Being accused I'm a father of someone's baby who is actually a hamster

Hello, thanks for reading :) I've been having some curious dreams lately - I'd be very grateful for any interpretation :) It's a long one!

First a bit about me :) I'm a 20 year old guy, recently feeling a bit lonely as I'm away from home and friends. Insecure about my current relationship - been dating a guy for more than 3 months, but unsure about whether he even truly likes me. I'll call him James in this story. My family doesn't know I'm gay

The whole today's dream is set in my father's home where he grew up, I haven't been there in years. I think that it started by me being in the room (hereafter "the room") with James. Suddenly a bird flew into the room and it started spasming. Then we figured out it was giving birth - but it gave birth to something that looked like a spider. I was disgusted. But the spider quickly shapeshifted into a black-yellow bird. There was something sticking out of his wing, like a deformed feather I think, and the bird mother tried to pull it out. It wasn't a nice scene and I continued to look away. James and I weren't sure whether we should help. That's all from this scene.

I dreamt that some girl (I don't know who, I've never seen her in the dream) said that I am the father of her baby - she left the baby and disappeared. My family was very supportive and at first didn't have any doubts or comments. They helped take care of the baby. But the baby was like a bobble head doll. The only scene in the whole dream where I interacted with the baby was when it was crying. For some reason, the baby (doll) was in the cage - but a very nice cage. It was small but since the doll was tiny it was big for its size. There were little birds inside and lots of toys. So I hear the baby crying, my family is around the cage, trying to calm it down. Then I start crying and call the baby by its name (don't remember the name), which stops the crying immediately. I then say something like:"How can you cry, look at how many lives you've saved, how much good you've done!" and point to the birds. The baby then starts to smile and raises its little arms and gaze towards the birds.

In the meantime, in that same room, I was with James's friend (another guy). We were getting intimate. I remember thinking that it's completely fine since they're friends - and I truly thought that. In reality, I would never cheat. Then while we were getting intimate I suddenly realised that this isn't right. At that moment, James comes into the room and lies in bed with me and we start cuddling. I remember the exact feeling I had - it is the same one whenever we cuddle. It felt so right. I could swear I felt it while I was dreaming.

Then some time passed I think, since everything seemed normal and my family started to have doubts this is really my baby. They asked me whether I had a DNA test, which I didn't. Then I realised myself - I've never been with any girl. I remember my parents organised the whole DNA test - they took the samples somehow (don't remember the details) and told me not to worry. Then it turned out the baby really wasn't mine. My parents said they'll take care of it.

Next scene was in the room. I went to the cage, which was now a tiny cage, like a small hamster cage, with some books on top - the cage served like a shelf - i.e. totally unimportant. I removed the books and saw that in the cage there actually was a hamster. There was no hay bedding, just the wood of the shelf that the cage was on. The hamster just sat there. There were no birds anymore or anything, just him alone. I started crying and went to my mum and asked her how can she be so heartless, to which she replied something very cold, not sure what. I think the hamster was actually the baby now.

After I "lost" the baby, James's behaviour changed dramatically as well. He got extremely cold and started sending me some ambiguous messages about how our relationship is on the verge. I had a dream within the dream that he installed some dating apps and that I found him there. Then I woke up in the dream and was relieved it was just a dream. But then when we met the next time he showed me how he is trying out some new dating app and showed me his profile. I was heartbroken and just kept quiet.

And then I woke up :) Again, I'd be extremely grateful for any interpretation, as I think it's an interesting dream. Thank you :)

Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation it would usually be best to have some additional general background information about you, from looking at this and your earlier posts, a few ideas can be tried out to see if they might fit your personal situation in some way.

For example, this dream takes place in the home where your father grew up, possibly suggesting that one important key to its meaning might be related to a certain influence, attitude or outlook of your father which could be affecting you strongly without you being very aware of this fact.

The room you’re in and what happens their might reflect symbolically how this largely unseen mind-set could affect your life at times. For instance, you’re feeling alone and unsure at university now even though apparently this isn’t your first year there. These feelings might possibly have contributed to your unconsciously forming a relationship with James just in order to ease these emotions and not really to form a true relationship over time. If so, any such situation might somehow relate back to influences directly and indirectly received from your father.

In any case, the dream seems to be emphasizing a mostly negative set of circumstances by showing the upsetting behaviour of the birds. A bird in dreams is normally a “messenger” from the unconscious. In this instance, the message isn’t a good one at first in that the birth is very hard and the newborn is a disgusting spider-like being. The good thing is that it soon turns into a black and yellow bird albeit with a deformed feather, perhaps suggesting that a change towards something better in your attitude is possible but could be difficult to bring about quickly.

So the dream could be showing a kind of repeating cycle where, apparently because of some unknown influence of your father, feelings of loneliness and being unsure of yourself understandably arise in times of stress but perhaps these emotions then lead to an attempt to escape such feelings by, for example, finding a kind of convenient friend who soothes your upset. But the overall result might often become as it is now with James, i.e. you’re unsure whether he even likes you.

The spider-like being is also an important clue about what might be going on inside you. A spider itself symbolizes a kind of snapshot of the whole of nature and of life itself.

