Dream like I've never had before. Tigers.

**Sugawolf** · 02-08-2015 02:42 AM

Hello guys. I'm a student, 19, male, about to go to college this year. I've never had a dream that I so strongly felt I need to decipher as this one. I was looking for interpretations and symbols around the internet but nothing seems really to pertain to my dream. I'm new to dream interpretations although I have a really good dream memory and recently started to keep a dream journal. I hope you can help me to get all the pieces together, I'd be thankful. Sorry if the story is a bit chaotic, English is not my first language, but please, don't let that discourage you.

This is today's dream. My dream was divided into 2 parts.

1.

Me and my mom were in the house I've never been to before. Then all of a sudden 3 masked man jumped out of the other room and tried to kill us, but before they did jump out, I already knew that this is going to happen. The time slowed down and I could see in a slow motion how one of them is grabbing a gun. (I don't play too many games though) I don't know how, but I already had a gun in my hand so without any problems I killed all 3 of them. Now the strangest part is, one of the assassins was my dad.
But then, after I killed them, I decided to go into the other room and search the room for some valuable stuff I could take. All I found was some change and my fathers wallet, which inside had only 10$. Then, me and my mom were in the room which resembled a kitchen, and the sun during the sunset was really glaring through the window. I felt really bad about killing those people but my mom was really chilled out, like nothing happened. In reality, she is usually one of the most kind and goodhearted people I know, in the dream a complete opposite, she didn't feel nothing about me killing them, I could say she was cold, cocky and arrogant even. So I felt really bad and as a spiritual person I am, I said that God will not be happy because I have insulted Him.
Then my mom said in the sarcastic tone "God? Does He even watch our neighbors as well?" I don't know what that was supposed to mean, but I replied "Don't provoke Him, you wouldn't want to feel His power." After that I had a little sleep paralysis and woke up and then went back to sleep.

(My parents are divorced but they are on good, friendly terms and I'm on good terms with my dad too and we don't have any problems. I don't wish for my parents to get back together, because they're grown and I'm grown so everybody has their freedom of choice. They have divorced when I was already a grown up and at first I felt sad but then I thought that it all worked out for the good anyway so I don't hold no grudge against any of them. I should note that me and my mom didn't really get along for the last couple of weeks, lately she annoys the **** out of me, but nothing to serious though, just regular arguments. As for 10$, I called my dad yesterday to give me some money and today he gave it to me. But I don't like asking him for money though, I'd rather earn it. As for the God part, I won't go into details but I wasn't happy with my spiritual life for the past couple of years. I was spiritual but on the wrong path and lately I began to change my ways but I still have a long way to go. Also my belief in God doesn't include going to church or saying catholic prayers every morning. Just belief in the Creator, an intelligent Superior Being.)

