The grizzly bear, six doors, and an owl

I will never understand how the YouTube algorithm works, but last night it decided (correctly, as it turns out) that I wanted to watch this:

The video is aptly summarized by one of the comments: "I like how it was acting so mischievous. 'I'm not doing anything... Just sniffin' the wind... But now I'M CHARGING- ok ok... Backing away... Or am I-? Yeah I am...'"

Today, I was reading -- well, you know by now what I was reading, right? Am I ever going to finish that book, you ask? According to Kindle, I'm 76% of the way there. In this passage, one of Clelland's contacts reports a dream:

The dream started in a bland suburban setting, and I was standing out in the driveway of a house that I assume was mine. The other homes were spaced sort of far apart, it was summer and the lawns were green. The sun was low in the sky and everything was calm. Then I saw there was a grizzle bear poking around on the lawn across the street. At first I didn't feel nervous or threatened, it was something amazing to see. Then this big thing was lumbering towards me, and I retreated into the garage.

I hurried into the house using the inside garage door, only to realize there were about six other doors all lined up. The bear came into the garage and tried to break through each door. The doors, from one to the other, got progressively more flimsy.

Suddenly I was hearing the hooting cry of an owl, steady and clear. I could hear it as this bear was pulling at this thin sheet of plywood with its claws.

It was at that point I woke up, but the hooting continued. I lay there in bed, with the pale light of dawn easing through the only window in my bedroom. I was hearing the unmistakable call of a great horned owl, and it must have been on the telephone pole right outside my window.

Let me state this clearly: A real owl woke me up right as a grizzly bear in my dream was about to rip down a door!

Like the video, this dream begins with the bear just "poking around" in a non-menacing way, and then it suddenly charges. I was also astonished to see a reference to six doors in this book about owls, since a restaurant called Six Owl Door (in English; just Six Doors in Chinese) recently entered the sync-stream.

Here is how Clelland's correspondent interpreted his dream:

This dream was awash in symbolism. Maybe the bear is the truth and the flimsy doors are the crumbling barriers between me and that truth? The owl was saying -- quite literally -- wake up! Bear is bare, the naked truth. Bear also means to suffer a burden. Anyway, this was sure how it felt.

Later the same day he received this account, Clelland heard from a friend who related a very similar grizzly bear dream he had dreamed the same night as the other person. There's no owl in this one, but the recurrence of the grizzly, the door, and the garage is uncanny.

This guy's dream starts in an idyllic forest where he sees a grizzly bear on the opposite side of a river, it's jsut sniffing around and he feels no threat. The whole scene is beautiful and majestic.

The next thing he remembers is a small house, he walks up to the side door and knocks on it. He peers through a window into the house and sees a tiny woman walking up to the door, and walking behind her is this massive grizzly bear. She opens the door and the bear comes outside. . . . He continues moving away, and the bear follows him and they both end up right in front of the garage. The bear has done nothing threatening, it is just lumbering along and sniffing around, but Jack is very aware of the danger. Then the bear looks up at him, he thinks, "Oh fuck!" and he wakes up.

"I'm not doing anything... Just sniffin' the wind... But now I'M CHARGING!"

The "tiny woman" who opens the door is an interesting point, too.