Let’s face it, if you dreamt of a skunk, chances are you probably woke up and asked yourself, “What the hell did I just dream about?” Any attempt at getting at an accurate and serious skunk dream meaning must clear this hurdle.
Usually, people wouldn’t go out of their way to dream about this animal that squirts a very noxious smell.
In fact, in most cases, people would really go out of their way just to avoid skunks.
This level of disgust and discomfort is what makes getting to the bottom of any skunk dream so difficult.
General meaning of skunk dreams
If you’ve dreamt of a skunk, you might be easily forgiven for wanting to forget that you’re trapped by this animal because part of you is probably thinking, “There is no good in it anyway. What’s the big deal? It’s a skunk. It stinks. I’m gonna forget about this dream”.
This is a very natural response.
Because there are certain animals that we think are just so plainly awful, that they don’t merit any deeper scrutiny or analysis.
But since we’re talking about dream symbols here, the skunk can actually represent good things happening to you right now or about to happen to you in the near future.
This is counterintuitive.
Because usually people equate skunks with bad smells, or even shut down locations.
For example, if a skunk enters a classroom, it is common practice for many organizations to at least shut down that classroom for a few hours or even a couple of days for the smell to clear out.
How can such an animal symbolize good fortune and going further, some sort of happiness?
Well, a lot of this has to do with the confidence of the skunk.
The skunk knows that it stinks.
And that’s why it’s not afraid of many predators.
It has a certain confidence that enables it to go to places where other animals its size, they’re not going.
This fact about skulks points to the deeper realities regarding fortune, and personal happiness and contentment.
You have to be confident with what you have, and what you’re capable of having or producing or getting.
If you’re able to achieve that level of confidence, it doesn’t really matter how much money you actually have in your bank statement.
As long as you have objective proof that you can make stuff happen up to a certain level, that is a solid foundation for confidence and by extension, happiness.
Why?
A lot of people’s unhappiness stems from the fact that they feel that other people have more than them, or they have to catch up, or they somehow are incomplete or inadequate.
A skunk doesn’t suffer from any of those issues because it knows who it is.
You have to be comfortable in your skin and this requires confidence and for confidence to materialize, you have to have a realistic appreciation of your real competence level.
Confidence is not something that other people give to you.
That is a shallow kind of “confidence” that is very dangerous.
Why?
People can always withhold their approval.
What happens to you and your confidence then?
Also building your confidence based on other people’s approval is like building on sand.
People are fickle.
People change their minds.
People are inherently evil.
Do you see how this works?
Do you see how this can lead to tragedy?
Your subconscious is showing you there is strength in the confidence of a skunk.
It’s not cocky.
It doesn’t overextend itself, or engage in overreach.
It just knows who it is.
And it’s perfectly content.
I mean it to put it in a humorous way, it’s like listening to the skunk say, “I am who I am. I know it stinks. But this is who I am”.
You should be comfortable in your own skin.
Stop trying to be other people.
Stop pretending to be other people.
Find the values that you want for yourself and live them out.
That’s how you define a well lived life and a life you can live from.
What is the meaning of baby skunk dreams?
When you dream of baby skunks, this indicates that you are beginning to be aware of your limitations.
This is not a depressing thing.
There’s a lot of space within the walls of your limitations.
Develop that space fully before pushing against the walls of your comfort zone.
This is how you build mastery.
You have to have some sort of base.
Just as a baby needs to take baby steps.
And just as a baby skunk needs to eat baby skunk food before it becomes an adult, so should you when it comes to your inner emotional and psychological resources.
Start with what you have.
A lot of people play this game in a completely different way.
They start by desiring what other people already have.
Those people have already gone through many different steps.
They are already further along in their journey.
It doesn’t make any sense where you do want what they have.
If anything, you didn’t bother to ask yourself a key question, “Am I willing to pay what they paid to get to where they are?”
People don’t think about such questions, because if they did, the answer is no.
Because you have what you have right now.
Deal with it.