2.
I was supposed to start my 1st day at college. Funny enough, my friend from Junior High lived with me and we were in the same class and we were supposed to catch a bus together. It's funny because he was just one of my many friends, I never considered him to be someone special in my life, we barely shared the same interests so in real life we wouldn't go to the same college anyway plus I haven't seen him for like 3 years. I don't miss him and I never thought about him for the past 3 years. But in my dream we were really good friends. I don't know which city we were in but it surely wasn't my city. The place where we took a bus kind of reminded me of Trafalgar Square in London. London is a city were I used to go every summer when I was in junior high and some of my best childhood memories come from that. So we arrived at the college and all the people in there were people I already knew from my previous schools, like this two girls who were in my class at the Elementary. No sexual feelings there, I barely spoke to one of them and the other was just one of my friends, but in the dream we spent a good time talking with each other. In class I also met this girl who was in love with me in Elementary and through Junior High but I never wanted to be with her although I found her really attractive. Instead, I was chasing other girls and relationships didn't work out. And when I broke up with the other girls, she was already taken.
And after that I really wished I tried to be with that girl, because she kind of understood me and we had a lot in common and I wondered what it could be like, but I haven't thought about her at all for at least a year or two.
So we had English class. And I was really killing it in class, I knew the answers, the teacher liked me, I was lively, also I made people laugh and all that. But then funny thing, behind me there were sitting guys older than me who I also remember from Junior High. Now in real life they would never go to collage because they were simple hoodlums but we usually got along, sometimes we grabbed a beer or play soccer and we never was on any wrong terms. But in a dream I felt that they were really jealous of me, because
all the attention was focused on me. And after the class I couldn't find my backpack. So I assumed that one of them took it and I got up and I started yelling and cursing,
like "where the **** is my backpack?". They didn't say nothing, some of them smiled and one of them gave me this friendly look full of understanding (if it makes any sense).
Then I turned around and my backpack was right in front of me and the one guy started to laugh. I still don't know if one of them took it and then put it back or what. Okay, we moved on to the next class and the teacher gave us an assignment but before we began, I had to take a pee. The toilet was really dirty and smelled bad. Of course, the people I met there were also the guys I went to school with. One of them was one of my closest friends from Elementary and the other one was a guy younger than me, who used to go to Junior High with me. They were both named Jacob, just thought it was a funny coincidence. Now all the cabins were taken and I was left with the one that had no toilet bowl in it! So once again I got mad and I wanted the young guy to give me his cabin and when he refused, I spat on the floor. This is strange, because this guy was one of the most kind and well behaved kids in the whole school and I'd never treat him like that. Now I have to say that in real life, I have some anger issues and I easily get provoked but it isn't that bad, to the point that I just curse somebody off a toilet cabin. I'm working on my anger and I feel ashamed when I let it take over me. Finally, one of the guys gave me his cabin and I walked in there but I don't remember taking a leak at all. Next thing I know, I was already in class doing the previously given assignment. The assignment was something about XIX century nobility in my country and something about them witnessing the mass murder of peasantry and not doing anything about it. Now I don't now if it really happened but might have, because in my country the nobility and peasantry had a long history of feuding against each other. I asked the teacher to give me a pen because I didn't have one. I started writing but everything I wrote was all smudgy and blurry. Like you know, sometimes you write something and then you wipe it with your hand and it becomes all smudgy. So I was crumpling page after page and throwing them away. Finally I was fed up so I asked the teacher to give me another pen because I couldn't write anything with this one. So she gave me a red marker and it surprised me. Then I wrote at the center of the page in big, red letters the word "NOBILITY" and wanted to continue doing the assignment but suddenly I was in a different place. Now to this point, most of the dream I could fairly understand and interpret, but since this moment I don't know what to make of it, this is the most important part. It was me and the friend that I talked about at the beginning, the one who lived with me and we took a bus to school together. We were in something like a police academy (I never wanted to be a police officer) and we were in a training of some sort. The guy gave us pistols and we were supposed to go outside and train to be cops. When I was outside I recognized that I'm in my city and we were walking in this park were people often meet, it has this nice water pond and a little wooden bridge that leads to the other side of the pond. So when we got close to the pond, two tigers jumped out from the bushes. I got just a little anxious and tried to shoot at them but I missed. All I know, is I wasn't try to run away from them but really had to get to the other side of the pond. But one of the tigers was on the bridge and blocked the way so I jumped into the pond and tried to swim to the other side. At that time, my friend ran away in the opposite direction, where we came from and I think the other tiger ran after him. Now as I was swimming to the other side, the other tiger was waiting for me at the shore. For the most of the time it looked like an usual tiger, but then it appeared white or had a really bright fur. But it walked over very calmly and peacefully and I wasn't afraid. Then the tiger said to me, "I just want to help you". Then this thing happened, like in the movies, the screen went black and when it came up again, it was like "10 years later". And 10 years later I was still with the tiger at the same place, and I was living with it and it was taking care of me. I didn't know it for sure but I had this feeling that my family thought I was dead. It was night and near the pond, there was an old man with a white beard, looking like a bum. Kind of looked like he was fishing but I can't say that for sure. He was smoking a cigarette and a weed joint at the same time. I asked him to share it with me and he gave me both, so I had a cigarette in one hand and a joint in the other. Then the tiger showed up and it was kind of mad at the man for sharing it with me, but at that time I was already walking away from the pond in the direction where my neighborhood and my home is. I had this feeling that the tiger might have killed that guy. In reality, there is like 1km between the park where all this takes place and my house, so I don't know why I was living there for 10 years and nobody knew where I was at. As I was getting close to my home street, I've noticed that basically the whole town from the pond to my neighborhood were encircled by this high technology fence so nobody could exit. At every few meters, the fence had this red diode-like lights, kind of looking like airport lights at the runway. I was still smoking a cigarette and a joint alternately, cigarette finished first so I threw it away and still had a joint. Without any problems, just casually walked out the fence and nothing stopped me, and I was really close to my street. Then I heard this omnipresent tiger's voice in the sky, I couldn't see its' face but the voice was really strong. It said "because you've decided to leave, now there shall be rain!". The voice wasn't mad, angry or scary, it had almost no emotion, but was intimidating. Immediately the rain started pouring from the sky, but it wasn't the big, strong, stormy rain, it was more of a really pleasant, light rain that I could barely feel. Few seconds later, I met two guys who used to be my best friends and we went through a lot and we live on the same street, but we grew apart and don't hang out as much, although with one of them
I'm still on good terms, but the other one annoys me. They were both almost bald, but had a little hair growing back and my first thought was "did they just got out of prison or what?". Only thing they said to me was that I should take better care of my mom, then as we walked down the street I woke up.

