Thread: I slaughtered a bear.

Wow. Some dream!

This is a tough one, especially because it seems to take in so much daytime imagery. But bears can stand for the cycle of life and death and renewal, sort of like the Death card in tarot...so possibly the dream is about some aspect of your life that's already changed/is changing/you're thinking about changing? Given how the bear wanted to die and how hard it was to kill and how sympathetic you were to it's death, that would seem to imply a change you want to make but which is going to be hard to follow through on? The death by beheading can stand for a bad decision, one you made and regret, which might cast some light on what situation the bear represents. I'm not sure about the other details of the bear; that it was eating a dead animal and one-armed. That is was talking is often your subconscious' way of sending a message; it represents superior knowledge.

I don't know how much of that came from the show or the lyrics, though...you'd be the only one who could figure that out. Joe being the one to deal the deathblow...well, sometimes people aren't themselves in dreams, they just play roles. Your brain can be pretty loose and easy about casting, and often the other actors in dreams are just facets of self. What sort of qualities does Joe have that your brain might have cast him for? Another question only you can answer.

The axe: this can indicate a tendency to be over controlling, also destruction, hostility. Also frustration, possibly an "ax to grind" with someone. That would seem to figure back to the bear - if it means a change, then one that's been frustrating you or evoking those feelings in you, which is maybe why it needs to go?

For the cabin; in dream imagery, that could indicate self-reliance or independence, a desire to succeed via your own means. Also, possibly that you prefer the simpler things in life. Living so far away from your family seems to indicate that you've been pretty self-reliant; possibly the cabin reflects those circumstances?

Not sure how much that helped, 'cause that was one wonky dream! Positively bananas!

Firefly is possibly the greatest show ever, and The Message was a great episode as well. I definitely see the relation in the dream. I'm not so great at nor do I put much stock in over-interpreting dreams, myself, but I can't help but comment on this. Do you often have dreams in which bears are out to get you, perhaps? Or is this the first?

The instance of a normally malignant creature manifesting as benevolent can mean many things; that you're facing your fears, that you want to face your fears, or that you just have weird dreams. I often have dreams about snakes trying to kill me or my dog. Which is odd because I really like snakes, and have no fear of them whatsoever, so the dreams usually center around me trying to kill the snake or snakes out of self-defense, but they won't die, because I subconsciously don't want them to have to. Then just the other night I dreamed of a huge, robotic snake with metallic scales chasing me through a museum of natural history and out into the parking garage. I ran, helped the friend with me into my car, then turned and ran back to face the snake, which was making its way along the ceiling. I asked it what it wanted, why it was chasing me, and it communicated telepathically, telling me that was all it had wanted; for me to face it, and then it warned me that I needed to get out of there, that something bad was about to happen. I went back to the car and left, as it headed back into the building to wreak its own kind of havoc.

I usually don't bother asking, but I was fed up with snakes in my dreams trying to kill me. So instead of my usual methods of stabbing/shooting first, treating it like the animal it would be in real life, I treated it as a dream. I was vaguely semi-lucid at the time.

Anyhow, there are many elements of your dream that stand out to me. Ultimately, though, you're the one who can best interpret this.

Wow, thanks for the responses. You've both definitely given me some things to think about.

Man of Steel - no, I can't recall ever dreaming about a bear before.

For many reasons, I think killing the bear represents my desire to quit my job and play music full time. Here's why: 1) that actually is what I want to do and 2) I feel like I'm approaching a point where I may actually be able to pull it off. I see the bear as symbolizing my current job where I sacrifice creativity (no left arm! bam!) in order to receive a material gain (eating a tasty dead animal = stable job+decent salary+benefits). Tracey's face probably represents a life misspent. But like you said Anansi, that is a tough decision to follow through on. It won't be happening particularly soon, if it ever happens. I just have to keep moving in that direction, keep swinging that axe, which is a resolution I had made before having the dream. Totally cool.

I'm curious what the significance of "daytime imagery" is? Why does that make it harder to interpret? The dream did mostly take place in the daytime.

Oh, "daytime imagery" is just all the various flotsam you picked up from your day that may have been floating around in your head when you went to sleep. It shows up because you saw it, not because it's got some kind of archetypical symbollic meaning. It's got nothing to do with a dream being set in daytime!

Like, if you had just been to the zoo that day looking at bears, possibly a bear might have showed up in your dream because you were actually thinking about bears, not because your subconscious was using a bear as part of a symbolic language.

At that point, if someone was trying to read your dream based on the bear as life/death/renewal, for instance, and was trying to tie the other imagery into that as the main symbol, the "code" they were trying to read would be all messed up because the bear they were using as a key to decipher the code was "flotsam" not symbol. Sometimes the daytime imagery gets recycled with a personal meaning - like you got meaning from Tracey's face. But then it's likely to be based on the context from that day; something even the dreamer might not be able to interpret just even a day or two later and which somebody outside the dreamer's head would be really unlikely to ever figure out because it's so personal.