dreamt a polar bear buried in snow in my garden, my dog attacked, bear hurt my dog. So vivid, that’s what made it strange.
–Maria M.
DREAM SYMBOLS:
polar bear: a habit in the thinking
snow: unchanging life experience
garden: subconscious Mind
dog: a habit in the thinking
attack: disharmony/incomplete change
DREAM INTERPRETATION:
In the day or two before this dream Maria was beginning to see a pattern in her thinking. Water in any form in dreams represents conscious life experience, aka our daily, waking experiences. Snow represents unchanging life experiences. Maria is seeing that something in her life is not changing and that a previously hidden habit in the way she thinks is at the root of the inability to create a change.
The habit (bear) is in the way she engages with or perceives her subconscious Mind.The subconscious is the part of Self that holds nothing but truth. It is a vast repository of wisdom, intuition, and creativity. Maria may be having difficulty fully tapping into the resources of this part of her Mind due to the habit. Habits are simply unconscious patterns of thinking. They may be productive, unproductive or neutral. It appears that Maria perceives this habit as being unproductive and negative.
Maria’s dog also represents a habit but this is a way of thinking that, although unconscious, is familiar, beloved, and feels protective to her. The dog attempts to protect her from the bear and is injured in the altercation. Death represents change. An injury would indicate an attempt at creating a change in the familiar habitual thought. The fact that it was a violent interaction also shows Maria that these two unconscious parts of her thinking are in disharmony with each other.
The first step for full understanding of this dream is for Maria to determine exactly what the habitual thoughts are that are in such conflict. They could be virtually anything…habits of self-isolation, laziness, efficiency, or compassion, for example. ANY quality can be habitual if not consciously chosen. I would suggest she determine if there’s something in her waking life at the present time that she wants to change but doesn’t seem able to. I suspect there will be clues about problem areas in her thinking with a truthful assessment. Also, I would suggest that she try to look at this dream from a different angle. What if the polar bear is actually the productive habit and the dog is actually the habit keeping her stuck in her relationship to her subconscious Mind? Sometimes the problem lies solely in our perspective, and once we can open ourselves to the possibility that something that appears frightening or harmful actually is a powerful ally everything changes.
(One last note: this dream was vivid because your subconscious Mind wanted you to retain it and think about it. When a message is important the subconscious tends to crank up the volume.)
WE ALL DREAM 