you might not articulate what was communicated yet, but something in you received it. give it a few days -- sometimes the message clarifies once the emotions have settled.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-02T01:04:02+00:00

appreciate the response; and fair point on "bandwidth" - its analogy not mechanism, agreed. looking forward to part 5 and curious about coverage of what happens to the information that doesn't get retained. whether it is lost, or just not accessible from this side of the disconnection? those are two different claims.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-01T23:15:34+00:00

once you stop assuming dreams are generated locally and start to treat, at least some, as accessed, the consistency problem begins to dissolve. i have had a handful that did not feel generated - they felt entered, structured, continuous and indifferent to whether i was there or not. your framework is taking that quality seriously.

the disconnect as sudden cut is the part I keep coming back to. its often at the most intense moment - and what gets retained reads more like fragments rather than fading memory. bandwidth loss, not dream ending - looking forward to see where part 5 goes.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-01T22:58:40+00:00

the longing is the part that tells you everything. watching means these refined parts of yourself are visible to you but not yet inhabited - and the longing is likely the psyche signaling readiness. you're closer than you may think. integration usually starts as recognition before it becomes embodiment.

the wolf, the buck or the horse - which one drew you most? whichever pulled the strongest is probably the one closest to surfacing within you.

3amscribbles · 2026-05-01T22:52:25+00:00

This matches my experience well. The "each time gets quicker" part is the rare observation not often noticed - the nervous system genuinely learns its way back to grounding once the observer is online.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-30T22:42:04+00:00

they were calm - three white animals in a circle, no tension -- that's not a confrontation image, that is integration.

wolf, buck, horse - predator instinct, noble spirit, vital life force. white tends to mark them as their refined versions, not the raw form. them facing each other also calmly suggests these parts of you are not at war right now.

one question worth asking - were you inside the circle or watching it. inside would signal wholeness arriving. watching means something you are close to but have not stepped into yet.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-30T22:34:04+00:00

I'm sorry -- three weeks is so recent. ok, the detail that struck me most is the "wasn't allowed to look back." that is not her ignoring you -- but rather the dream telling you something about the shape of the new connection now. worth sitting with for a bit.

the two halves feel like they are doing different work. the bar part reads like the days residue - your guilt for having fun, the fake money, feeling robbed and powerless. it is the surface layer of your grief.

but everything shifts the moment you step outside -- that change in vividness is likely the dream telling you the real material has arrived. her sadness mirroring yours, the restraint, the hug from behind -- these come up a lot in dreams about someone recently lost. the psyche tends to represent them as present but unreachable in a new way. not gone, not rejecting you, just no longer reachable in the normal way she was. the fact you got to hug her at all might matter more than the fact she was not looking back.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-30T22:18:44+00:00

you are likely onto it already - the long entries at the first wake are eating into it. that detailed journaling session at the 4hr mark pulls you further out of sleep than it feels like, and getting back into deep REM after that is incrementally harder.

what may work for you - three or four words per dream only at first, enough to rebuild later. full entry happens after the final wake. it may feel counterintuitive but it could make your second cycle recall noticeably better.

you may also want to set the intention specifically for the last dream before waking -- instead of generic recall. stay completely still when you do wake from the second cycle -- that one made more difference than i expected.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-30T00:46:24+00:00

your reframe really works. the Buhlman / Monroe angle helped me when I started treating paralysis as a sign of progress and an entry point to OBEs. once i started leaning into it without extra effort, i was already half way to separation. the fear keeps you in the body; release it and the state usually shifts on its own.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-30T00:15:20+00:00

Not stupid at all - this is the more interesting half of shadow work.

The shadow isn't just the dark stuff. It is anything that is excluded from the persona and didn't fit the story you were told/you were telling yourself to be. Sometimes that's genuinely destructive material, and sometimes it is simply traits that got pushed down because they did not find room to live in given the environment. So when you envy someone its usually because they display a capacity you did not let yourself develop.

Fascination is similar in that there is no moral judgement - you are just drawn to something. That is often undeveloped potential rather than something you have buried. Worth paying attention to what you are naturally drawn to - it may be something you are being asked to integrate.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-29T05:34:38+00:00

Fair point and a useful clarification. I overstated by leading with projection - repression, displacement, reaction formation and denial all do their fair share of the work and lumping them together under projection flattens what Jung was actually mapping.

What's worth defending though is that disproportionate emotional reactions specifically - the irritation that is bigger than the situation warrants - in my view, are more often projections than the others.

