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What part of your wild nature do you need to release?
Interpreting what animals mean in our dreams is a very personal process, but some animals can create such strong impressions they may seem to overwhelm our logic. This can be a good time to step back and try to understand the animal as a symbol before we go the next step of applying our own personal layer of interpretation.
One animal that is often a such of such confusion and power is the wolf. Feared, worshipped, maligned, misunderstood and revered, the wolf is a potent symbol through-out much of Europe and North America, and now thanks to cultural diversity, through much of the world. Wolves star in folklore and fairy-tales from many generations ago, and still capture our imagination through popular films and television today.
Wolves in dreams may be scary, threatenning and viscious, they may be noble, protecting and wise, or they may be something else entirely – mysterious, elusive, wild. To understand the wolf in our dreams, we can start by understanding the wild nature of these animals, and the very attitudes that society has to them can reveal much about our own wild selves.
Wolves can represent all that is wild and “uncivilised” about ourselves. This can be a scary thing to confront. What is wild is what our polite and safe day to day behaviour does not want to let out – what is wild can damage, hurt and upset. But what is wild can also free, excite and release. Wild can be untamed and bad mannered, but wild can also be pure and uncorrupted. Sometimes a wolf dream will be guiding us to find our true, authentic nature that we are afraid to reveal as we try to conform, but sometims a wolf dream will be a warning that we are behaving too wildly, that we may be threatenning something else that is important to us.
The behaviour of wolves in their native environments can give us clues as to why we might be dreaming about them. Do you long to feel part of a group, or seek the support and kindred spirit of a pack? Do you feel a need to protect something that is important to you, and need the fierceness of a wolf mother? Do you need to approach a situation carefully, using the stealth of a wolf to get close without being discovered? Do you feel a need to express your true self more freely, let go of inhibitions and howl at the moon?
The She-Wolf can be a fierce but also caring protector
Looking at the role wolves play in fiction, folklore and films may also give us insight as to what the wolf means in our own personal dream. The mythical She-Wolf who nurtured Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, as well as Mowgli from the Jungle Book, can help us understand how wolves in our dream can be a sign of us seeking or offering nurturing, care and protection to a part our selves or someone else. The Big Bad Wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” may be sign of our own wild nature, or it may symbolise a person who is threatening or bullying to us, or even how we might be acting that way ouRselves. The wolf may also be associated with a predatory nature in a sexual sense, so those who have suffered abuse, or fear some sort sexual overtones they are not comfortable with may dream of wolves in this way.
Wolves can appear in our dreams when we fear or are experiencing loss, especially of a material or financial nature, stemming from the old saying that “to keep the wolf from the door” indicates security and not going hungry. Wolves may also appear in dreams when our subconscious has picked up something is not quite right, and is trying to warn our conscious mind that we should be careful of what or who we trust, that there may be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
But no animal itself is inherently bad, and these values that we assign to them are the result of years of cultural associations. Remember when we dream of animals, they also represent a part of our selves, and we cannot understand what our dream means simply by looking up a symbolic reference. We always need to go the next step and aks ourselves, “what does the wolf mean to me?”
Are you ready to confront what is threatening?
Wolf dreams challenge us to confront what we are afraid of, and to not lurk in the shadows of our own subconscious. Wolf dreams offer us the gift of strength, freedom and the ability to fiercely protect that which is dear to us. Wolves in our dreams invite us to claim back our own power, to run freely and live our most authentic life possible, without fear, without shackles, without shame.
PS. I have mentioned this book previously, but it is also relevant in this post for those who may have missed it – a very empowering and insightful look at how to live wildly and freely:
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Wolves-Clarissa-Pinkola-Estes/dp/0345409876
Is it time to shed your skin?
Like any animal dream, snakes in dreams can have a wide variety of meanings. But as snakes are found the world over, and many cultures and religions through-out history have used snakes in their myths and legends, these animals more than most may share common meanings to different people who dream of them. When snakes appear to indicate a symbolic meaning, rather than simply being the biological animal, they are often referred to as “serpents.”
Freud would have us believe that snakes are a symbol of sex, and little more. And while snakes might indicate a sexual energy in our dreams, especially if they slide into bed with us or the dream in some other way is erotically charged, snakes are more likely to appear in our dreams for several other profound reasons.
