My New Pet

The Dream: I have a new pet. She has landed on my lap and is happy to sit there and be petted. She is very content to sit quietly, and it seems this is her only activity. I think this will be the perfect pet, not at all demanding.

Then practicality intervenes. She will no doubt poop, but I get around that difficulty by thinking she'll probably use something like a litter box. Will I need to take her to the vet? That could be expensive. And then she'll die—how will I handle that? I know that some people eat this sort of animal, but eating one that died of old age—and that was one's pet—strikes me as creepy.

Interpretation: I had this dream during a visit to Yellowstone after a day viewing wildlife along the Hayden Valley. At one venue a bison carcass was being eaten by birds and wolves. People we chatted with said grizzlies had been feasting earlier in the day. The animal in this dream embodies my own life force. She may be very tame, happy, and undemanding right now, but I can see that problems, rooted in the physical realities of life and death, will inevitably occur in the future.

Ready to Die

The Dream: The dream was of an image of four squares lined up in a row. I felt that I had achieved what had been necessary, and I was now ready to die.

Interpretation: I felt ready to die in the sense of being “prepared.” I had done the necessary thing and could now move on. When I awakened the dream message left me feeling uneasy until I played with the idea of death in a dream as being the death of no longer needed aspects of the Psyche: in other words, I began to see this death as preliminary to a rebirth. The four squares of the dream remind me of Jung's diagram of the Psyche, with its four functions, and his interpretation of the square as symbolic of a centered Self.