a REAL owl plays a pivotal role in last nights dream

this morning I heard the mournful hooting
of a great horned owl out my window

I had a dream last night that was interrupted, or maybe punctuated, by the call of a great horned owl. I am writing this within minutes of getting out of bed.

The dream started in a bland suburban setting, and I was standing out in the driveway of a house that I assume was mine. The other homes were spaced sort of far apart, it was summer and the lawns were green. The sun was low in the sky and everything was calm.

Then I saw there was a grizzly bear poking around on the lawn across the street! At first I didn’t feel nervous or threatened, it was an amazing sighting. Then I realized this big thing was sort of lumbering towards me, and I retreated into the garage.

I went into the house through the inside garage door, but I realized there were a bunch of doors from the garage into the house (I think as many as six), and they were all slightly open. I quickly went into one as the giant bear entered the garage. I locked it from the inside, but typical of this kind of anxiety dream the whole thing felt awkward and frustrating, I needed to force the bolt in place.

I went to each door, one by one, and locked it from the inside, and each door was progressively more flimsy and each lock was harder to latch closed. I could tell the bear was right outside each of these doors. Just like me, it was going from door to door, and each was just a little bit open as I got to it, so I could see the bear as I pulled it closed.

Eventually, the doors would just barely close, as if they were sized wrong for the frame. The locks were broken, and parts would fall off as I tried to get them to work.

The final door was nothing more than a small sheet of thin plywood, far too small for the door frame. It was barely hanging in place on deteriorating hinges. The plywood was warped and rotten, and I could see the bear over the top and sides of it, slowly coming towards me, then his big paws were reaching through the open spaces as I frantically tried to somehow get it locked.

Suddenly I was hearing the hooting cry of an owl, steady and clear. I could hear it as this bear was pulling at this thin sheet of plywood with it's claws.

It was at that point I woke up, but the hooting continued. I lay there in bed, with the pale light of dawn easing through the only window in my bedroom. I was hearing the unmistakable call of a great horned owl, and it must have been on the telephone pole right outside my window.

Let me state this nice and clearly:

A real owl woke me up 

right as a bear was about to rip down a door!

I was going to get up to see if I could get a look at it, but it stopped before I could muster the energy to climb out of bed. I lay awake for a long time, deeply impressed at the symbolism of the dream, and that a real owl would invade my dream-scape just as a bear was about to pull down the final flimsy barrier between me and it. (Bear? Barrier?)

I have lived in this cabin for over 20 years, and I’ve occasionally heard an owl, and very rarely seen one nearby. But starting at the end of March of this year, I’ve been hearing them outside my bedroom window and they’ve been waking me up, something that’s never happened in the decades I’ve called this my home. (see THIS and THIS)

And in the essay Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO abductee I come to the conclusion that the owl plays the role of an alarm clock. A real owl blatantly played that role for me!

Yesterday, I saw a mother owl with two fluffy owlets in a nest (see below) on my daily bike ride to town. And, last night was the full moon.

mother owl and owlets 

from today's small town newspaper

How to analyze the symbolism? 

Maybe the bear is the truth and the flimsy doors are the crumbling barriers between me and that truth? The owl was saying (quite literally) WAKE UP! Bear is bare, the naked truth. Bare also means to suffer a burden. Anyway, this is sure how it feels.

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Text added May 16th (the day after the posting above)

Another persons dream:

I know a guy who has had a lifetime of what sure seems to be abduction events. He also had a grizzly bear dream the same night as I did, the morning after the May full moon.

We talk together quite a lot, and we’ve had a few other shared dreams. I spoke with him last night, and he told me about his grizzly bear dream.

This guy’s dream starts in an idyllic forest where he sees a grizzly bear on the opposite side of a river, it’s just sniffing around and he feels no threat. The whole seen is beautiful and majestic.

The next thing he remembers is a small house, he walks up to the side door and knocks on it. He peers through a window into the house and sees a woman walking up to the door, and walking behind her is this massive grizzly bear.

She opens the door and the grizzly bear comes out. They guy then moves behind the corner of the house. He know if he runs or panics the bear will chase him down and kill him.

He ends up moving away, and the bear follows him, they both end up right in front of the garage. The bear has done nothing threatening, it is just lumbering along and sniffing around. But this guy is very aware of the danger. Then the bear looks up at him, and he thinks, “Oh F*ck!” It’s right at this point he wakes up.

There are so many elements that feel similar to my dream and his. The grizzly bear and the garage are the most obvious, but the feel of the dream is similar.

This guy is about to undergo hypnotic regression in an attempt to retrieve what might be buried memories, and this has been (understandably) a looming stress for him.

We both saw the bear as representing fear. Or more correctly fear of the unknown. I feel my bear (from my dream) might represent the unknown truth, or fear of the unknown truth. We were in agreement about all these facets of the grizzly bear symbolism. I sense that this lumbering fear is something deep inside, and it's following both of us.

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