In ancient times, harmless snakes would be left in temples where people seeking cures to an illness would go to dream. The dreams people had in these temples amongst the snakes would then be interpreted by the holy people there, who would reveal the cure the dream was showing. Hippocrates, he of the medical profession’s “Hippocratic Oath” and a powerful ancient healer, had as his symbol the snake. Even modern medicine still uses the symbol of two snakes entwined around a staff as its symbol (caduceus). These associations mean that snakes can be a symbol of healing in our dreams, either physically or emotionally.
Snakes also shed their skin, and have been associated in many cultures as symbols of wisdom. These
For centuries, snakes have been associated with wisdom and healing
associations can indicate snakes as powerful sign of personal transformation. This can suggest we look at what old patterns of behaviour or beliefs we are outgrowing, and what new thought processes or new stage in our life we preparing to step into. This transformative power is especially strong if in your dream you look the snake in the eye, connect with it in some way, or it bites you and you recover or don’t die. When combined with the healing elements that snakes can indicate, this may imply a significant transformation through healing, almost like an initiation. These snake dreams, though they may be be scary, and make us anxious, may provide us with an important opportunity to leave behind something that hurt and restricted us, moving forward into a new way of being.
Sometimes snakes dreams can be profoundly unsettling, and leave us with a sense of being deceived. This is especially true if we dream of being in a pit of vipers or if we are surrounded by many snakes. This kind of symbolic meaning may arise from recalling the snake that spoke in the garden of Eden lied to Eve, or knowing that snakes have forked tongues, which some feel indicates that they can speak multiple stories, which must be lies for there is only one truth. Snakes are also hard to see, and can be stumbled upon by surprise, which can associate them with secrets. The phrase “snake in the grass” refers to this sense of someone who cannot be trusted, who may lie or deceive. If we dream of snakes and have this sense, there may be a truth that we know but are deceiving ourselves, denying what we know to be true. And given the multi-layered aspect of dreams, it may be that when this truth is finally revealed to ourselves (whatever that truth may be) that this will lead to healing and transformation, the gifts of the snake.
Is something restricting you?
Dreaming a snake that is coiling around us like a python and squeezing tight may be an indication that we feel restricted somewhere in life. This may be by our own self-limiting beliefs, our refusal to admit what we know we must do, or it can be an indicator of external factors inhibiting us, such as a job, lack of experience or education for something we wish to achieve, or a dominating and controlling relationship. If the snakes dream is constricting us so we can’t get enough air, this may mean it is time to make some changes, to stand up and act, to create some air, some breathing space in our lives.
Essentially snakes in dreams can be potent symbols that we often fear because of the change they bring and the energy they contain. A snake rising up, coming awake after hibernation, or uncoiling and springing to life can indicate our own energy flowing freely again, our passion, our motivation, our love for life. Some eastern cultures refer to this as the awakening “Kundalini,” an energy that coils up from the base of the spine to the crown of our head and then beyond, a process of spiritual growth. The dream snake’s poison is far more likely to transform us than it is to destroy us. It is up to us how we choose to either fight, run from, or embrace the transition.
We all use our understanding of symbols every day
Unravelling the meaning of symbols and metaphors is one of the great skills of dream interpretation. You may think that this kind of understanding requires a specialist knowledge and complex abilities that only the few possess. But in truth, while some people are naturally more able to give voice to their understanding of a large range of symbols, (just as some can read music easily and others speak foreign languages), it is a skill that we all possess and in fact use every day. If you are reading this, you can understand symbols. Letters are simply symbols for sounds. If you understood the heading to this entry, you will have immediately understood that “&” is a symbol for “and.”
Symbols are things that have an inherant meaning beyond what they simply look like. We use symbols so much in our day to day life that we rarely question what they mean. We all know a red light means “stop” and a green light means “go.” We all also know that red when on a tap means “hot” while blue means “cold.” We don’t have to stop and think “oh, I see a red light, is that telling me to stop, or that it’s hot?” We not only understand the meaning of the symbol, but also how that meaning changes in a different context. So rest assured we can all interpret symbols with relative ease when when know how. These kind of symbols will come up frequently in our dreams. We just need to take the time to recognise them, and look at the meaning they are conveying, not simply watch the literal story of our dream playing out.
