Happy Chinese New Year – Year of the snake!
When people ask what their dreams mean, those with snakes are one of most common topics. Generally, Westerners find the presence of snakes troubling in their dreams. While I can’t say what “The Snake” means in a dream, because dreaming is fluid and each dream is alive to the person dreaming it (e.g. there are no symbols in dreaming), I can talk about snakes as a dreaming animal which may shed some light on how to look at snakes the next time you might dream one.
Snakes are known in many cultures as mystical animals. They are said to be able to cross between both worlds – the physical and the spiritual. Why could this be? Let’s dream it.
As with all dreaming, images must be experienced. When snakes ready to change their skin, they first go to a quiet place, become very still, and create a film over their eyes. They are neither dead nor fully alive – they are immobile and have gone deeply inside in order to do the work of metamorphosis. They remain in this state for hours and even days – not eating, not moving, eyes closed. What human spiritual practice does this make you think of? What happens if you close your eyes and sit quietly?
Snakes are the original meditaters. They are shamanic animals because, after going deeply inside – into the still, quiet space of the inner self – they emerge with a new skin. What does it mean to have a new skin? To be completely transformed? To have shed an old self in exchange for something new and glistening, open to possibility?
Now, to be exact, snakes can also bite. If we close our eyes and sit quietly, the truths from our inner are able to bubble up – truths that, during the running, busy, eyes-open daytime routines we often dismiss or never even hear. But because they are our deepest truths they are insistent. So, if we DON’T take time to sit, get still, and listen, we can be bitten. If we run from that which we know to be our deepest truth whatever we do in its stead will bite in the form of disappointments, regret, actions we perceive as mistakes, and so on.
So while snakes have the potential to bite, they also offer the potential for radical transformation. It all depends on the perspective taken by the participant.
How do you dream the dream? What will your Year of the Snake become?
