Totem

A sense of your connection with your forebears and nature. The intuition the unconscious has of your links with the past and with your connection or lack of it with your own animal/mammal past. See Levels of the Brain and Dreams; Seed; Religion and dreams 

If you just read or then think about your dream animal, you have not fully entered into its meaning for you. A dream image is, in many ways, like an icon on your computer desktop. It just sits there, you can think about it till you are red in the face, but it doesn’t come alive until you click on it. A dream is a product of the miracle we do not understand – LIFE. As such each dream image is alive with intelligence and information, and links not simply with ideas we read in a book or website, but with the workings and wonders of our body, the depths of our mind and even beyond.

Remember that dreams occur in animals and have been a feature of living creatures long before humans arose. So, dreams come from a part of us prior to the arrival of human language. Therefore, it might be useless to think about dreams. It is best if you actually explore your dreams as explained below. You can then ‘click’ on your dream images using the following way in. See: Being the Person or Thing

My first one was a Hare.

Example: ‘I was walking across open moorland, followed by a crowd of people. I was their leader, and was supposed to be leading them to “Salvation”. The only thing was, I had no idea in which direction salvation lay. We came to a barbed-wire fence and stopped. I was considering the best place to cross, when I noticed a rabbit beyond the fence. My dog was with me, and leapt on the rabbit to kill it as in my previous dreams, but this time the rabbit fought back and bit his foot, and he stood back respectfully, as he would if a cat clawed him. I now saw that the rabbit had turned into a huge and powerful hare, with four pink furry babies. Then the hare spoke to me, saying, “Where are you going?”

‘I told him we were looking for salvation. He listened, then quietly said “Turn back. Go back to whence you came. At this I became irritable and said, who was he to tell us what to do. There were so many so-called authorities telling people how to discover truth, and yet most of them either disagreed or hadn’t found it themselves.

‘The hare looked at me and suddenly disappeared. Then, in a few moments it reappeared. This impressed me tremendously. I felt it was a sign of complete self-mastery, and knew the hare was the master. He then said again, “Go back, and carry on with your accustomed tasks. Do not seek wildly the Kingdom of Heaven, for you already have what you seek within you for you are looking for yourself that you miss by frantic searching. Your seeking only hides it.” Then we all turned around and went back to our village, and carried on our usual tasks, knowing that in time, we would realise our heaven.

The dreamer explored his dream and saw the hare as depicting his intuition which speaks of the inner wisdom. He was amazed to later find that the hare has been used as just such a symbol in many countries and cultures of the world. The dream and instruction were potently important in his life. He had been desperately trying to force his growth by extreme practices of meditation and yoga. In fact, his practices bordered on the fanatical or compulsive. The words of the hare helped him to start the process of taking a very different approach to his inner unfoldment. Has your animal ever spoken to you?

Example: The living totem animals are now on my level, the wolf is in front, the squirrel up in a tree, the boar beside me, the earth mother tells me that everything is in its place, except for a dark dangerous bear like creature that is stalking me, she tells me I must beware of this creature, as I walk through the forest I feel protected by the animals around me, but am on edge as I know I am being watched by the dark creature.

The totem in your dream is a magnificent manifestation of the living forces within you. It is something that like a rock has pushed through and from the earth by the forces of nature in you, but it is your own work on yourself and shows what has been produced in and by your life in the carvings it artwork at the top. The dark creature is a representation of your own fears you have not met and dealt with yet. See The Rock Beast

People, especially Americans, often dream about their totem animal. It as been a part of the American people’s inner life for thousands of years, and recent American apparently have it as part of their inner life too. This is apparent in this man’s experience where me met the Puma and was told be a Guardian to killit with a knife the Guardian gave him.

In trying to understand the dream I became The Puma. As such I am. I am life. I am love and the untamed expression of being alive, of feeling passion and love. I am both a test and an opportunity in my life. He was not afraid of me, and so I become his companion. I am a native of the America’s. I know this territory. I can survive here. It is what I do, what I know. I can hunt for you, but I need something from you too. Take the lead and we will be of good to each other. As the Guardian I also test the traveler, as I did by giving him a knife. I attempted to frighten him by my appearance – half alive – and by carrying a knife, and also by telling him the Puma would harm him. But he passed the test by loving the Puma instead of killing it. To pass beyond here you need courage and love.