The meaning of a polar bear in dream imagery

One of the happiest and most emotionally positive signs you can see in your dreams involves that of a polar bear. This is what makes trying out to figure out the meaning of a polar bear in dream imagery so tricky.

This is not a normal bear, not the type that you can stumble upon in the woods and possibly get attacked by.

Usually, pilot polar bears do not elicit feelings of fear, panic, and impending death.

Instead, they connect with us from a very positive place.

Usually in the West, when we think of the fall and winter seasons, we think about Christmas.

We think about the gifts under the tree, the festivities around the winter fire, and of course, the presence.

There’s something childlike about the whole holiday season.

In fact, it’s not unusual for a kid to start looking forward to the present in the good times of Christmas, right in the middle of January.

That’s right, the holidays have barely ended and you are already looking forward to the next holiday season.

Polar Bear is a part of that happy childhood memory.

But it resonates because it comes from a very sensitive part of ourselves.

This is the part of our persona that has the power to anticipate, it has the power to imagine all sorts of great things and feel so motivated that it’s able to wait.

In fact, it is the waiting that makes it all worth it.

These and other related realities make up the meaning of a polar bear in dreams.

From this set of attitudes and mental and emotional states, many people perceive courage, good luck, perseverance, happiness, serenity, and emotional self-reliance.

To be sure, there are many more on the list.

But the polar bear image in dreams is very big as it is quite deep.

You have to pay close attention to the context because if you just focus on the fact that there’s this polar bear in the foreground of your dream, chances are you’re probably reading it wrong.

You might end up making certain decisions in your waking state that operates off a misreading of this amazing dream symbol.

It can be a sign of fright

The first contextual meaning of a polar bear in dreams involves a sense of fear.

You may be asking yourself, “Why would you fear something positive? Why would you fear something that brings so many good memories?”.

Well, the part of you that is feeling fearful is the part that has matured.

Obviously, if you’re reading this and you’re over the age of 18, you’re no longer a child.

You should no longer look at the world from the eyes of a child.

And although a lot of us grew up with a certain amount of childhood trauma, for the most part, the reason why we are here is that the adults in our lives have done enough to make sure we make it to adulthood.

This is not talked about often enough.

Many people look at this development as some sort of given.

They automatically assume that since they’re born into this world is the responsibility of their people, for them to make it all the way through.

Not quite.

In fact, it’s the opposite.

A lot of people had to claw their way out.

Many people struggle with where their next meal will come from, or if they might get stabbed to death in their sleep.

That’s the kind of world we live in.

And when you view your dream polar bears with a sense of fright, your subconscious is trying to communicate to you that your adult consciousness understands the cost of naivete, idealism, and optimism.

But here’s the problem.

You can be so fearful that you just focus on the price of such a mindset and neglect its value.

This is the classic case of confusing price with value.

Sure, there’s a tremendous risk of loss.

Who wants to be embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated?

It’s as if you show up to a gunfight armed with a knife doesn’t make any sense.

Why would you focus on this childlike nature that is a part of your persona, with its wide-eyed sense of possibilities and adventure when you’re surrounded by sharks?

It doesn’t seem to make sense and that’s why your adult subconscious is showing signs of fright.

But two things can be true at the same time.

You can actually get out from under your fear by tapping your power of imagination which the child in you possesses.

You have to understand it as you get older you’ll feel more competent precisely because you have learned how to take a lot of the things that you normally pay attention to.

You develop tunnel vision.

Many adults confuse this with mastery.

But we achieve it at quite a cost.

When you see a polar bear in your dream your subconscious is trying to tell you there is a happy ground.

But even then, there is a middle way between harnessing the power of the child within and benefiting from its intuition, imagination, and a deep and profound sense of connection to the Unformed and the chaos of the universe while at the same time minimizing the risk.

There is a fine line.

What does it mean to dream of being the prey of a polar bear?

Your subconscious is trying to communicate an emotional state that you may find yourself in far too often.

You get the sense that the easy streak of your life is over.

Now you have to earn each step you make forward.

This applies across all areas of your life.

For instance, if you’ve been investing all this time, and for close to decades now, you look forward to predictable returns from your investment.

Your subconscious may signify that those days are over.

It’s not, because you’re some sort of profit of the financial markets, it’s because you’re able to tell the signs.

If you’re an investor, you check out the Dow Jones, you read online financial news, and you probably even watch financial channels on cable.