(I feel real good about going to college and I'm looking forward to it. As for London, I think I was a better person at that time and I look fondly at those times and I'd wish to be like that again. And I don't mean being a 15 year old boy again, it's just I was living in a real beautiful state of mind back then and now my soul feels kind of dirty. As for the girl that wanted to be with me, I think it has a connection with the time when I was 15, because I was feeling so good then and she reminds me of those moments. I smoke weed and cigarettes, but cigarettes only occasionally. I haven't smoke weed for a couple of weeks too. The two friends at the end of my dream are reoccurring in my dreams quite frequently, usually we play soccer or smoke weed and hang out, kind of reminiscing what we used to do, but sometimes with this one guy that annoys me, I get into a fight, curse him and once I've even killed him. We aren't enemies in real life but he became an irritating little **** (not saying I'm perfect). And we didn't have a particular fight that lead to the end of our friendship, he just started doing things that I didn't agree with so I stopped hanging out. And for the mom part, in the waking life I know I give her a hard time sometimes and I often think that I should be better to her, but I'm very far from a bad son. I'm good in school and don't get into trouble.
Sometimes I'm just a drama queen and when something gets me mad, I can say some hurtful things or make a scene (which I feel sorry for later), but I'm usually positive and try to share love with my family. I don't really know what to make of that tiger thing though, I read that it mostly symbolizes sexual urges or anxieties but I don't know how to put it into context. The tiger in my dream seemed like he really cared about me and was good and friendly, even when at first I tried to kill him. No need to mention, that in Europe there aren't any tigers, especially in city parks. Also I wonder what that red marker means.

I don't really have any fears in my life as of now, except one, which is kind of unjustified and also hard to talk about. I don't want to give you a wrong impression about myself but lately I've been hearing that a few people I may know have been caught by the law enforcement while having some drugs on them. I don't do drugs but I do smoke weed and before I went to sleep that night and had that dream, I was thinking if the same thing would happen to me and if I should be more careful, even though there is rather no possible way for them to know about me, but still the politics are very strict in my country, it's not like Colorado. I'm not paranoid, I'm just thinking ahead. Is there any warning in my dream? )

Oh, and on another note, 2 nights in the row I had the dream about teeth falling out. Yesterday it was my 2 front teeth and my tongue that fell out, today I just took out my whole upper row of teeth. My theory about that is I really feel sorry for many bad things I've said to people and I want to change. And in my waking life I am really striving to control my anger because I'm tired of it. Maybe that could help with an interpretation. If you have any questions regarding the dream, I'll be happy to answer.

Help me out, please. Cheers.

**Firewater** · 02-09-2015 10:35 AM

It seems you have a fairly high level of self awareness for you age & I think are looking at the right kind of things to draw meaning from the dream.

There seems to be a fair bit of imagery in the dream contrasting how you are now (at 19) with how things were when you were 15. Could it be that you have lost touch to an extent with something of who you were back then & that if you can re-connect with that you might find more fulfilment in life now & going forward.