Metaphors are also not so esoteric and mysterious as they might at first seem. A metaphor is when we
Our dreams are like poems our subconscious mind creates
say one thing is something else, to give it extra meaning and actually show what they have in common. This is at the heart of poetry , but we don’t need an advanced degree in literature to understand the poetry of our own dreams. One of the easiest ways to understand metaphors is as a “figure of speech.” When we uses phrases such as “he blew me away,” “this where the rubber hits the road,” “get into hot water” and so on, we are using metaphors. We know we don’t literally mean anyone jumped into a pot of boiling water, or even a warm bath for that matter, but we do understand what is meant by the phrase. Our dreams work in similar ways. We can also scan our favourite songs for the use of metaphors that our dreams may use to communicate with us. Look for examples like “Love is a battlefield,” “You are my sunshine” and so on.
Another way dreams can convey meaning to us is through similes. Similes are quite easy to understand if
Are you dreaming of being wily, or sexy?
we just take a moment to consider them, as again they are ways of communicating we use every day in waking life. To use a simile is simply to compare to things by saying how they are alike. Again, this is a device used commonly in poetry, figures of speech and songs. Some of these similes become so common they are like cliches or stereotypes, but this can be really quite helpful when our dreams try to convey a message where the meaning might otherwise be a little ambiguous or misleading. When you dream of a praticular object or thing, look for representations where you would use the word “like” or “as” in a sentence. Consider comparisons such as “cunning as a fox,” “quiet as a mouse,”swim like a fish,” and “regular as clockwork,” “like watching paint dry” and “love is like a red, red rose.” (Of course, a “fox” to you might instead be a metaphor for someone who is sexy, so remember only you know which meaning to apply in your own dreams!) If you are trying to describe something that you aren’t sure someone else will understand, you may find yourself saying “its like I’m…(insert appropriate simile.) Your dreams work in much the same way. Keep an eye out (note the metaphor!) for when you do this in conversation. “It’s like I’m stuck on a roundabout and can’t get off.” Or “it’s like my hands are tied.” Or “it’s like when she walks into a room I just light up.”
Where we use any of this kind of language when awake, our dreams are likely to play it back to us in pictures. The trick is just for us to recognise when we see it, instead of the usual waking way of hearing it. Symbols, metaphors and similes ask us to look beyond the obvious, and see the meaning in the image.
Our dreams are as unique as we are
This is just a gentle reminder that despite all the posts I put up here that indicate what certain symbols and themes may mean in dreams, that I still hold dearly to my belief that only you can really understand your own dreams. This blog was never meant to be a sort of “dream dictionary”, nor a substitute for your own thinking and reflecting. These entries are to help you develop the skills to apply your own dream analysis, and to help provide some guidance and suggestions. While we may have common reactions to common symbols, this is because we share a common culture and language, and even beyond that, all human beings share universal feelings such as love and grief, as well as common inescapable human experiences such as birth from a mother, the need to eat and defecate, breathe, bathe, move, sleep and dream. But beyond this, we are all special and unique. We each have our own unique life experiences, our own personal take on things, and our minds’ form our own unique relationships between things. Not one of us dreams exactly the same as anyone else. So if you come here, or to any site, book or teacher to understand what your dreams may be, that is only the first step in the equation.
To really understand your dreams, you must ask yourself “what does this mean to me?“ You can start by working with your dreams, or you can start by working with your waking self. There are as many different methods to do this as there are people on the planet, but some suggestions so as to get started might be:
- Look at the symbols in your dream. Say it’s a certain animal, like maybe a crocodile. Ask your self, “what do I think and feel about crocodiles?” Your answer might be, “they are primitive, powerful, scary, cold blooded.” (Of course, if you were Steve Irwin, your answer would be very different! But that’s just the point.) Then look for where in your life the words “primitive, powerful, scary and cold blooded” might apply. What first springs to mind? An old fashioned boss who shows no feelings? The way you have been behaving with your partner? If you look for the descriptive words, rather than “how is my life like a crocodile” you might have an easier start.
- Look at the actions or behaviours in your dream, and again use words to describe the action. Is it swimming freely? Is it creeping up on something? Then you can apply this to the first question. “Where in my life is something primitve, powerful, scary and cold blooded creeping up?” As you apply this to different areas of the dream, gradually you can build up a picture of what this dream means to you uniquely.
Chances are dreaming of a crocodile would mean quite a different thing to Steve Irwin than it would to most of the rest of us!
Without a bit of self knowledge though, the link between the dream and “where this may be relevant in my life” can seem a bit tricky. This is why instead of going straight to dream interpretation, it can be helpful to reflect a little on what’s going on in your life first. The following suggestions can be done either before or after attempting to understand a dream, there is no right or wrong way to approach this, it’s simply a matter of finding what works best to help you get more insight into your own life.