Whatever the case may be, your subconscious is beginning to connect the dots and it is not looking at the big picture as far as your investments are concerned.

It’s not looking good.

Its image of you being the prey of a polar bear to let you know that the easy times are all but over.

But this doesn’t mean that financial ruin is right around the corner.

Instead, it is a call to action.

Maybe you need to roll up your sleeves and figure out how great opportunities often masquerade themselves as looming financial trouble.

What if I told you that more millionaires are made during an economic crash than during boom years?

Employees with 401 k’s and other private retirement funds do really well during boom years.

But those who make their money through investing get away like robbers during crashes.

So don’t think that just because you see yourself being the prey of a polar bear and you’re running away from its terrible ferocity and size that bad times are up ahead.

No.

With the right perspective and armed with correct financial data, you may be able to unlock the tremendous financial opportunities presented by market crashes.

Beware of memories from your childhood

Another important contextual meaning of polar bears involves our tendency to sentimentalize our childhood.

People are prisoners of their past to some extent.

It’s easy to see the negative connotation of this.

When you constantly think back on a time when your aunt, uncle, or even your parents abused you, you can’t help but feel a negative range of emotions from feeling sorry for yourself to unquenchable anger, and the need for vengeance.

All the strong emotions just grip you and oftentimes they come in waves in different combinations.

One moment you’re feeling terribly sad and the next moment you want to get back and then the next moment you feel bitter.

This is the easy-to-understand part.

You can easily talk about this type of childhood memories and emotional reactions with a licensed certified social worker or counselor.

But the bigger problem is deceptive.

It is when we look at our childhood as golden ages.

When we do this golden age is filled with happy memories, we focus on the fact that we didn’t seem to have any problems.

When we do this, we delude ourselves because we put up this foil to our current reality.

In truth, our childhood is no more nor less ideal than our present reality.

We live in the real world, there are ups and downs, black and white, ins and outs.

It’s never one color, and it definitely is never golden.

Though when you imagine some sort of ideal childhood, you’re basically trying to emotionally insulate yourself from having to do real work today to deal with actual past trauma.

Similarly, you will tap into these positive emotions and predictably positive mental states they trigger because you don’t want to accept certain hard truths in your current life.

For instance, somebody in your family might have an addiction.

So just like an 800-pound elephant in the middle of the room, everybody talks around it.

It’s as if everybody’s tiptoeing on eggshells, they know it for what it is, and they can definitely call it by its right name, but they choose not to.

They don’t want to upset the shared delusion from addictions to cheating in the family to financial issues, or even health problems.

People do this all the time.

Are you doing this to yourself by using your past?

That is the bigger issue.

So your subconscious can be using the polar bear image with all its almost automatic positive vibes as a contrast or a foil to your emotional reality.

The polar bear as a call to adaptation

I came across a video recently on TikTok, where the commentator said the image of a grossly thin bear was that of a polar bear.

I knew that polar bears are actually dark-skinned underneath all that white fur, but I wasn’t prepared to see just how thin this animal was.

Please note that polar bears only exist on the North Pole.

Penguins on the other hand can only be found on the South Pole.

(Just a little bit of trivia there)

Due to climate change, with the ice flows disappearing, polar bears are having a tough time ambushing seals their main source of sustenance.

And it’s no surprise that many polar bears are dying and this image of this polar bear is really just heartbreaking.

When your subconscious shows you a polar bear image and it’s out hunting or it’s perched on an ice floe waiting for a seal to pop up from the water, pay close attention to the context.

This is a picture of preparation, focus, and even poise.

Your subconscious is trying to communicate to you that you need to adapt better to your environment.

This is easier said than done.

After all, we are creatures of convenience.

Our habits define us and once our habits are set it’s very hard to break out of their orbit.

In fact, a lot of people would rather dissolve their marriages, quit their jobs, fold up their businesses, and make other major decisions instead of giving up on their habits.

Still, your subconscious is trying to tell you, that you need to adapt.

Because those polar bears that are dying on those ever thinner ice flow due to climate change are getting fewer and fewer.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “I’m doomed. How do I adapt? I’ve been in this industry for so long. How can I explore new career territories or new opportunities?”

Well, it’s actually quite simple, use the 1% rule.

Make a tiny 1% change once a week and after a year of constant experimentation and changes, you’re halfway there.

It doesn’t have to be dramatic.

You don’t have to make a big production out of it.

Just do it.