When we are in our early teens we have ideals & dreams as we are just coming out from our parents shadow. I imagine a divorce, whilst it is amicable, still has an impact in an impressionable time like the teens where a person is just testing & developing their independence & confidence in thinking for themselves. I think the parents relationship is like a solid springboard that helps this launch.

In that part of the dream that went forward 10 years & you were still in the same place, it might suggest that in some area there has not been the progress that would normally occur.

Something that may help is spending a bit of time imagining yourself back as you were when you were 15 or around that time- what did you like; how did you spend your time; what were your dreams? Maybe writing some of this down may also be helpful. You might find some emotions welling up as you do this & there may be some healing in it.

**Athanor** · 02-10-2015 12:22 AM

Just to start off by saying that the presence of the talking tiger shows that your dream can be called “archetypal” and is a very important one.

Such dreams appear when the person is at a very important transition point in their lives such as you are because you’ll be starting college soon and will be building the foundation of your future career and meeting new life-long friends etc.

This type of dream comes from the deepest layers of the person’s psyche and provides a kind of snapshot of some very basic issues and potentials etc. which it’s best the dreamer be aware of so that they can move ahead in a good way.

It’s also great that you’ve provided a lot of background information which also helps to interpret a dream more accurately.

In the first part of the dream, you and your mom are attacked by three masked men in a house you don’t know, suggesting that you’re in a part of your “psychological space” in which various motives, beliefs and feelings etc. are active but you aren’t mostly aware of the dynamics involved.

Usually in dreams, being attacked or chased by violent people etc. means that the dreamer is trying to shut out certain painful issues which it would generally be better to face, often with a little help from a trusted friend or counsellor etc.

It looks like unfortunately you might too often be very effective in “killing” (i.e. making totally unconscious) various realizations etc. about certain issues (you shoot and kill all three thugs without any problem).

The fact that one of the assassins was your father maybe could point to the idea that some extremely painful feelings surrounding your parents’ divorce were understandably just sort of “put aside” too soon before they were fully worked through because, though sad for a short time, you apparently soon just thought how everything had worked out and all was OK.

This might tie in with your anger issues and if so, shows up in the dream at various times (e.g. yelling and cursing when backpack disappears, spat on the cabin floor).

After the killings, you look for valuables but don’t find anything worthwhile.

This could possibly mean that if certain painful issues aren’t faced, you could tend to often feel “not worth anything” and “showing off” sometimes (do a great job in the English class) won’t really help because you’ll tend to be irritated by various emotions etc. that you can’t control very well (other guys make fun of you regarding the backpack).

Also, in real life, sometimes you’re just a “drama queen” and when something gets you mad, you can say some hurtful things or make a scene, so things don’t go well and you feel even worse.

In the dream, you start feeling sorry for killing the guys but your mother is strangely cold and callous though in outer life, she is one of the “most kind and goodhearted people you know”.

The incident also includes a discussion of God and the need not to make him angry.

Probably, this part of the dream is extra important because it could be dealing with your attitude towards God which in turn might be tending to cause you some inner conflicts.

Just to mention that some following remarks about God are from a psychological point of view. This approach doesn’t exclude, however, that there could be God or other divine figure external to the human psyche.

For example, as mentioned in the description of an online seminar, “The Human Experience of the Divine: CG Jung on Psychology & Spirituality” by Murray Stein:

“Approaching spirituality from a psychological perspective does not contradict traditional religious practices and beliefs. It offers a richer appropriation of religious images and doctrines on a personal level, and for many it provides a way back to religious thought and belief that have lost their meaning in modernity”.

The following might be a little hard to understand at first, but if your mother in the dream is not being shown in a positive way, it could be that you have to reduce your own wish to be only “kind and goodhearted” like she is, and the way that, understandably, you believe God wants people to be.

In this way, you could gradually learn to accept and deal with the other, darker side of human beings including yourself as shows up in the scene dealing with going for a pee.

That’s because excrement and pee usually symbolize, for example, the “disgusting” results of having to “absorb” and “digest” various realities regarding our own lives and those of others.

