Rabbit

Last night I dreamed of a rabbit.  It was nothing special.  A typical brown Florida rabbit hopping unexpectedly into the scene of the dream from a place that rabbits might live.  It was not even part of the storyline of the dream.  It just occurred as a moment in the dream.  It didn't do anything magical or strange.  Just looked at me and then hopped on about it's business.  This is common for me with dream symbols and I've learned to pay attention to them when they occur.

Truthfully, I didn't even think much about it until my wife mentioned a rabbit today and the recollection of the dream flooded back.  But then she said she also dreamed of a rabbit last night, though in a different form.  That really made me start thinking.

Now, I'm wont to over think everything, so this in itself may be the meaning of the symbol, but since understanding a dream is more about understanding how the dreamer reacted to the symbol and what it means to that person, I thought to write it out and see what occurs.

I looked up typical meanings of rabbits in dreams, in myths, in folklore.  There's a lot there about magic and innocence, and helplessness, and fertility, and cunning, but it really has more to do with the associations I give rabbits, so I wasn't settled on any one thing.

So how do I view rabbits?  I think most of Br'er Rabbit.  They are smart, cunning, elusive, mischievous.  While they can be seen as innocent and helpless, I don't view them that way.  In fact, I'm more apt to see them as kind of mean.  This comes from experiences with real rabbits.  Their cute looks bely teeth and claws.  They fight with each other, bite, and even abandon their young.  But this is part of their nature and secondary in my mind.  We are all of us made up of pleasant and not so pleasant aspects that form a synergistic whole. 

So for me, rabbits are uncatchable without weapons.  Not needing to eat them, I see them as fellow creatures sharing a space.  They are relatively untameable, adaptable.  We find them existing in close proximity to us and often not even known.  Unlike other commensal species, they keep their distance and do relatively little nuisance to us.

I once had an experience with a rabbit as part of a school project to experience 'place'.  I had to visit the same place for a set duration for a set period of time and record anything of note both internal and external.  Then cap it off with a presentation expressing what I had learned of the place.

My place was a little grove where a rabbit just like the one in the dream kept appearing as well.  It would come out and lounge and I began to try to take a picture of it up close.  But this required some stalking with my old disposable camera.  This sparked a silent game in which I would wait for it, then stalk, only to be foiled at the moment of the shutter click when it would bounce away.  By the end of the project I had given up and decided to say my goodbyes and admit defeat.  That very last day, the rabbit appeared again and this time brought out several little ones in tow.  This mother allowed me to see them this once, showed me to them, and quickly herded them back into their lair.  It was truly a moment of understanding for us both.  She had been playing with me all along, protecting her young which were no doubt watching from the brush.

I was reminded of Br'er Rabbit.  The stories I had grown up on told of this tricky cunning nature.  So I capped my project by sketching my rabbit friend as Br'er Rabbit.  And to this day, I always greet rabbits kindly and respectfully when I see them.  This is my primary association with the animal.

But another aspect of understanding a dream is how the image in the dream was perceived in the dream.  What emotions and thoughts did it arouse?  This is difficult and I won't blog all the details since they are complex and very personal.  There is a bit of a revelatory or capstone nature to it.  Sort of cementing or confirming the effects of some good changes that have happened in my life.  And there is a bit of the fear representation element, though it is a subtle care more than a real fear, like the fear of breaking something delicate.  Then there is the aspect of fertility, though not my own or my wife's that is at issue. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly is the aspect of intuition.  The rabbit looked at me and a moment of understanding passed.  Since rabbits can represent intuition, I am confirmed in thinking that it might have been a message to let go of my rationality in certain situations of my life and go with my intuition.  My logic doubts it, but perhaps this dream was telling me to trust it.

The symbol is so complex, but it all rolls into one cloudy sort of point at one particular complex thing in my waking life.  I am becoming more settled on this as I write.  If I dream it again that could confirm or change it.  But either way, time will tell.