- Try thinking about all the emotions you have felt in the day. How did you feel when you first woke up? When did that mood change? Remembering how our moods can change through-out the day can helps us make sense of a dream symbol that is trying to tell us about a particular emotion. Maybe you were quite happy until a colleague made a sarcastic remark about your shoes, which hurt your feelings but you didn’t want to show it, so you made a nasty remark back. You may recognise that you behaved in an unsophisticated, insensitive way. You might even describe the behaviour as “primitive, powerful, scary and cold blooded.” Are you starting to get the picture?
- Take time to think about what’s really going on with you. Is something bothering you deep down? Or are you really content, but maybe could take a minute to appreciate how happy you really are. Think about what you really want from life, how what you are doing will help or hinder you in achieving that, and what you have to be grateful for. Our fears and hopes are often at the root of many of our dreams. It is not by accident that we use the same word for what happens while we sleep, as we do for our goals and hopes in life.
Understanding our dreams and understanding our waking selves are inextricably linked
With a little effort, these processes of understanding our selves better and understanding our dreams better will become interwoven and inseparable. It is like a loop, each one feeds the other. But more than that, it can move our hopes and dreams out of our minds and into the real world. Dreams can shine the light on who we are and where we are going, and if we act on their advice, can change our lives for the better – waking or sleeping.
Have you had to learn a humbling lesson? You may have had a visit from the Trickster!
Now it is a good thing, I think, to be dedicated to one’s dream work. Focus, persistence and rigour are all qualities that can help reveal the hidden meanings of our dreams, achieve greater understanding of ourselves and help with our own personal growth and development. All sounds very grown up and serious, right?
The thing is, our dreaming mind does not always feel that way about itself. In fact, most of the time, barring times of great stress or anxiety (and sometimes even then!) our dreaming mind likes to have a bit of a laugh. Our subconscious mind, as we have discussed earlier, is where much our creativity, problem solving and lateral associations come from. That is to say, our dreaming mind is playful. This may come as no surprise to those who frequently dream of bizarre and wondrous things like elephants on roller-skates and monkeys in the bathroom!
But it is worth remembering this when we can sometimes get a bit rational and over analytical in our dream processing. Personally, I think this is one of the areas where Freud started to get it a bit wrong. Not everything in our subconscious is a deep dark secret full of shame and fear. In fact, most of the time it may be a secret because we haven’t thought about it or understood it yet, and it may be dark, but that’s because we sleep in the dark. Or to get a bit more metaphorical – our subconscious is dark and we just haven’t woken up and thought about it in the light (consciousness) yet.
This playful and creative streak is why our dreams can sometimes seem so random and bizarre, but look a little closer and you may start to get the joke. Look for puns, common phrases being acted out or word associations. You may be surprised how funny you can be! Examples might include things like you driving a car then pulling over with a flat tyre and deciding to have a rest – this might indicate in life you are feeling too “tired” to keep going. If you dream of being hit by something, it might be the solution to a problem you are looking for, being revealed in a “then it hit me” kind of way. You get the picture.
But there is an even more fun and interesting aspect to our dreams if we are lucky, and if we pay attention, we may be visited by the “Trickster.” The Trickster is very important character to Shamans and indigenous people around the world who seem him as sometimes helpful spirit, and if you prefer a more Western approach, he is a Jungian archetype who communicates to us through our subconscious. Whatever your approach, the Trickster lends a new element of fun and challenge to our dreams. He will often try to help us, but his advice will never be straight forward, and may take the form of a riddle. He may sometimes mislead us, giving us false clues, or leading us somewhere we didn’t intend to go, but if we pay attention and keep an open mind, there can be great lessons to learn from these adventures. The Trickster will often teach us things we didn’t think we wanted to know! And he will usually have a lot of fun with it as well, laughing all the way.
How do you know if you have dreamed of a Trickster? The easiest way to know is when you wake and feel a little foolish, that something in your dream seemed so clear or obvious, now seems exactly the opposite. You may feel a little humbled, like you’ve been “had”, and yet some how didn’t come out of it as empty handed as you thought. There is usually a hidden gift or piece of advice that you didn’t notice at the time with a Trickster. A Trickster may often appear as a Crow, a Coyote, a Fox or a Monkey – animals who are clever, wily, wise and at times cheeky. But the Trickster is also prone to disguising himself, so if you dream of something that suddenly changes shape or form, you may have encountered a Trickster – especially if it then disappears laughing! Any animal that talks to you in your dreams, might be a Trickster.
