(Danika - woman, age 25)
I am in one of the old buildings in Sweden where I was born. It's old with thick tenement walls. Inside there is an ice rink where a hockey game is being played. There I see three men who look like gangsters. They are taking jewellery away from some of the girls that are inside. I realise, that they will come after my jewellery too.
"Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth." - Henry David Thoreau
I decide to run, and one man runs after me. He is very fast, and I feel like I am running for my life. I am heading towards my house, and when I am halfway there I notice a huge wild bear laying down on some grass, just a little off from the footpath towards my house. It raises his head up as it sees me and for a moment we are looking into each other’s eyes. I am standing still and I am in shock. The bear moves slightly and gets up, I can tell that it is aggressive and wants to chase me. I quickly run inside a supermarket that is close by. There is a glass entrance door and once I get inside, I can't lock the door to keep myself safe. The bear is running after me, and leans on the glass door trying to open it with its body weight. I am pushing back from my side of the door. This is when I realise that I am dreaming, and I cannot die (be killed by this bear) and I am not scared anymore. I open the door, and the bear shrinks to the size of a puppy.
Dream interpretation:
The dreamer finds herself in the building which she associates with the place of her birth. She lived there until she was around eight years old. Therefore the building in the dream reveals psychic features linked to that period of the dreamer's life; her early childhood. She describes it to be old and robust which is likely to convey the atmosphere and principles that surrounded this period of her life. The hockey game which is played inside the building is manifesting her inner masculine energy. Seen in her dream, the game is an indication of the collective Animus manifested as a group of men competing within the frames of controlled rules. Such energy invokes something oblivious yet intriguing inside the dreamer's psyche. And from the perspective of time exposes strong masculine influences imposed on her during childhood. The building as a whole represents the features of the dreamer's younger Self, and the game played inside reveals a strong influence of an older man such as father or older brother during that time. The girls inside the building are getting robbed of the jewellery which reveals her perception of the Animus seen as being unsafe. As she describes, all the girls in the building wear jewellery hence the jewellery can be seen as a general personification of femininity.
In the next part the dreamer runs away in order to save her jewellery from being taken away. Consequently, she perceives masculinity as a threat. This part of the dream may be mirroring a belief to general distrust towards men in reality anchored in her childhood experience. When she is halfway home she notices a huge bear laying in the grass. Being halfway home may emphasise a stage of the individuation path. If we would look at this part of the dream as the allegory for developing personal autonomy and unique identity, so to speak halfway would suggest that at this stage the dream refers to more recent events in the dreamer's life rather than the childhood symbolised by the building. To take a step back in the plot after escaping from the building she was chased by one of the gangsters who may in fact indicate a person who she projects the Animus attributes in her real life. There were three gangsters in the building and in the dreamer context they could represent her father, older brother and her partner. One of the men follows the dreamer and symbolically pushes her into the encounter with the powerful and dangerous animal.
A bear symbolically refers to the maternal strength as well as the dreamer's individuation process. When she comes across a sleeping animal and awakens it, through eye contact she symbolically encounters her own primal instincts. A paralysing fear of the bear in the dream may in fact be manifesting the fear of the dreamer's mother's anger as a consequence of her individuation i.e. saving her jewellery. Also the bear which falls asleep and wakes up seasonally may symbolise a rebirth to the new stage of life. In order to synthesise this primal energy and find an inner strength coming from her own Self, she needs to look it in the eyes which symbolically happens in the dream. At first she is terrified of being ripped apart alive and tries to hide behind the glass door. The dream reveals that she may find protection there but at the same time, a see through glass signifies that despite the barrier the feared part of herself will always be seen inside. At the end of the dream she faces the fear and she realises that she has the power to control it.
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