And the good news is our egos are less likely to react in a negative way to change when it is tiny and incremental.

But what’s important is those tiny incremental changes are consistently scaled up.

That’s how you get out from under your habit.

Polar bears as a sign of deceit

Polar bears get their meals when an unsuspecting seal pops its head above the water near an ice flow.

Little does it know that is drawing its last breath because on top of that ice floe, is a polar bear.

But it’s razor-sharp claws and hundreds of pounds of ferocious slashing power ready to pounce at a split second.

It would really be terrifying indeed, to find oneself in the way of such power.

But for it to constantly have seals on its menu it uses the power of surprise.

Polar bears are Snow White for a reason.

They blend into their background.

But when you shave off the fur, a polar bear is actually dark-skinned if not black.

It uses the element of surprise to its advantage.

When you see a polar bear in your dream and the context is one of hunting and springing a surprise, your subconscious is trying to communicate to you that it’s picking up signals in certain relationships and certain work groups or collaborations where there are signs of betrayal.

Of course, the Judas betrayal is the most famous in history.

But your personal version of that doesn’t have to be as grandiose or as dramatic.

It can be as simple as somebody sharing something that you communicated to somebody in confidence.

It can be as simple as something as a person going against their word.

Whatever the case may be, you will know it.

It will be upfront but it will sting nonetheless.

You view it as a sign of betrayal, although they’re being upfront.

You’re thinking that they are deceitful but it depends on how it’s done.

You may be out of line.

If you shared something in confidence with somebody and tell them that it’s your secret, that’s one thing.

But if you then share that same info again on social media, and then the next time among a group of friends, that’s another thing entirely.

It would really be unfair for you to hold that person, you will initially share that info with to some sort of oath or bond when you yourself are spreading that info.

Do you understand how this works?

A lot of people operate on this level.

They tell themselves, “Well, I told this person first. They know me in and out. And even though I have blurted it out to everybody else, I still am going to hold a grudge against this person”.

And you have to pay close attention to the context of the deceit.

There has to be actual deception.

It has to come up as a real surprise.

You have to understand that being backstabbed hurts even more precisely because it is a surprise.

But on the other hand, if you knowingly said certain things and it triggered a chain reaction, and you end up suffering for it, that’s on you.

You weren’t betrayed.

You weren’t backstabbed.

But there’s a part of us, our psyche, that loves to play the victim.

We love to exaggerate emotionally so we think, “Whoa, this was a surprise. It came from an unlikely quarter, I trusted these people so they backstab me”.

Well, you might want to look at the facts.

I’m not saying that there are no signs of deceit, but make sure you call a spade a spade.

What does it mean to dream of hunting of polar bear?

If you see yourself hunting a polar bear, either with a rifle or better yet a bow and arrow, this indicates that you are beginning to become a fully self-aware person.

You understand that the internal script that you will listen to, about who you are, where you’re going, what you can and cannot be, and even your definition of what a good life is, are all choices.

If you see yourself hunting a polar bear, regardless of what happens in the dream, you are definitely going in the right direction.

Unfortunately, most people never get here.

They think that the way they think is just part of their identity, they just “things just turned out our way”.

Talk about a passive way to live.

How can you say you want the very best in life and how can you say that you truly have goals to become the very best version of yourself when you have this deep and profound sense of passivity locked within you?

The things that you say and visibly aspire for do not line up with how you emotionally carry yourself.

Do you see the disconnect?

Unfortunately, this is why a lot of people live the way they do.

They don’t see the disconnect.

They operate on two totally different rounds.

They compartmentalize these two aspects of their psyche and that’s why they continue to be frustrated, and in many cases even suffer.

Well, if you see yourself hunting a polar bear, this image indicates deliberation and most importantly, self-awareness.

You’re definitely on the right track.

Keep at it.

What does it mean to dream of a polar bear chasing you?

You have to be very careful of the “truths” you tell yourself.

All of us have this internal script, telling us who we are, where we came from, what we’re about, and what we were aiming for.

This varies from person to person, you may think that this is not that big of a deal.

Well, it is.

What if it’s based on a lie?

What if it’s based on the worst form of self-defeat and low self-esteem?

What if it’s based on somebody else’s expectations of you?

Do you see how this works?

When you see a sign of a polar bear chasing you, you have to understand that the things that you choose to believe about your past, your childhood, and their implications as I turned out as a human being should be under question.

You should constantly pick them apart.