The “by-products” of having to go through this process include such things as anger, resentment, jealousies and grudges etc. etc. which somehow have to be “gotten rid of” (“eliminated”) in a regular way.

Similarly, giving up pride (e.g. maybe wanting to feel part of the “nobility”), fear and wanting to control others etc. can equally be part of the “elimination” that needs to happen.

If this natural process isn’t working well, then dreams usually symbolize this fact in the form of run-down bathrooms and dirty toilets etc.

The best way to help the process is usually to allow into our minds any unpleasant feelings and thoughts etc. (the “excrement”) so that they can be accepted for what they are, that is, as being part of the gradual movement towards being more complete and mature.

This idea is represented in folk tales as well as in dreams. For example, feces changes to gold in a miraculous way.

Folk tales come from the same deep source in the psyche where your dream came from, so the ideas kind of “cross over” freely and can help us to clarify the meaning of our dreams for instance.

Also, many young children conceive theories about childbirth being related to feces and therefore see their own excrement as proof of their own creative magic.

This represents the chance for “new birth” that can come out of seeing the “disgusting side of things” and learning to accept it reasonably well.

It’s maybe going to get really confusing now because the English poet William Blake’s “The Tyger” involves this theme of the “dark and light” side of human beings and of God, so it might be worth looking at it in connection with the tigers who appear later in your dream:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

This double edged side of God might also be hinted at by your mom’s sarcastic comment in the dream "God? Does He even watch our neighbors as well?”

Maybe this means something like “He made these guys the way they were so he didn’t look after them very well, right? So will he somehow look after our neighbors and us in the same poor way?”

Later in the dream, you go to London (William Blake’s birthplace as well as your summer holiday spot) and are among many people you knew earlier in school.

This probably means that you might have to get to know all over again certain parts of yourself that were “left behind” too soon.

The guys and girls involved could generally symbolize some need to get back to practical, down-to-earth ways of interacting with others in a more values-based and controlled emotional way instead of maybe sometimes shutting out a lot of feelings (training to be a police officer in order to “control” things) just so you won’t ever feel again the hidden pain related to the divorce of your parents for example.

Maybe there was a negative change in your overall attitude that occurred around age 15 or when your parents divorced which you didn’t really notice.

This world of feelings and the instincts shows up when you enter the park and the tigers appear.

Immediately, you want to “kill” them (make what they represent totally unconscious).

This is very understandable because from a psychological point of view, a tiger usually symbolizes dangerous, destructive and deeply negative emotions such as overwhelming rage and violence.

But every symbol has two sides, so in myth and folk tales, there are stories where a child can walk safely among tigers, lions and snakes etc.

This means that in the end, the best way to tame the very strong emotions which the tiger represents is to try to be kind of childlike, spontaneous, creative and playful with them, just like a child is often not afraid of a very large dog etc.

Approaching these emotions in a sort of “innocent” and accepting way can make them less “angry” and “aggressive” in everyday life.

This way of dealing with them is the opposite of trying to totally control and have power over them.

Then instead of anger suddenly bursting out and taking you over as it apparently does sometimes, you would be able to call upon a firm controlled anger in order to assertively protect your interests if they’re in danger of being damaged in some way by others.

This state of affairs overall could be shown in your dream by the fact that instead of facing the tiger of your emotions head on (he’s blocking the bridge that leads to “safety”), you plunge into the water of emotions (the pond) which could theoretically “drown” you.

It’s a very good sign that the dream shows how the tiger just wants to be friendly and protective; that is, your deepest instincts are willing to come to your aid regarding your anger issues and so on which many teens have if you’ll just gradually learn to trust them by letting in your gut reactions, emotions, natural reactions and intuitions etc. in an ongoing way instead of letting them build up and then bursting out unexpectedly.

Ending up with the tiger for ten years could be the dream’s way of showing how it might indeed take a long time to accomplish such a large change in your attitude.

But in the end, it looks like doing so would bring you closer to the chance of then becoming the “real” and unique “you” as probably symbolized by the old man with the white beard who is likely fishing in the pond.

He looks like a bum and is smoking weed and a cigarette.

