Hi there,

I’ll try and take a stab at your dream and offer suggestions.  But first, my advice is that you post dreams in the Dream Forum in the future so that it can be easily found.  That way all the dreams are in one place and those of us who like to chat about them can go there to do that.

I’ve been journaling dreams for decades and love to follow their patterns.  I would suggest that if you’re really into dreams and their meanings that you turn your attention toward what they mean to you.  Looking up meanings rarely does any good. 

First, follow your dreams by writing them down in detail in a notebook.  Then, look for recurring patterns, themes, symbols, and situations.  This will tell you a lot more about what your dreams mean than anything else. 

Also, a lot of dreams hold extra stuff (junk) that is just filler material and doesn’t really mean anything.  You’ll learn how to put that aside and focus on the good stuff.  That’s another reason why looking up each symbol in a dream dictionary isn’t the best approach.  It could sidetrack you from what the dream is really trying to convey.

A good and fun tool for learning to interpret your own dreams is to do a dialogue with something in the dream.  To do this you would pick something in the dream that seemed to be meaningful or important in the dream, or maybe something that the You in the dream felt strongly about.  Emotions and feelings that our dreamselves feel during the dream are a BIG indicator of what the dream really represents and is trying to tell us. 

For instance, what emotions or feelings do you remember from the dream?  Were you sad or worried about the animals?  Were you frustrated?  When you walk yourself through the dream in your mind you should be able to discover what feelings you felt.

So for example, the main theme in your dream seems to be these animals, and it sounds to me like your dreamself cared about their well-being.  Am I right so far?  So you could try the dream-dialogue technique by doing something like this…by the way it works best to do it in writing.  You would start out by making up a conversation.  The best way to start is to just basically re-state the main theme:

YOU:  “ I see all you animals together in a way that doesn’t make sense.  I care about you and don’t want any of you to get hurt, but I don’t know what to do.” 

(Now you just let your feelings and emotions take over and continue the conversation.  It doesn’t matter how it goes or which animal responds, or what.  Just go with what you’re feeling.  If a response isn’t coming to mind, then you should continue doing the talking until you feel a response coming.)  If you don’t feel a response, just  keep talking…..

YOU:  “When I’m holding the rabbit and hamster in the bag that seemed to help, but that’s not a good solution either.  What can I do to help?”

Hopefully by now you can bring out some conversation from other perspectives in the dream.  For instance, maybe the rabbit and hamster would say:

RABBIT AND HAMSTER:  “Thank you for holding us where we can be safe from those lizards.  Can we stay with you?” 

Or maybe another dream symbol in the dream wants to say something.  (Only you would know this, as it would just pop into your head on a feeling-level while doing this technique).  Maybe you might get a feeling that the tank has something to say:

TANK:  “Hey, I was doing just fine with all the animals together in here.  Why did you take the rabbit and hamster away?  I’m big enough for all the animals.”

YOU:  But if I let you do that, the lizards will eat the other animals, and I can’t let that happen.  They are my pets and they trust me to take care of them.”

Digginsdub, now do you see where this kind of role-playing can take you?  If this were how the conversation went, you would most likely begin to recognize who/what the rabbit and hamster represent in YOUR life.  Maybe they represent something or someone in your life that you care about and want to protect, but up until now you’ve felt like you had no way of taking care of them.  Maybe they represent something in your life that you feel you’re starting to lose control over, or are about to lose if you don’t take some action.

Trust me, this is a fun way to really delve into your dreams and find valuable meaning in your life.  There really are no right or wrong answers.  You’ll discover true meanings for you in your dreams by learning how to pay attention to how your dream symbols and theme show up in your dreams.  Especially when you start noticing recurring symbols and themes and patterns. 

Vicky