Welcome to the Month of the Rabbit!
Rabbits are, of course, snuggly little fluff-balls…
We have arrived at the time of the Spring Equinox, when the scales begin to tilt away from the long, cold trudge through the winter season, and towards a warmer, brighter vision of summer.
This is the time of year governed by the Rabbit in the zodiac cycle. Coming off the back of the Tiger month, which saw us going through the dramatic throes of early spring—with ice and snow, sunshine and wind, and all the ups, downs, and unpredictability that comes with the volatile Tiger season. Now, we have weathered the storm and find ourselves in more placid waters. There will still surely be rain and sunshine, but here in Portland we rarely see snow after March. This means we are in a time of less intensity where we can relax and start to stretch our legs outdoors without worrying about getting frozen or chapped by icy, whipping wind, but still we’ll likely be spending most of our time indoors, cozied up to wait until the spring weather warms up some more. It’s a good time for naps - a lazy time of daydreaming and envisioning what the year will bring once we can really get out and enjoy it.
All of this is very Rabbit-y behavior. Rabbits are, of course, snuggly little fluff-balls who stay cozied up in their burrows much of the year. They only venture forth in the twilight hours of dusk and dawn, where they can hardly be seen due to their habit of zooming around in the half-light, only to stop and stay totally still. This liminal nature – now you see me, now you don’t – of Rabbits is how they have gotten the reputation as being symbols of dreams, specifically of crossing the threshold between waking reality and the imaginal world of dreaming (think Alice in Wonderland). In keeping with this, we are at a fertile time of year to notice the emotional experiences we have in our dreams and how they affect us in waking life, and in doing so seeing how the line between waking and dreaming becomes blurred.
For personal practice, this is a great time of year to keep any sort of journal, especially a dream journal to record meaningful symbols that might be popping up in your imagination this month. The “Dreaming” of the Rabbit month isn’t the same as the intention-settling energy of the new year and Ox month, because dreams aren’t about getting anywhere, and they don’t even have to be possible. The Rabbit month is actually the opposite of the Ox: it is about letting go of the need to get somewhere so we can enjoy the wonder of our own imagination and follow where it leads us. Again like Alice in Wonderland – who is routinely confounded in her quest by absurdities and nonsensical tangents – navigating our way through the world of dreams is a playful process of developing a relationship with our own imagination, noticing how the bizarre stories of our dreams make us feel and ultimately change us.
On the other end of the year, at Fall Equinox, we get to the month of the Rooster, where we symbolically “wake up” from the “dream of summer” to face the harsh nature of impending winter. What happens between the two equinoxes – Rabbit and Rooster – is an internal metamorphosis. Whatever external goals and aspirations we may be striving for, the Rabbit invites us to consider what about us is changing on the inside while we go about our days. This is especially true in the Year of the Snake, which is very much concerned with internal transformation. The deep feelings elicited by dreams may not be tangible, but they directly impact how we move through our lives.
Below, I offer one of my favorite exercises to stimulate the dreaming mind while awake, and also encourage wakefulness to the dreams we have at night so we might better engage with them and remember them when we wake up. I encourage everyone to try this exercise as often as possible during the month of the Rabbit:
While laying down to get to sleep, close your eyes and imagine you are in your childhood bed, or any other familiar place from your past that feels comfortable and safe. Imagine opening your eyes to see the room you were in back then. Get up and start to explore your house, slowly, taking care to notice as many details as come to mind without straining to recall missing pieces. From there, take a walk outside, notice what you see, hear, smell. What season is it? What time of day? Take a walk in your mind’s eye in the area that surrounds this house until you get to a point where you get tired of the imagination or it becomes less clear, and at that point imagine a wall of mist that you can walk through, and on the other side is the blank canvas of your imagination. As you pass through the mist, let go of any focus on your imaginal world and simply wait, watch, and see what happens next. You may find yourself falling asleep during this exercise or completing it and coming back to yourself lying in bed. Either way is a successful exploration of the dream world and sets us up to connect more with our imaginal world of images and emotions that characterizes the Month of the Rabbit!