What does it mean to dream of a skunk spraying people inside a home?
There are a lot of people around you who say that they have your best interest in mind.
There are a lot of people who say that they’re your friend or that they love you because you’re a member of their family.
Though at a certain level, this is true.
But at the end of the day, everybody is out for themselves.
Everybody’s got enough problems of their own.
So if you develop this attitude, that whatever personal issues you may have automatically become the issues of the people around you who supposedly love you, then you’re in for a nasty surprise later on in life.
It doesn’t work that way.
It wasn’t built to work that way.
Because at the end of the day, you are responsible for your own issues.
You are on your own journey alone.
The other people can encourage you but at the end of the day, they are also carrying their load and traveling alone.
So once you can wrap your head around this and understand that you are fully responsible for how your emotional life turns out, the better off you would be.
Stop asking other people to save you from your decisions and the consequences of your choices.
It’s unfair to them and unfair to you.
This means reconnecting with the skunk in you.
Stop asking for perfection.
Stop comparing yourself to others and say “I will be a better person if I’m like this other person”.
No.
Build with what you have.
Walk your journey.
Know every inch ahead of the path ahead of you.
That’s how it works.
And the longer you stay ignorant of this, the longer you will continue to struggle.
In many cases you can end tragically where you live your life thinking you’re one person when in reality you’re another.
What does it mean to dream that you smell like a skunk?
If you see yourself smelling yourself and it smells noxious, this is not a bad sign.
You may be disgusted in your dream.
But the spiritual meaning of this is that you are finally getting it.
You’re finally understanding that you are different.
People will be upset with certain parts of you, people will not like you because of certain things that you do or say, that is all fine.
Because this is who you are.
You reached the point where you can take stock of who you are and you can then map out the boundaries of where you begin, and where others end.
I’m talking about your parents.
I’m talking about people who influence you.
I’m talking about the smaller segment of society that surrounds you on a day to day basis.
When you see yourself smell like a skunk in your dream, this is the beginning of an adult realization of the true extent of identity.
Now, does this mean that you’re going to be completely happy with what you find out?
No.
And that’s part of what makes the challenge so interesting.
Because at some point, you begin to choose who you want to be but you do it with open eyes.
You don’t do it blindly like saying, “Well, I like daddy. So I’m going to be like Daddy”.
Why?
What for?
How come?
Or “I like Mommy, because she has a lot of positive traits. I’m going to be like Mommy”.
Are you sure about that?
Have you thought this through?
When you ask yourself such questions, and you’ll become more honest with why you’re deciding on certain things regarding your personal values, you get closer to the answer that makes sense to you individually.
What does it mean to dream of getting rid of skunk smell?
If you see yourself rubbing yourself with perfume or detergent, or soap frantically with an air of desperation, your subconscious manifests to you that you are rushing through your process of self awareness.
Maybe you’ve signed up for a meditation program and you look at it in a very mechanistic way.
You’re saying to yourself, “Okay, I’m gonna meditate 20 minutes a day. Later on, I’m going to set it up to 30 minutes a day. And during my meditation practice, my mind is quiet exactly for this amount of minutes”.
While I’m a big fan of tracking and accurate record keeping, there is such a thing as taking things to a fire, because you end up missing the forest from the trees.
It’s not about the numbers per se.
Sure you’re logging in more minutes now meditating and practicing mindfulness.
That’s great.
But make sure that you redeem the time.
You’re not just ticking a box on a checklist.
You’re not just going through the motions.
Because when you focus on the present moment by practicing mindfulness or meditation, not only do you relax deeply, but you will get mental and spiritual clarity.
This leads to you being able to resolve past issues, to not think emotionally and take more control over your decision making processes.
In other words, this is heavy duty stuff.
And you can’t just put this in a straitjacket of a fixed schedule where you think that the more minutes you invest in this type of activity, the better your results will be.
No.
It’s not mechanistic at all.
Focus on redeeming as much results and value from the time that you spend it.
