When Animals Speak

I was reading an essay by Ursula Le Guin in her collection; "The Language of the Night," this morning. Le Guin is a brilliant science fiction author who dabbles heavily in Jung. She's talking about fantasy and the knee jerk reaction she's encountered with people disaproving of fantasy stories. I just started to read it, so I'm sure I'll find more gems, but this caught my attention. She quotes Von Franz's article, "The Problem of Evil in Fairytales":

"In this labyrinth where it seems one must trust to blind instinct, there is...one, only one, consistent rule or 'ethic': Anyone who earns the gratitude of animals, or whom they help for any reason, invariably wins out. This is the only unfailing rule that I have been able to find."

That's pretty much how I feel about dream animals. I always feel blessed when a dream animal shows up, and if they talk to me, even better. Sometimes they really scare me to the core; sometimes I am totally awed by them and sometimes they awaken deep confidence and the feeling of being unconditionally loved. Often, it's all these things at once. How about for you?

I have the great honor of meeting from time to time with a group of curious dream explorers. Last meeting, we journeyed into a big dream starring one of our dreamers and a sizeable black panther who spoke to him. It was wonderful; this animal fired each of our imaginations and I think gave the dreamer something to "chew" on for a while. How's that for a dream image?

In my night dreams all this year, I've had the great honor to encounter a black German Shepherd/wolf/man guide. I'll probably come back to this sometime. I just want to share with you that I do think animal dreams are great gifts. These are among the dreams I try to preserve in my journals and ponder in my imagination for a good long time. Robert Moss says some wonderful things in our DVD series and in his books about animals in dreams.

Since my cats often speak to me in dreams, here's Sunny looking like he has something to say.