Bears

Dream By Mags – I had a dream in which a group of us (it looked like my parents, me, my dog, and some friends) were in a house and a bear entered. Despite all of our efforts, the bear could not be locked up. Every time we got the bear outside, it kept coming back in. Every time we tried to lock it in a cellar or a room, it would get out.

We were trapped with the bear either way as it kept following us. The bear did not hurt us, and it eventually left us. It was a very unusual dream and I would be interested in knowing if it has something to do with a relationship I am in.


Reply By Dream Patient – Hi, Your ego and the parental influences and some other known and friendly elements in you are living together in your awareness when the bear enters your awareness. It is disruptive.

To find out what the bear might mean ask yourself what images and feelings “bear” brings to your mind. How do you feel with the picture of that “bear” in front of you? Is it female, motherly or male? What would it feel like to be that “bear”? Have you ever seen a real bear in your life? What, where, how did you feel then, did anything special happen? What words would sum up “bear” for you and then put those words into your dream to replace “bear”. Is there a phrase that comes to your mind when you associate with (play with) the word/image “bear”?

Do the same with your “dog”. Is he male, female? How do you feel about him/her? etc.Its interesting that there are two animals present in your dream. One domestic smaller one trying to kick the other wild (?) huge one out. Are they both female or opposite or both male? Animals are often instinctual elements and guides/helpers in us. But which is for you to feel. There is a story happeneing here!

There are general collective symbolic meanings for these two animals, but it is just as important, if not more so, to find your feelings which created these, your very own, images. It is your dream and it is your own psyche and noone else’s which has chosen the images for your own life’s reasons.

If the dream could be reduced to a logical message which one could say……then why on earth go to such extremes to hide the message? Why not just dream the message? The dream is its own thing. It is its own truth. Rather like a play on a stage written by an author inside us.

The author writes a play because he can’t say what he wants to say any other way at all. The play’s integrity and meaning is there in the play even without an understanding audience (interpretation). But, if part of our nature is to get into relationship to our inner world (and perhaps to the Author), then receiving the play/dream and learning how to relate to our own symbols is at the very least a healthy exercise.

One of the very practical rewards to knowing my own dream life is that I can come to know when a problem in life (always leaving relationships eg) is my own or when it is someone else’s problem. We project out onto the world what we do not know in us. The dream can show us what truly does belong to us. Then we can’t blame the stranger, the other, for our problems.

All of these different parts of you try to get rid of all that your “bear” means inside you. Also your dog? You tried to push it out of your conscious mind into the outside world. You tried to push it down into your own unconscious in underground parts of you that you are aware of but that are there to store useless or old stuff you don’t want (basement).

You come to accept in the dream that the bear’s presence (those elements in you) are inevitable. You can’t avoid them. They aren’t destructive. As soon as the situation is accepted, you find that you feel better, or safer now with those bear elements.

When your ego accepts this, the bear leaves the dream and your inner space. What this means related to your outward life I can’t possibly know. But something “bearlike” has taken up residence in you that you feel as though came from the outside. Something you feared at first and now know that it will not hurt you.

Dream Patient