In fact, the picture should be you.

It should involve some sort of role reversal, it should be you’re chasing the bear.

But in your dream, you’re the one being chased.

It’s as if you’re trying to live up to all these positive memories that you think you had from your childhood and here you are feeling miserable because things aren’t lining up.

For example, you imagine that your family life was warm, accepting, encouraging, and empowering but here you are dealing with mommy and daddy issues, or where she had you’re a parent now, and you feel that you’re letting your kids down.

Maybe you’re not emotionally there for them, maybe you can’t provide for them financially as you feel you should.

Whatever the shortcoming may be, it’s because it is in the context of a comparison to an ideal childhood that you think you remember.

But in reality, it’s the polar bear with its connotations of the past chasing you.

You’re trying to live up to it.

There’s a problem here.

Flip the script, hunt the bear, pick it apart, and make it serve you.

What does it mean to dream of a pet polar bear?

There are two ways to interpret this.

It depends on the positioning.

Do you have a pet polar bear?

Or are you the pet polar bear?

Pay close attention to the point of view of your dream.

If it’s all first-person, and you’re not seeing the bear, but people are referring to a bear, chances are you are the pet polar bear.

On the other hand, if you see a polar bear being all cute in front of you, and you’re treating it like a pet, then the interpretation is completely different.

If you are the pet polar bear, there’s a part of you that refuses to grow up.

There’s a part of you that is so convinced that your past is the very best and that your future will never ever live up to what happened in the past that you can let go of it and it is having a negative effect on your relationship with others in your life.

Either you hold them up to impossible standards or you hold yourself up to a standard that you know you can’t be.

So as you can well imagine that there are a tremendous amount of chain reactions that could emanate from such a strategy, and most of them were not good.

We’re talking about hypocrisy, constant emotional exaggeration, his bionics holding people up to impossible standards, analyzing people’s behavior in the past based on today’s standards, and so on and so forth.

It’s a mess.

And what’s really happening here is that you have an improper relationship with your past
I use that phrase deliberately because we all have a relationship with our past.

It could be an empowering relationship or it could be an oppressive one.

You get to pick.

And unfortunately, if we put our past onto some sort of pedestal and use it as the golden standard for everything that will happen in the future, We’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

So many people are under the impression that their best days are behind them so they lose themselves in nostalgia.

For some, this is justified because they did live substantial lives.

You’ve invented something or you pioneered some sort of discovery.

Feel free to do that.

Feel free to wallow in nostalgia.

But for the rest of us, mortals trying to get some sort of emotional rush from an idealized picture of the past is as useless as it is dangerous.

So imagine yourself as the pet polar bear, being all cute leads to an emotional dead end.

It doesn’t give you the right set of coping tools that you need to deal with the here and now.

On the other hand, if you see a pet polar bear, this indicates a sense of mastery, you know where your past lives, you know the proper relationship with the past, and instead, you’re focused on your life now.

At the very least you paint your tendency to over-sentimentalize and exaggerate the positive aspects of your past.

So if you have a pet polar bear in your dream, congratulations.

Again, just like the image of you hunting this animal, you are definitely on the right track.

On the other hand, if you imagine yourself as a polar bear pet, that’s going to be a problem.

What does it mean to dream that you kill the polar bear?

It only depends on the emotional state that you remember in your dream.

Did you see the polar bear chase you and you turn around and shoot it in the face with a shotgun?

Or they do have the polar bear and after huffing and puffing and sweating profusely, as you position yourself for the optimal shot, you end up killing the bear?

These are two totally different contexts but they all lead to the same place.

You have dealt with a very important aspect of your psyche that controls how you think about the past.

For people who used to view the past as oppressive and containing only traumatic memories of abuse, neglect, and abandonment, killing a polar bear can indicate a more realistic and mature assessment of your past.

Please understand that this doesn’t make facts that involve abuse go away.

Facts are facts, those things really happened at a specific place in a specific time.

Until and unless you can get into a time machine and erase those facts, those are not going to go away.

Instead, we’re talking about how you choose to read them and just as important how you choose to retain them.

There’s a big difference between the past and “history”.

The past is a collection of facts, either they happened or they didn’t.

If they didn’t, they’re not facts.

Open and shut, black and white.

History, on the other hand, is a series of opinions.

Your personal history is going to be different when you’re 20 years old than when you are 30, 40, and most importantly, when you’re 50.

