I used to have a job in the Hunter Valley, where I lived for a few days a week on open, dry hills in the hot sun. One week, as I walked around the hills, I encountered three snakes on separate occasions. One was swimming across the dam, another large black one reared its head a metre away from me on a walk, and another slid past me at the top of a hill. I also saw a kangaroo swimming across the dam, something I had never seen before. Having worked as a psychotherapist I wondered whether these sightings could have any symbolism attached to them.

I looked up a comprehensive book about animal symbolism. It went into great depth on each animal, but, basically, snakes were said to symbolise rebirth, initiation, change and healing. The number three was also said to represent new birth from the darkness. Kangaroos were about moving forward and not backwards. A few weeks later, I went through a long and difficult time in my life that resulted in change, rebirth and healing. I couldn’t help but wonder about the connection.

Afterwards, when I was back in Sydney, I went for one of my daily walks through a nearby national park. It was getting dark. That evening, I saw three owls in the space of 30 minutes. I was tempted to dismiss the sightings as coincidence as I had seen the occasional owl over the past month. However, for the next three nights in a row, I saw three owls every night. Once again, I felt compelled to check the symbolism, which was the ability to see that which is in the darkness, and making others uncomfortable as they’re less able to deceive you for this reason. “You will hear what is not being said and you will see what is hidden or in the shadows,” said the book. I was experiencing this to a small extent in my life at that time, though it didn’t seem significant.

Once again, though, a difficult time of transformation followed — perhaps the number three was relevant again regarding rebirth. And what instigated this process was my experience of perceiving and exposing a lack of integrity in someone else’s behaviour that they would have preferred to have kept hidden. I often check the meanings of unusual animal sightings these days and it’s always interesting how relevant the symbolism can be.

So to what extent can our external physical reality, such as unusual animal sightings, be a reflection and a meaningful symbol of our internal reality? Certainly, in alternative models of healing there is a popular view that we create our external reality — our everyday experiences, the quality of our relationships, career and home life — according to the inner beliefs we hold about ourselves and our world. If we repeatedly have a negative pattern in an area of our life, it’s said to be holding up a mirror to some internal aspect of our belief system that we need to recognise and heal.