So, I am awake at 5 am thanks to an interesting dream....
In my dream I am a small creature. Perhaps a field mouse. I am running along, minding my own business, scrounging for food, when one day a creature (I can't remember what, perhaps a bird of some sort) approchases me and tells me I am needed. I ask him for what purpose and he simply informs meto follow him. What follows is, I'm sure, a chain of adventure-esque events. I can't remember much detail but I know I have embarked onto an epic journey, and can feel the course of fate finally pulling me into it's grasp. As I go along on this adventure I come across many creatures, some willing to help and offer me their assistance, others trying to slow me down. But eventually I come to the only one I can remember in detail. He was a great Mare. Brown and beautiful, Wise and a bit elderly. I ask him if he can lend me his assistance, but he only answers me in riddles. After a few frustrating attempts at communication, I, the field mouse am starting to get annoyed, until...suddenly clarity of thought hits me. and it is like i suddenly speak his language. And understand what he has to say to me. I then continue along on my journey, and with this new knowledge have a much different goal than I orginally set out to fullfill.
Now I am a warrior for peace, and balance, rather than just justice and light. Then I woke up.
It took me awhile to reflect upon the dream and see it's intention. I think perhaps it was reminding me that even though we are all warriors in this Great Battle, it is not about good triumphing over evil. At least that is not the humans roll in it. We are forever striving to maintain balance in the face of our "human nature", And this is our great purpose. To bring the light and dark into some sense of peace and tranquility so we can draw on one or the other when it works for the greater good. If we try to hard to be all light, we will get to drawn in and see our selves as supiror beings. And if we give ourselves wholly to dark, we let evil rein until we feel the weight of it so heavily that we feel trapped forever.
The goal is not to live without one or the other but bring both into harmony to achieve the balance of our true nature. As humans, with this unique aspect to be both light and dark at once, we can tip the cosmic scale just because we have this power. I feel like this dream was waking me up to my own powers and showing me what is to come next.
Just some thoughts I thought I'd share......
Replies
This is a big dream. One that will lead to great adventures and changes, and one you probably continue to think about on and off. Yet you can probably recall the feelings and images even now a year after the dream. Like the little mouse that is in the attic, slowly but surely working its way.
Leaving aside what it means for you, it would be great to know of similar dreams in the wider community. For we would be able to get a different cross-section and be able to look into what patterns of meanings are evolving in the unconscious (which is one), regardless of how each manifests it or translates into waking life.
I would say this mouse is working very hard. This problem of too many light warriors and the lack of balance is clearly a big issue all around. Everyone looking for the "right" answer, a "best practice", a "good advise"...meanwhile losing or ignoring their own health, their instincts and connection to THEIR unique life..
With a mouse I dreamt for instance a while ago, in 2007 in September. A mouse in a lab cage exploded from within. It just became like a blob or mass sprayed all over.
This followed a meeting with a client where I had suggested a way to work with deep unconscious images to help them figure out a product strategy. The client (a global food company) came back that day and we met. The person a senior manager, proposed to use my approach for a particular product, which I thought was unhealthy and wasn't excited to work on. But for work sake I would just do it.
After the dream I decided to research the product and found so much wrong with it that I turned it down. It was literally one of those industrialized food ideas that is really bad for you. But also, I realized that it was bad for the mouse, to use the language and meaning capacity in such an utilitarian way.
The mouse was there to say life is to live it not to manipulate it. Shining warriors of light that is what they do, it is that part of us that wants to shine the light of understanding on everything, in the crudest form. Yet the space of the unconscious is this precious space with its own language, and it is a great mystery how we learn to listen.
Cassandra, you've reminded me that all the mice (as well as some other little critters) of Brian Jacques Redwall Series for Children are abbots and abbesses.