Pay close attention to what you deem as your personal history because for the most part, it
reflects your priorities at the time you’re making that assessment.

The sad thing is that people have it in reverse.

They look at their personal history as some sort of reflection of the truth from years gone by.
This was who I was.

Are you sure?

Or are you just reading your present frustrations, hopes, dreams, and misgivings to the same old facts?

And as the years go by, and your challenges change with them, your history changes as well.

Funny how that works, right?

So make sure you know the difference between your past and your personal history.

Your personal history is your reading.

It’s your reading of the facts, it’s your personal take.

But if you were to ask your partner or your best friend to experience those same things with you, at a certain place at a certain time in the past, they might tell you a completely different history.

Why?

They’re looking at it with a different mindset.

They have a different perspectives.

So understand that we have this tendency to read into the issues that we’re wrestling with today.

When you kill a polar bear because it was chasing you, this indicates a maturing attitude regarding your past.

Just how important is the past?

Let’s put it this way, your past determines your present and your present determines your future.

If you constantly believe that you are a certain type of person because of past facts that you hang on to it while neglecting others, don’t be all that surprised if your present decisions lead to certain future events.

You may not be happy with the results but the causation is clear as day.

Do you see how this works?

You have to have a healthy relationship with your past and paradoxically, the best way to do this is to hunt the bear.

You’re going to sweat, you’re going to put into work.

I’m not talking about physical work.

I’m talking about emotional work.

Believe me, nothing is harder than breaking away from your delusions and setting them because that involves setting aside your ego.

What does it mean to see an aggressive polar bear in your dreams?

Be very careful of over-sentimentalizing certain people and definitely the past.

If you see an aggressive polar bear in your dream, you’re basically retreating too much into the past.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look at past facts to help you navigate present issues that are similar to past events.

You’re just being practical if you do that, but I’m talking about your reading of the past, your opinion about those facts.

Again, there’s a big difference between “the past and personal history”.

Know the difference.

And if you see an aggressive polar bear, this means that you’re slipping in your distinction between the two.

This can cause real issues as far as your waking life goes.

What does it mean to see a baby polar bear?

If you see a polar bear cub, you are beginning to be more at peace with the positive things that happened in your past.

I know this can go to strike a lot of people as unusual and strange.

But you best believe that so many people have this abnormal fixation with negative experiences from the past.

They focus only on the “cautionary tales” instead of giving recognition and even celebrating the things that went right.

Maybe you’re so focused on the fact that your parents divorced when you were 17.

As traumatic as that may be for some people, it doesn’t excuse turning a blind eye to the fact that they gave you a great life prior to that point.

You may have moved to several neighborhoods as your parents clawed their way up the financial ladder.

They may have gone out of their way to make sure that you did not experience the problems that they had when they were growing up.

Those stories that your dad would tell you, “When I was your age, I had to walk 10 miles to school”, or “We didn’t have the internet back then we were just passing notes”.

It would make for great laughs, especially during thanksgiving.

But there’s a lot of wisdom in those stories.

They’re basically reminding you that “We love you so much. We don’t want you to experience what we had. We want you to start with a better place. And the best that you can do to repay us for doing that is to do the same for your children”.

But we don’t do that.

We focus on what went wrong, or what was missing.

I can go on and on about friends of mine who lived lives that many people would kill for.

I’m talking about annual Europe vacations, a wardrobe that you only wear once, getting a Porsche on your 16th birthday, that kind of thing.

And they focus on, “Dad, one day saying the wrong word”, or “Mom suddenly becoming cold”.

I’m not saying that these are completely meaningless and you’re just a drama queen or king, blowing things out of proportion.

But it’s a good idea to have proportion.

When you see a baby polar bear in your dreams, you are beginning to have the right relationship with your readings of your memories of the past.

It’s one thing to have memories of the past, it’s another to read them in a way that empowers you and makes your life more productive.

At the end of the day, it’s all a choice.

We can focus on what’s missing, what’s gone wrong, or what got warped.

We can do that all day every day.

In fact, you won’t exactly be alone, there are too many people doing that nowadays.

It really is quite interesting how when one person’s belly becomes failed and all their basic needs are taken care of, they will almost always look for other problems to solve.

Like you can take that in the bank.

So what I’m saying here is that your subconscious is trying to show you perspective.

Is that polar bear very happy?

But you need to take care of it.

And the best way to take care of it is to read it properly and understand what goes into your reading.