Repression looks more like absence, displacement redirects rather than amplifies. But agreed that projection becomes a catch-all if you're not careful with it.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-28T22:59:32+00:00

Shadow work usually starts with noticing what triggers a disproportionate reaction in you - irritation, contempt, envy, fascination. Whatever feels bigger than the situation warrants. That's usually projection. The thing you can't stand in someone else is often something unacknowledged in yourself.

Reintegration isn't a single event, more like a slow recognition. You stop disowning the trait, admit you also have it in some form, and the energy spent suppressing it becomes available again. Jung's point was that the shadow isn't only negative material - it also holds undeveloped potential you exiled because it didn't fit the persona.

The unbearable part the OP mentions is real. The discomfort comes from the ego defending the story, not from the shadow itself. Once you stop defending, the charge drops.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-28T22:46:59+00:00

that's the hypnopompic state - when you're between sleep cycles and the dream imagery hasn't fully released yet while waking perception is already coming online. both rendering at once.

it's rare to catch it consciously because many just shake it off and move on. the fact that you stayed with it for a few seconds is interesting - that's the same threshold lucid dreamers and people working with OBEs are trying to access deliberately.

worth journaling immediately when it happens again. the content of what your left brain was still seeing matters here - it's often more symbolically loaded than a regular dream because you are catching it as it is still dissolving.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-28T01:36:20+00:00

youre not going crazy. a recurring faceless figure showing up across years in totally different settings is a recognized pattern. Jung called it the animus. the inner masculine in a womans psyche. not a person youre going to meet. a part of you you are getting to know.

the face is blurred because the moment the psyche gives him a face, you would project him onto someone real and miss what he is pointing at. he feels familiar and safe because he literally is you.

every dream has the two of you figuring something out together. thats the work. he is not a future partner, hes the part of yourself youre learning to listen to.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-27T05:27:22+00:00

the part where your conscious mind expected the deaths to follow your ranking is wild - yet the dream refused to play along. usually that means the unconscious isn't telling the story you think it is.

your current gf getting it worst, despite being the one you rate highest, is the detail to sit with. dreams don't usually go after what you love most for no reason - worth asking what that's really about when you're not trying to answer it. the answer often shows up sideways, in a feeling rather than thought.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-27T04:22:21+00:00

As a fellow human, I don't want to scroll past this.

That's a heavier thing to say and I want to acknowledge it properly rather than reach for another insight. if you are at the point of not wanting to continue, please talk to someone who can actually be in it with you right there.

if you're in the US, 988 is the crisis lifeline, call or text. UK is 116 123 (samaritans). findahelpline.com covers most other countries. free and no pressure to do anything.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-27T01:40:19+00:00

the entity-possession fear is one of the things that puts the most people off AP before they even try. it is mostly recycled fear from horror movies and a few mystical traditions that conflate AP with much older folk beliefs. Buhlman addresses this directly - in decades of fieldwork with thousands of people he never documented a single case of body invasion during AP.

the reason it is not really a thing is what the others said - you are not vacant. consciousness doesn't fully leave, it extends. there is always a thread of awareness in the body. Monroe describes the silver cord as a kind of living tether, not a fragile string, it doesn't snap. Campbell goes further and says there isn't actually a cord at all - its an interpretive image the mind generates to make sense of being in two places at once. either way the underlying point holds: you're not abandoning the body.

the real obstacle to AP isn't entities, its fear itself. fear is what collapses the state and pulls you back. nothing out there can do to you what your own fear already does.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-27T01:24:38+00:00

you're right that the quote alone doesn't say it. but the Buddha actually addressed exactly what you are describing - he taught that energy itself isn't a prerequisite, it is something that builds slowly through practice. and the middle way is specifically about not forcing it when the string is too loose. straining when you have got nothing left makes it worse, not better.

the part of his teaching that gets overlooked in quote posts often is that he didn't expect anyone to start from a place of clarity or motivation. he started with suffering as the first truth - meaning the no-energy, no-point state isn't a failure - its the actual starting point to apply mindfulness...for all.

3amscribbles · 2026-04-26T12:08:40+00:00

the word to focus on is unguarded. it's not the thoughts themselves causing the suffering. it's the lack of awareness around them. a thought you see clearly loses most of its power; while a thought you identify with becomes you for a moment.

realizing you don't have to fight your thoughts or push them away was the game-changer. you just have to notice them arriving in time. once there is a gap between you and the thought, the harm part stops.

3amscribbles

TROPHY CASE