The Trickster likes to remind us not to take our selves too seriously, he loves nothing better than humbling the proud, revealing the show-off and out-witting the superior. But he does not do so maliciously. He may rob us of our jewels, but that is only to remind us there are more valuable things in life. He may send us down the wrong track, but that is only because we could find something more important there. The Trickster challenges us to improve our own wit, daring and curiosity. He encourages in us humility and humour. And aren’t these wonderful gifts, after all?
It is quite distressing that often when we have a nightmare, it doesn’t occur in isolation, but recurrs with a frightening persistence. As if having one nightmare wasn’t bad enough, but to have them frequently! It just doesn’t seem fair! But it makes more sense when you realise why you are having these bad dreams. When something is not quite right in our life, or in our mind, there is some level of us that wants to put things right. This is our subconscious. While consciously we may not want to admit that something is not right, because that would mean facing up to it, and that might mean getting hurt, humiliated, risking shame or a sense of failure, our subconscious refuses to let us forget, and will keep trying to send a message to our conscious mind to do something about it. It will keep shouting and shouting until it is heard. One of the strongest ways for our subconscious to make us pay attention to it is by giving us nightmares. These images are so intense and so startling that we can’t ignore them.
The sad thing for us Westerners is that we live in a society that does not in general place a great deal of value on dreaming, so we are not encouraged to value them, to discuss them, or to learn how to work with them. When this means we miss out on the opportunities for growth and delight dreams can give us, this is a shame, but when it means we can’t manage our own nightmares, it is a far more serious affair. As we grow into adults our dreams should mature with us. As we become more skillful, balanced and wise with years, so too should we dream in a more balanced and rewarding manner. But studies show that in Western society the dreams of anxious adults do not differ much from those of children. We still feel anxious and afraid, we are still pursued – maybe not by a big hairy monster as child would be, but perhaps by a vicious knife wielding bandit, and we all still dream of being attacked by wild animals. As adults we differ hardly at all from children in our response to these threats as well – we flee, we run, we get stuck, we are eaten, hurt, trapped. In short, we remain victims.
To stop having adult nightmares or bad dreams, we need to face up to what we are afraid of, we need to honestly admit to ourselves what is not working in our lives, we need to really grow up. It is hard. Our society does not encourage talking about our fears, it judges perceptions of failure, and we don’t teach our children the skills they need to work on their own inner selves so they can mature into self-aware adults. So the only thing we can do is start learning now.
We can learn how to overcome our fears, even in our dreams
Facing a scary threat in a dream can be a very difficult thing to initiate. This is especially so if we aren’t practised and confident with working with our dreams! That is why confronting the thing in waking life is often an easier way to start. Try imagining your dream when you are awake. Sit somewhere comfortable where you won’t be disturbed, and play the dream through your mind like a movie. Remember, you are the director of your dream, so tell yourself you don’t like the ending, and imagine a new one for yourself.
Another useful method you can adopt while awake that may have a carry over effect to helping deal with nightmares, is to actually do in waking life what you can’t do, or what you need to do, in your bad dreams. This often means learning a new skill, which can be confronting, difficult, frustrating or embarrassing at first, but the commensurate feelings of ease, satisfaction, confidence and pride that you should feel upon mastery will make it well worth the effort. Nightmares of sharks? Try swimming with them in a safe tank. Have a nightmare you are lost and can’t read a map? Try learning orienteering, how to read a map and use a compass. Have a nightmare someone is hurt and bleeding, and you can’t help? Go on a First Aid course and learn how to treat wounds. It may sound simple, and even silly, but actions such as these send a clear message back to our subconscious – it lets our deeper self know we have heard the message, we are listening and we care enough to do something about it. That is a very strong message indeed. It can even be enough to stop our subconscious from shouting so insistently at us, and go back to a normal tone, breaking the repetitive cycle of bad dreams. At the very least, actions such as these give our mind an alternative to work with. Instead of thinking of sharks as something that always eat us, when you have been with them safely your mind now has a clear, conscious (and no doubt very emotion charged!) image of you being with sharks and them not eating you. In fact the more emotion charged these images are, the deeper they are likely to penetrate our mind, and the stronger and more effective they can be in helping us imagine a new and happier outcome. The greater the fear, the greater our exultation can be on overcoming it.
Tomorrow, looking at a special kind of nightmare…
Are you prepared to set yourself free?