Also the night/mare of your mouse-mare dream tale just as you situate it next to the March Hare of Alice strikes me as reading each other somehow (an intertextuality of imaginal text-messaging)
In a kind of uneven or odd wordplay when they cross pollinate ie the night standing in for the character of the mouse and the mare standing in place of the month of March/time in the space of Wonderland where time is in the hands of the hare I get an even stranger character morphology: night/mare/hare.
Curiously, your description "The mouse... timid but bold creature...always in a constant state of self-preservation... completely depends on it's surroundings to provide the tools it needs to maintain that state... trying to learn how to be more of this nature. To use my surroundings to enhance my experience with this world, rather than seeing them as something to hold me back" comes close to describing the hero in a lovely little cartoon from 1955 called Knight-Mare-Hare. Likewise there is a link established in the dream underworld of the cartoon character to the dual nature of the wizard and the mare. For the fun of it, here is a link to watch the cartoon. Enjoy, stephanie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15U_DZHZPmE
Well the evening before this dream I had just watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. And I had some very intriguing insights into the nature of that movie for the first time. So I know that was part of the associations. But it hadn't even occured to me that this is the only all-animal dream I have ever had, and also the only one where I was an animal.
In the past couple of weeks I have been making great strides along my spiritual journey, and have been able to see how everyone and everything is connected more and more. So perhaps the fact that it was full of animals was my mind finally seeing the similarities between human and animal nature. As far as being a mouse, before I look up any associations, here is my take on it. The mouse is a timid but bold creature. It is always in a constant state of self-preservation, but it also completely depends on it's surroundings to provide the tools it needs to maintain that state. I am trying to learn how to be more of this nature. To use my surroundings to enhance my experience with this world, rather than seeing them as something to hold me back, I try to see everything as an opportunity to grow and move forward.
It occurs to me that I used to read Brian Jaques books about Woodland creatures adventures, and he generally had mice as the main character. They where always wise, balanced, warriors.
As far as the Mare goes. I have always been connected to horses and seen them as knowing much more than we give them credit for. In this particular instance I saw him/her (I'm not sure she had a gender) as a spiritual guide. Setting the answers before, even when I am to dense to see them. And when the moment of break through and I could understand the mare, perhaps that represents where I am spiritually at the moment. I feel like I can finally see ALL the signs God, the earth, and spirits, have laid before. I can read them, interpret them, and now I just have to figure out what to do with them!
Sounds like with a bit more active imagination exercises, you will have the mouse and mare (sounds like a story in itself) leading to insights. Your image of the mouse using the physical offerings of its environment certainly sounds more animal nature and more in tune with nature than human attitudes about nature seems to be these days. It also occurs to me that the mouse passes from light into darkness and back again when either becomes too confining or limiting. Be careful with the amount of psychic material you take on at one time, it can be overwhelming. Paradoxically, take care AND fully enjoy. :)
If you decide to check out books on animals and you feel close to indiginous relations with nature, try some of the Ted Andrews references (Native American). I believe one is Animal Speaks (Its downstairs so I am guessing.) :)
Keep in touch.
Thanks for sharing your dream and your perspective on good vs. evil.
As long as many of us have dualistic perspective, we will never see the end of the battle between the forces of light and dark. This "you versus me" mentality has increased the level of hatred on the planet and has not liberated us. As long as there is "you" to hate, there is "me" with the capacity to hate. I agree with you about the need for balance and harmony.
Hi Cassandra-
I have been thinking about your dream's dreamscape and your own initial reflective narrative. It made me think about the various mouse-gods in the mythoplokos of texts talking to each other beyond our ear just out of earshot in the ancestral soul. But, I am like Ed, I'd love some further insight into your own take regarding that field mouse of the dream and that "beautiful brownness" of the mare.
Just as there are mice connections to "gods," there are mare connections to images of balance. One of the great images of balance is the yin/yang.
Here is a description of the symbol and a delightful retelling (mythoplokos) of the yin/yang; the tale is taken from Tao Te Ching along with its horseplay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt75vonma94
Thank you so much for sharing this dream with all of us.