Last night I had the following dream.

I was sitting on a dock by a lake or lagoon and put my hand in the water.   Something grabbed my hand from under the water.  It didn’t have sharp teeth, but seemed to have a strong grip.   I was wondering what it was and then I pulled it out of the water and landed it on the dock.    It looked like how a whale shark looks only not quite so big.

I was pretty excited about landing the fish, but after a little while I noticed that the fish was suffering from being out of the water.      Then I turned away and when I turned back there was a baby elephant that was orphaned instead of the fish.    I took the baby elephant to where some other people were trying to get them to help with it, but no one seemed to want to do it.

So what does it mean?  There are a lot of interesting symbols in this dream, but the first thing that I think of when the characters are primarily animals is that I am not quite at the stage where the learning can go directly into the real world.  It needs some more processing time.   This is because animals in a dream are more metaphorical than say people.

Fishing is a symbol of teaching normally, but putting my hand in the water means that I am trying to give people a hand.  Water is a symbol of relationship.   Landing the whale shark means that when I set out to assist others,  I have a bit of an issue showing others what I have done so instead of giving assistance to the shark I am showing it as a prize.  As soon as I have that mentality then shark starts to suffer.    The solution to this part of the dream is go in the water and swim with the shark in its own environment because this is how I first can create rapport with people.

In the second part of the dream when the fish turns into an orphaned elephant,  it is obvious that the quality I need is to be nurturing with people, but I am trying to give that responsibility to others so that I can have the recognition for having landed the fish.

So the two qualities that this dream seems to be calling me to are rapport building and nurturing. I thought I was pretty well through with recognition seeking, but the dream is telling me otherwise.   Back to the work.