Dreams of being caged may sound quite simple to understand, but in reality they often prove more of a challenge than you might initially think. For while we can easily understand that a cage represents some kind of restriction or loss of freedom, knowing why the cage exists, and how to be released from it can be a lot more challenging indeed.
When you dream of a cage, it can help to start by looking at who or what is in the cage. By using some of the other posts I have written you may begin to realise which aspect of yourself is caged. Is it a wild animal? Maybe your inner wild nature is being restricted. Is it another person? Maybe an aspect of your personality is being shut-off or caged.
Dreams of being caged can also represent a difficulty your are facing in your waking life, where you feel circumstances do not allow you to be your real self, or where you are compromised in some way. Take a look and see how much of this is really out of your control, and how much you are complicit in what is going on. Are you just avoiding the confrontation or feel you lack the bravery it would take to change things? For while cages can seem like a prison to some, to others they can be a safe haven. Does the bird in the cage want to live there safe from the cat’s evil claws, or would it rather fly away to freedom? If you are the bird, what is it you really want? For others, the cage keeps the wild things safely hidden away. But remember, these are all simply aspects of yourself. If you are a lion, do you want to roar proudly, or cower in the dark in shame and humiliation?
The reason dreams of being caged can be so difficult to resolve is because often it is only our-selves who have constructed the cage in the first place. Dreams of cages invite us to consider:
- Where have we placed restrictions upon our-self?
- What self-limiting beliefs or behaviours are we exhibiting?
- What part of ourselves do we need to “set free”
Are you caged by your own thoughts?
As soon as we begin to realise that we can cage our-selves with our own thoughts, dreams of being caged may become less distressing of frustrating. Often, we hold the key to our own release. Address these areas of your life, and see how your dreams may change to ones with symbols of freedom, such as running happilly, dancing, flying or floating.
It may also be helpful to look at my posts on”Wild Animals” “Other People” and “Obstacles.”
Take a second look - dream creatures may not be what they first seem!
So you’ve had a dream about a wild animal, but you want to understand – why this one in particular? To understand the message of an animal, try and understand its characteristics and what it may mean to you in your culture. Does it symbolise freedom, strength, industriousness etc?
But also look for what you may be missing. Remember, dreams are often trying to reveal things about ourselves we don’t like or don’t want to see, but they also offer us a solution, a way to transform these things into more desirable attributes.
Creatures in your dream may not always be what they seem. Take the vulture, which you might describe as a harbinger of death, as unattractive and feeding off the fallen. But Cherokee Indians call the vulture “peace eagle” because it does not kill, and to see the magnificence of one in flight is really a peaceful and uplifting experience. So do not be too quick to judge the animals in your dreams. They are a part of yourself, and can have good and bad qualities. How you choose to interpret and relate to the good or the bad is of course entirely up to you.
For interesting information on “Peace Eagles” and animals as totems, check out this:
http://dovelove.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/peace-eagle-and-healing-our-vision/#comment-782
For more information on animals as cultural symbols, check out this link:
http://www.thedreamwell.com/symbolsexample.html
What is your own wild nature trying to reveal to you?
A lot of people have been asking me about animal dreams, so while to do this topic justice would cover too much territory for a humble blog post, I thought I could at least give you some starting thoughts.
Wild animals in dreams can often represent a “wilder” part of our own nature, those aspects our personality that we like to keep caged, or tame, or domesticated. Our wild natures can often scare us because they can seem unpredictable, or not conforming to the rules we put around us to keep us safe. Wildness breaks the rules, wildness takes risks, wildness can be dangerous, but wildness is also free, brave and creative.
If you have a wild animal dream that scares or confronts you, look for where in your life you afraid of taking a risk, or where you are not allowing yourself to feel or experience something fully because you might be afraid of what will be released if you do.
If you have an exciting or exhilarating wild animal dream, think of what parts of yourself you are now getting in touch with that you might have previously ignored or resisted. Maybe you have started to be more creative, freed yourself from a restrictive job or relationship, or maybe something more subtle, like just learning to express yourself more authentically.
When you dream of wild animals, look for where changes are happening in your life, and whether you are resisting them or embracing them. Wild animal dreams invite you to trust your instincts, to discover your own independent source of power, and to understand the challenges and rewards of freedom.
(For anyone interested in reading more about our inner wild nature, I recommend “Women who Run with the Wolves”, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian analyst.
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Wolves-Clarissa-Pinkola-Estes/dp/0345409876)