And for you to do that, you have to be mentally and spiritually present at that time.
You can’t say, “Okay, this is a time block for self improvement. And after that I have another time block for work or for something else”.
If you do that, then you rob this block of time of the full value we could have had.
What does it mean to dream of panicking when a skunk is passing?
People dream in projections.
And a lot of the time, we actually react in fear in our dreams to reflect envy, jealousy, or covetousness.
This is one of those types of dreams.
When you see a skunk pass, and this panic overcomes you, because you don’t want to deal with the smell there’s a deep and profound respect you have for people who are simply comfortable in their skins.
A lot of people hate them.
A lot of people misunderstand them.
They rubbed so many people the wrong way.
But it seems that they don’t really care because they have that look, and the way they talk and the way they carry themselves indicate that they are who they are.
That gets your respect.
But you don’t want to say it.
In fact, you respect it so much that you wish you had that kind of courage.
But here you are, another facing the crowd going along to get along.
Sounding like everybody else, thinking like everybody else.
When you see a skunk pass, and you’re disgusted, part of this is envy.
But envy can be very dangerous.
It is dangerous, probably not in the way you think.
It’s dangerous, because you might think that there is a certain formula “to be yourself”.
In the United States, we make a big deal about being ourselves because this is the land of second and third chances.
People who have migrated here historically have zero money.
In many cases, a lot of them got kicked out of their home countries.
This is where they come to reinvent themselves.
That is our ideal: mavericks, pioneers.
People wouldn’t take no for an answer.
People who marched by the beat of their own drummer who lay down their own path.
Rugged individuals.
And that’s why the primary American value (that can be reflected in its long foreign policy history when it comes to other countries) is freedom.
You only need to look at the Declaration of Independence to understand just how fundamental that concept is.
It doesn’t matter what you look like.
It doesn’t matter what accent you speak with.
It doesn’t matter what God you worship or if you would worship no God.
It doesn’t matter what your gender is.
It doesn’t matter who you choose to sleep with.
Freedom is the foundation of the American experience.
But here’s the irony.
We talk a good game about freedom, individualism and being unique.
But in practice you see a completely different store.
Whether it is a suburb out there in middle America or a typical inner city high school, what unites us is this need to conform.
Have you ever noticed that certain people from a certain part of your state tend to look the same?
I’m not talking about being cousins or genetically related because they can come from different countries migrated here.
Pay attention to how they dress.
Pay attention to what they talk about.
Pay attention to how they talk about the things that others are talking about.
You will see a pattern.
It’s conformity.
So when you see a skunk in your dream and you’re disgusted, there is this danger that you think that you are being yourself that has some sort of uniform.
This is where your conformist mindset comes in because there is no standard.
There is no fixed set of rules.
A unique person is unique precisely because of their specific experience.
Walk your own path alone.
You can be inspired by others but what you end up with is the look, the feel, the ethos, or the overall persona, is you.
That’s how it works.
Don’t just copy nonconformity.
It’s funny in the 1980s I was into hardcore punk.
And a lot of people were into heavy metal and in the later day trends in disco, and people griefed the punk community.
They said “You’re freaks. You’re weirdos”.
And it was kind of bittersweet.
When the 2000s came around and radio stations that used to play punk music now became the dominant radio outlet in most media markets in the United States.
And when I check out that scene, and I turn on the radio it’s the same level of conformity.
But now we’re conforming by being non conformist.
But when you look at the fashion that got big, especially after Nirvana broke through, everybody was a clone of each other.
This is the danger you risk.
There is no standard package of “nonconformity and individualism”.
You have to find your own on your own.
That’s why it is individual and personal.
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Dream interpretation and symbology have fascinated me ever since I read Freud’s classic, “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Ever since, I have explored Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist as well as Jungian psychological ideas about the meaning of dreams. Thanks for joining me in my exploration of the amazing intersection between our conscious waking world and the rich expanse of our subconscious-the home of our intuition, instincts, and hidden potential.