For instance, some species of spider create beautiful round-shaped webs that shimmer with dew in the sun, but at the same time, these webs are meant to ensnare and kill prey.

In this image are contained the realities of “creativity” (creating a web) and “destructiveness” (devouring prey), just like Mother Nature as a whole gives birth but also causes death in an unending cycle.

The image of a spider in its web stirs up all kinds of negative connotations, e.g. “a web of conspiracies and lies”; the World Wide Web which can lure people to endless sites of often unreliable data, to doubtful sources of relationship and even to limitless perversions; in general, “entanglements” with others can lead to all sorts of problems etc.; also we can fall prey to an inner “web” of psychological defenses and illusions to ward off the harsher realities of life in general.

In contrast to all this, a round spider’s web also has a “centre” which is symbolic of a kind of wholeness and a sense of calm. That is, if a person can eventually manage to absorb and accept both the lighter and darker sides of life by keeping an ongoing, interactive balance between the two, then a more stable outlook can develop over time.

This overall reality of the cycle of life and death might relate to the feelings you expressed five years ago when you wrote “I'm terrified of death, my own and of people that are close to me. I don't believe in Heaven, reincarnation, or everything of the sort. What saddens me the most is the fact that people who died are going to miss so much. Especially the world-advancement things.” So it could be that unconsciously, you might still have some half-hidden fears (as all of us do) as to whether you can succeed at living your life to the full before death arrives on the scene, potentially making you one of those who will “miss so much”. If so, this unseen type of attitude could tend to keep you from moving firmly into life at this important transitional age you’re currently at and the dream could be trying to alert you to this state of affairs.

The next part of the dream might be illustrating this set of circumstances more fully. For instance, although it might sound unusual, an unknown girl in the dream of a guy can sometimes symbolize life itself, a certain feeling that draws the guy strongly into experiencing all that life has to offer, both the good and the bad. She says that the baby is yours, possibly symbolizing your overall potential as a person. This image also carries the idea of “responsibility”, but except when the baby is crying, you don’t really want to deal with it, perhaps representing the idea that only when reality strongly intrudes in your life and action is required do you actually take some appropriate steps to meet it.

Some influences from your family in your upbringing apparently support the approach of accepting responsibility overall (e.g. your family in the dream try to help with the baby), but it looks like dedication to this responsibility could tend to not be very strong at this time (e.g. the “baby” is really only a kind of tiny bobble-head doll and seems to be kept in a sort of psychological “cage”).

In addition, the dream might then be saying that you could tend to “lie” to yourself about this situation (e.g. you tell the baby a false story of how many birds it has saved etc.). Also, the suggestion could be that, sometimes, there might be a tendency to completely leave this responsibility regarding your overall personal growth as an individual (e.g. you have a kind of responsibility for James but come very close to convincing yourself for good that it’s OK to cheat on him; also, you apparently might sometimes kind of sink into oblivion in the arms of a sort of mother-figure as possibly symbolized at this point of the dream by James).

Then the dream might be picturing the potential end result of any such attitude; namely, that your inner “family” and you yourself as the ego could lean towards making rationalizations etc. in order to “disown” the baby and have it kind of live “in limbo” and never be “cared for” by you (as symbolized at first by how your parents in the dream will take care of it).

The potentially dire consequences of this appear in the scene where you find that the baby’s “cage” is now even smaller than before. In fact, the baby is now only a “pet hamster” which is not even properly cared for by your mother in the dream. The change from at least the semblance of a human baby to a hamster could possibly symbolize the potential of a lessening conscious awareness of, and dedication to, the need for the continual growth of your overall potentials as a person over time.

Things then go from bad to worse as James becomes cold and is using a dating app, suggesting that your relationship with him is in jeopardy. It’s likely that the outer James has certain qualities and ways of acting which you admire, but the dream could be suggesting that it would be best for you to actively develop these traits in yourself instead of maybe relying on James to sort of live them out for you. That would mean an investment in “caring for the baby”, i.e. in developing potential character traits in yourself which would help to complete and round out your overall personality over time.

Seeing these pressing burdens of responsibility which we become aware of through outer events, dreams, intuitions and thoughts etc. can be frightening (e.g. like swimming over the scary ocean depths and having large fish brushing up against your legs as in your dream from 2017). But we have to work hard at developing practical methods to gradually deal with various challenges (e.g. as symbolized by the boat from which the girl in the same dream wanted you to retrieve something, but you couldn’t find the boat and apparently gave up looking for it).

Failure to do so could unfortunately lead you to feel that you “haven’t been a good grandson” as in your dream from 2013. That is, you might realize in later life that you didn’t pay enough attention to develop your practical potentials and spiritual life of meaning enough. This ultimate goal of being “wise”, “able to levitate” and to face all kinds of physical obstacles and adversities head on was probably symbolized by your grandfather in the dream.

The good thing is that you’re still very young and you’re trying to listen to your dreams which are attempting to provide some valuable advice on how to move forward at this important time of your life.

Anyway, please feel free to comment on, or to ask any questions about, this particular way of looking at your dream.