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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Owls, UFOs and Area 51

Actor and author Tucker Smallwood

The 2011 documentary The Truth is Out There features Dean Haglund (of the X-Files) playing the host and asking questions. There is one point in the film where an actor sits alone on stage and reads from his autobiography. He tells the familiar story of a seeing owls and a UFO. 

The man on stage is Tucker Smallwood, a veteran of theater and screen who’s long list of credits include Coppola’s The Cotton Club, Contact and The X-Files. He also played God on the Sara Silverman Show.

Documentary on UFO and consciousness from 2011

Tucker steps on stage at the 15:00 minute mark in the video above. 

His account begins in a car full of buddies, all of them UFO enthusiasts. It was February of 1993 and they were driving through the desert at night—heading towards Area 51. Tucker writes:

Suddenly from out of the darkness, a winged figure appeared on my left and flew directly toward my windshield. At the last possible moment, it veered and flew over the roof of my car. It was huge...and I suddenly realized (as my heart retraced its steps) that it must have been an owl, with perhaps a five-foot wingspan. I was now very alert and remained that way.

This is, in many ways, the ancient totem of the owl. Tucker was on a path towards the unknown—seeking. Suddenly he was VERY alert. For me, the owl plays the role of an alarm clock, telling the seeker to wake up and pay attention. 

Not long after seeing the owl they arrived atop a mesa just outside the ring of mountains encircling the mythic Area 51. His small team camped out that night on a hilltop within sight of the secret military base. They were hoping to see something that would confirm their suspicions. 

I awoke at 3:30 AM and exited the camper...and marveled at the clarity of the high mountain desert sky... I opened up a beach chaise lounge, slipped into a sleeping bag, lay back and surveyed the heavens.

As if on cue, from within the circle of mountains a light slowly rose up and above the peaks...and hung there in the night. THE LIGHT was yellowish-white and its intensity and hue varied with its movement. It was perfectly silent throughout the experience. I cannot say what shape the craft had, I cannot define its size, I cannot assert that it was built by or occupied by a man... or something else. It was, for me, simply THE LIGHT.

He goes on to describe the strange motions of this light in the sky. It seemed to float graceful and leisurely. Then he watched the commonly reported falling leaf movements as this light arched side to side like a heavy pendulum. He wrote that seeing this light, “...forever changed my belief systems.”

The next night was cold and clear. Once again he took up vigil in his sleeping bag, looking up at the ocean of stars.

As I lay back remembering the names of the sharply defined constellations above, the sky was suddenly blotted out—the stars disappeared! And as I rose in fear, the sky reappeared, and I defined the shape (like a huge manta ray, cruising along the ocean floor) of a gliding, hunting owl. He'd passed perhaps five feet over my head and I watched him as he flew, ‘nap of the earth’ along the desert floor...and disappeared into the night. 

Now, I'd seen zero owls in forty years...and within twenty-four hours, I'd had close encounters with two. Presumably different owls — but who knows? As much as I enjoyed the coincidence, I thought little about it for some time thereafter. Until in my reading (which was prodigious afterwards, dozens of books) I discovered Jung's description of what are called ‘screen memories.’ They arc a protective device of our minds when faced with anomalous or upsetting events. And apparently, for whatever reason, owls tend to be a rather common screen memory, particularly for other entities. But what they represented to me, I have yet to recall.

Tucker Smallwood begins a journey, he wants to see a UFO. He was seeking on the path (a lonely highway in Nevada) when he sees an owl, and is suddenly VERY alert. He has a golden UFO sighting that changes his belief systems. The next night an owl blots out the stars. He then ask deeply personal questions of himself and his place in this reality.

2006 autobiography

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but both his experiences and reactions, parallel the core of my research. On the surface, there is an odd connection between owl and UFOs. But there is a deeper connection, one of personal transformation.

These excerpts are from Tucker’s book Return to Eden. They come from the short chapter titled Dreamland, which begins on page 111, a prescient number indeed! His book was published on my 44th birthday, August 22, 2006. This is the year I point to as the start of my awakening.

Tucker makes this enticing statement in the foreword of his book:

I’ve been told that the four words ‘once upon a time’, when read or heard create an altered state of consciousness. Let’s see.

Now that’s somethin' I can get behind! 

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