In our weekly Mindful Dreams column, Aneta Baranek of the School of Metaphysics is offering free dream interpretations to The Mindful Word readers, as well as articles on dreams in general.
If you’ve ever been curious about deciphering the cryptic contents of your subconscious mind, here’s your chance! If you would like Aneta to interpret your dream, fill out this form. She will respond with your dream interpretation through this column, published every Thursday. Aneta would love to receive more comments for the dreams interpreted. If you can relate to a dream posted here or have any insights to add, you can post them as comments to the interpretation, or email her at aneta@themindfulword.org.
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DREAM
All I remember from this dream is that a raccoon was already on my hand, biting me. I believe there were other raccoons just watching us.
Anyhow, one was on my hand and didn’t want to let go. I grabbed it by its mouth, trying to get it off me, but it wouldn’t even budge. I grabbed it so tight, trying to break its mouth off. I never noticed when the raccoon finally left, but I appeared in a kitchen that didn’t look familiar. I was scared that I might’ve gotten rabies and I was freaking out. There was a little bit of pain.
I saw my older brother in the kitchen, but he appeared to be a little blurry. He said to me, “Oh, that’s happened to me before.” (I’m assuming he meant getting bit by a raccoon.) “Just wash your hands,” he continued. I ran water on my bleeding hands and that was the end of the dream.
– Rina
DREAMER: Female, 28, United States
MAIN SYMBOLS:
Raccoon — habit
Hand — purpose
Kitchen — place for preparing knowledge (food)
Brother — familiar aspect of the dreamer
Blood — life force
ماء — conscious life experience
INTERPRETATION
Hi Rina,
The main theme of your dream is the raccoon biting your hand. Both the raccoon and the hand are very significant dream symbols. The raccoon symbolizes a habit and the hand symbolizes your purpose. The raccoon biting your hand means that there’s a habit that derails you from “staying on purpose.”
What does it mean to “stay on purpose”? It means fulfilling the goals that you set for yourself. An example might be a situation in which you really want to practice more Yoga. You sign up for a Yoga class, but then, because you like watching Netflix, you decide to do that instead of following through on your commitment to the class. Throughout our lives, there are many ways similar to this in which we self-sabotage our dreams and aspirations.
Only you, the dreamer, can determine what habit the raccoon symbolizes. You can do so by evaluating your waking life experiences from 24 to 48 hours before having this dream. The first thought that comes to your mind, that initial realization, is most likely what the raccoon relates to in your waking life experience.
APPLICATION
Habitual ways of being often get in the way of our evolution. More often than not, we seem to be running on autopilot, rarely stopping to re-evaluate our ways of being. Not all habits are bad. Some are very beneficial; for example, meditating every day.
“Living on purpose” means that everything that we engage in is a conscious choice. To take this further, everything’s not only a choice, but a purposeful choice, with us knowing exactly why we’re choosing to engage in any given activity.
The “why” is all about who we’re becoming through what we’re doing. For example, we can choose to meditate daily to connect with our Higher Self or to quiet our mind and develop more stillness within ourselves. We can also meditate daily to develop discipline.
There’s an inner change that manifests within us once we’re clear as to “why” we choose to do what we do. Having a clear purpose for all the major activities we partake in energizes our bodies. It actually helps our chakras (energy transformers) return energy to our physical bodies.
Your dream, Rina, speaks to the need for you to be more purposeful within your life, to be mindful in regard to all the choices you make. If it were my dream, I’d make a list of all the major activities that I’m part of and clarify “why” I’m partaking in them.
Surely, some of the activities are things we seemingly must engage in—like going to work, for instance. However, we still get to decide who we want to become through that. We get to choose whether we’ll practice being responsible, diligent or neutral as we perform our work duties. By practicing certain qualities, we’ll retain them within ourselves for lifetimes to come and therefore fulfill our purpose of being a part of this schoolroom called “life.”
May your dreams illuminate the inner and outer you…
