Need a dream interpretation for a dream with a baby rat & another with a skunk

[shuddhaiccha]

In this dream, I was in my apartment all packed up & getting ready to go on a retreat like the one that I went on a few weeks ago.  I heard a cough & knew that it was an animal, so I opened the top drawer to my desk & saw a baby rat lying there, injured.  It had sores, especially on it's spine, which was covered by small pieces of, not bandages but electrical tape loosely placed, was breathing steadily but a bit quickly, & it certainly seemed like it was dehydrated & hungry.  In the dream, it felt like it was a newborn cat & I was caring for it as though it was.  However, when I looked up images of newborn cats & baby rats, it matched the image of a baby rat.  It had short grey hairs with a long rat tail that it shook a few times.  The poor thing looked like it was very hungry & thirsty, like I said, so I took it in the palm of my left hand, caressed it & pet it with my right pointer finger, & brushed my cheek & lips against it's face as it lay there in a dazed, hungry & thirsty state.  I thought to myself that it had been there for about 3 weeks & that I couldn't leave without getting it some medical attention.  Since there was an acute sense of urgency after seeing it lying there, I planned on dropping it off to the vet's office where I used to bring my cat in real-life before I went on this trip in my dream.

Also, a few nights ago, I dreamed that I was on a retreat in the same place that I go to every time.  We usually sleep in an enclosed wooden area but this time I slept outside in an individual blue boxed tent next to others with the same sleeping arrangements.  I had my suitcase open in my sleeping space when suddenly what felt like a white skunk ran towards me & sat on my opened suitcase with my clothes inside.  I felt scared, especially when the skunk paced a few times & then hissed at me.  Then, it ran away.  The skunk was mostly white in color with a black stripe on it's back, black stripes on it's face, & a large black stripe on it's tail.  I looked up images on skunks online & found out that there's such thing as an albino skunk, but this skunk was mostly white with some black.  It certainly felt like a skunk in my dream.  Maybe it could be a mixed albino.

This is odd that I even dream of animals twice in a row.  I hardly ever have them in my dreams at all & when I do, they've been of pets or tamed animals.

Thanks,

Kristen

[Tony Crisp]

Kristen – Dreaming you were about to leave for a retreat, if it is a spiritual retreat, says you were preparing for a special insight into yourself. Then you were given a special insight with the dream.

Your dream is about caring for a part of you that in general is felt as unclean or vermin. This came about because rats were seen a carriers of disease. But it wasn’t the rat that brought the plague to Europe but the gerbil was the culprit. So it seems you are meeting a part of your experience or feeling of vulnerability, instinctive intelligence, the caring feelings or drive to care, or responsibility for caring. The rat is an intelligent creature, is a great survivor and explorative.

But it might be you are on the way to experiencing something like this:

“It was on the last day of a four day meditation. I was with Ken as my partner, a big and quite earthy guy, and quite suddenly I had a very clear sense of moving into nearness with the animals. I experienced this as walking into a wooded garden and being surrounded with natural life and animals. As I drew near I was filled with the most exquisite sense of sharing something with them as an equal. It was that we were all within one great transcendent splendour. Again my emotions were ripped open as if I were being burst, or torn apart in my soul. I managed to gasp out to Ken between cries that I had been in this place so many times – the Temple of the animals – but always in the past with a closed heart.
I realised as I was opened more and more that it wasn’t my heart that was closed. It was that I had always been too proud. I had been shutting out the common animal. I had been trying to be so spiritual – from thirteen to my thirties – and had killed out my sexuality, my common humanity because I wanted to be different. I didn’t want to be like the common herd that had, as I felt, rejected me. I wanted to be holy, above them. I wanted nothing to do with the mundane attitudes, interests and emotions of them. I was never going to be like them. I despised them. Only some of this did I manage to blurt out.” See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/brain-levels-and-dreams/

Your skunk dream is a strange mixture, as it is a mixture of black and white – purity and earthiness. Also it suggests that in meeting this growing awareness of the animal that you are you might meet an experience of getting what you wear – your present attitudes – knowing them as a great stink.

Tony