LionKing's Mating Season (SM3)

[SargeMaximus]

You're aware of it then? That's good. Most people aren't.

If you feel inseperable from this female presence, it may simply be that you are becoming aware of the anima. If she plays no other role in the dream than to simply be "felt", then that would be my guess.

No, she's a separate character from me, but its like if you walk side by side with someone you can at times see her in the unfocused part of your vision and sometimes not, but you about know where she is because of the intermittent glimpses. And she's always doing the same thing I am, with me. If that wasn't some particular dream character, she sat behind me on a scooter, I remember seeing her leg (jeans) and feeling her hands on my shoulders. No particular personality to her, maybe a long-term gf, familiar friend, sister, companion.

Ok so, if she's just hanging with you, it's probably as I say: she is your anima but you're not aware of her yet, hence why there's no face. Keep in mind, your unconscious tries to show your conscious mind things it is unaware of so that you can incorporate them into your waking life. In this case, your unconscious is trying to show you that you have a feminine side that's always with you.

Btw, wikipedia mentions the "theriomorphic and inferior-function of the shadow", where Therianthropy = "the mythological ability of humans to metamorphose into animals through shapeshifting.". On the same night of the wise old man -dream I had the me & the female (animus) captured by a predatory talking animal (shadow), who was very violently (and calmly) killed by an even more dangerous predator. Or I don't know if they actually talked, but they were definitely conscious and had possibly bound us. Fun stuff

The female is the anima, not animus lol.

But it's important to recognize what the shadow IS. It's not a shapeshifting creature, it's simply aspects of your personality that you do not like or see as immoral (especially). Now it can MANIFEST as a creature, or a person, or a situation, it doesn't really matter.

Clear signs of the shadow in your dream are:

- fear of the element/character (with characters, again, you must see the face unless you can't, in which case the fear would be of a situation or something else)
- Character/element is a threat to you, specifically
- Police or other such authorities chase and hunt down the character to save YOU from it

Again, the shadow is an assortment of aspects of your own personality that are considered "bad", immoral, or socially unacceptable. Therefore, in dreams, often times we feel threatened when the shadow is making more of it's presence felt.

This can happen in real life as well. If you've ever been around a group of guys who start talking about gay stuff and the air gets an eerie tension, it's the shadow in all of them starting to wake up.

Just like children, the shadow doesn't like being ignored, and will often act up at the most inopportune times in order to be seen. Most people experience this as sudden outbursts of anger, or sexual fetishism, afterwards they do the WORST thing, which is to reprimand themselves for the "where did THAT come from?" behavior, instead of recognizing it as part of themselves, and incorporating it.

You cannot be whole until you accept and incorporate your dark side.

Again, think of the yin-yang.

I'll have to ask a female if she remembers a recurring male character with her in dreams... My female character is always following my lead, but I wonder if the male is following her lead in her dreams or not, because leading is a masculine trait?

The anima/animus doesn't have to be a recurring character. It just has to be gendered either male or female, and have a face (except, possibly, in your case here). The anima/animus is an aspect of your personality. The dream characters are just your unconscious mind's way of trying to show you something about it.

In your case, I'd almost bet that you are unaware of your own feminine side, in which case the unconscious cannot show you WHICH girl you are like (which would be the purpose of a face), but it DOES want to show you that you do, in fact, have a feminine aspect to you.

So do people usually see the faces of their anima/animus in these dreams?

I do most of the time, but it's not required. It depends what your unconscious is trying to show you. To discover that, you kind of have to see what each thing/character/situation/place in the dream means to you, specifically, then take the feelings, the mood, the overall story, and see if you can tie that back to anything that's going on in your recent day-to-day existence.

If so, is the face always the same across dreams or does it vary? It it can seem like anyone you know, it could basically be any sex dream or any encounter, or are there some special signs I could ask?

Faces are irrelevant in that a face is just a symbol that points to something.

For example, if a girl has a dream about her father, I would tell her it's actually the animus part of herself that is LIKE her father in the ways demonstrated within the dream.

Like wise if someone has a nightmare where someone chases them in a mall and no one is there to help them. I'd first recognize the shadow element, then ask them what the mall might have to do with them putting on an act to fit in.