Elephant Dream

[misty82]

Hi All So I had this odd nice dream the other night. I was sitting in the lounge of the house and I knew that an elephant was going to approach me from behind and I had a worried/scared feeling of its coming and was saying to myself that I am protected and no need to worry etc..When the elephant did come from behind it just placed its trunk on my shoulder. Any ideas on what this could mean if anything. I have vivid dreams from time to time and some are random dumb ones as we all do, but this one rather stood out.

[JoannaB]

Misty, Could you tell us a bit about what is on your mind, what is going on in your waking life? Dream interpretation without context is very unlikely to produce useful results because similar dreams can mean very different things for different people. Also what do you think of when you think of elephants in waking life? See different people have different associations when they think of elephants, and thus an elephant could mean something completely different to me than to you.

[misty82]

Hi Joanna I understand what you are mean. In my waking like there is a situation. There is something I want to say to someone and I am a bit freaked out about it and so not doing anything about it, so not sure if my dream is in relation to this? To me elephants are sweet, kind natured and connected with humans, they are my favourite animals too.

[JoannaB]

Ah, see this dream could be related to that. For example maybe your mind is telling you that you are worried too much about your encounter, that you have blown it out of proportion, that you are expecting a bad outcome, but perhaps expecting a good outcome when you say this something to this other person is something you may want to consider. Worrying about a creature that is usually perceived as kind but is really big and could be perceived as dangerous if one looked at it a different way, ... This reminds about a time when we were going to visit my father, and I was very nervous about how my father would be with my kids because he was too strict with me when I was a kid, and now we had not seen eachother for a while, and I did not know what to expect, but I kind of chose to focus on my more negative memories, and that made me worry about meeting my dad. Then when we met, my dad was wonderful with the kids, and I realized I had focused so much on negative memories and worrying, when I should have focused on the positive memories, and looking forward to meeting my dad. Sometimes we choose the memories and thoughts that guide our expectations unwisely, and then we worry more about what is too come than is good for us. I think your dream may be telling you to worry less about what you want to say to someone. Think about the positives, and think about the possibility that this someone may be kind.

[misty82]

Thanks Joanna. Just not sure if i can trust my dreams. id like another dream to confirm. no other dream since then.

[JoannaB]

Oh, I would definitely not trust dreams over waking life! I would analyze my dreams using my waking mind, and ponder it more while awake, but if my waking life had concerns which overwrote advice from my subconscious, I would not go with the dream but with my waking mind's best sense of it. Please keep in mind that while we are asleep and dreaming, we may not have access to all our reason, all our memories, all our inhibitions, all our moral values. Some of those important parts of our mind are resting and unavailable. Dreams can provide interesting new insights sometimes and creative ideas, but at other tes they can also be very wrong. It is the job of our waking mind to do a quality check to evaluate ideas, and not to follow ideas that are not right upon waking reflection. And whether you have another dream or not should not change that, even if you dreamed every night about the same decision, if upon waking it still did not seem like the right decision, I would suggest not doing it. Sorry if my initial interpretation made it sound like I was saying to follow your dream's advice. I was just trying to figure out what the dream meant, but whether you take it or leave it in waking life that is entirely up to your waking mind to decide, in my opinion.

[misty82]

Hey Joanna No, not at all, your interpretation was not like that to me at all . I guess for me it resonated well with me that's why. Part of me does want to say something but another part doesn't due to the possible outcome - I infact put a post on this particular situation a little while ago LOL in relation to another dream.