This echoes the parable of Jesus which contains the line “Did ye never read in the scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner’? This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”

This can be interpreted in a psychological sense to mean that we often look down on and disparage various spontaneous intuitions and feelings etc. which are trying to lead us more closely towards our unique personality, i.e. Jesus.

For example, a spontaneous memory might appear about something we used to do well but gave up.

This memory might be just discarded without even looking at it. Or if it’s thought about at all, various ideas might appear that it would be “too much trouble” to start again etc.

So the old man could symbolize your unique goal as a person but developing this goal could often be “unattractive” because it could go against what you as an ego want to do.

The tiger doesn’t like the man and this could symbolize the possibility in the future of a slight but dangerous resurgence of negative, rejecting emotions towards anything that might “get in the way” of various conscious goals and wishes.

You leave the park and notice the high-technology fence that was meant to keep everybody in, possibly symbolizing how your anger issues etc. could tend to “hem you in” too much of the time and prevent personal growth if not dealt with.

These hot emotional issues might be represented by the red diode lights on the fence.

But you walk past the fence without any problem, probably showing that if you work at getting closer in touch with all of your emotions and with your instinctive side in general, it looks like you’ll be free to develop your personality in a more complete way.

It’s possible that the dream is showing in the next scene that the tiger and God will become one if you’re able to add your emotions to the “Divine Image” as it were.

That’s because you hear the tiger’s voice but you don’t see the tiger and the voice comes from the sky, that is, from “heaven”.

The voice says "Because you've decided to leave, now there shall be rain!" which seems to mean that if you work hard at dealing with some inner stumbling blocks so that you can leave a kind of too fenced-in life, a refreshing flow of emotions will appear which will help many aspects of yourself to grow.

After this, you meet some old friends, maybe parts of yourself that were “imprisoned” by some hard issues.

It looks like they could kind of represent the “good” side of yourself (the friend you’re still on good terms with) along with the “bad” side of yourself (the friend you find very annoying which usually means that he probably behaves in a way that’s like you in some way that you know is bad).

This could be a reminder that nothing is ever “perfect” with life and human beings so that we all have to keep working at ourselves throughout our lives.

Like most people, you probably feel guilty underneath about how you sometimes act in a bad way etc.

These mostly hidden guilt feelings probably got projected onto the police authorities who arrested your friends and made you feel very uneasy even though you apparently really haven’t done anything as serious as they did.

Anyway, this interpretation might seem too confusing and to not fit your personal circumstances very well but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.

If anything does seem to make sense for you in your own situation, you might like the book “Meeting the Shadow”, edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams. It covers the concept of the earthy, emotional and instinctive side of human nature that we may not be very aware of, and covers how to deal with it in detail. It's easy to read, being composed of many short articles by various authors inside and outside the psychological community.

Other books to choose from on this subject include “Owning Your Own Shadow” by Robert Johnson, “Romancing the Shadow” by Connie Zweig and Steven Wolf, “Make Friends with your Shadow” by William Miller, “Your Shadow” by Robin Robertson, and “A Little Book on the Human Shadow” by Robert Bly.

And if you haven’t already done so, it would probably be best if you printed out your dream to protect it from site and computer crashes so that you will be able to come back to it at times in the years ahead when its meaning will probably get clearer and clearer.

Please feel free to make any comments or to ask any questions that you may want to about this particular way of looking at your very impressive dream.

**Sugawolf** · 02-12-2015 09:17 PM

Thank you both for shedding some light on the situation. Firewater, you are right about me trying to re-connect with my old self because I think about it sometimes. I'm not depressed, I have a positive nature but I can't shake of this feeling that something is missing and I need to go back in time and find out where I've lost it. I may have an idea where to look.

Athanor, I thank you so much for this very comprehensive interpretation. In fact, I think it is mostly really accurate and it cleared up a lot of stuff for me that I couldn't understand. You are absolutely right that around the age of 15 I went through a negative change of mind, and that plus my parents divorcing and also a few other situations in my life led to me acting in a bad way. Also thanks for the book recommendations, I'll be sure to check them out. I'm going to go through the interpretation once again now and think about it for a little while and if I have any questions, I might hit you up with the PM if that's alright with you.