The truth about your spiritual guide(animal totems)

I had a very nice experience with Damascus, my Bear the other day.

I was meditating to clear energy blocks, and he came to me and began to massage the energy in my lower legs to clear blocks. He did both legs, and stopped at the knees, i asked him to continue because it was very calming, he remained, but did not continue. "Why?" I asked him, "It is your turn now, you must learn it", and then left.

After he departed I called to him, but to no avail. Suddenly, without intent to, I envisioned himself as I and I as he, "I am of the bear.. The bear is of me.. We are the Me, the Me is the bear" flashed through my mind.

I have a feeling that my calling in life is to play that of a healer, and the bear fits it quite indubitably, as Windy pointed out.

 

in some traditions Bear is big time Healer

 

How funny ... i had a dream about bears last night.

 

butter flys does that count, eathril and eratic , pritty and peace full

 

That is a bona-fide experience Spiritchalist. Becoming one with your animal spirit. Another indigenous concept related to the other one I was trying to think of, is that the spirit animals we have are ours because they are our distant ancestor. In this context, you are a bear because your primal ancestor was a bear back when 4-legged and 2-legged animals had a closer relationship. I am not saying that is how it is, but that is an indigenous way of seeing the relationship.

In pagan Europe there were fierce warriors known as 'Berzerkers.' (There were also those of the wolf but I can't remember their name now). They were very fierce in battle, and were equally as frightening to the enenmy. They wore bear skins and bear claws---they believed themselves to literally become one with the bear, or enspirited by the bear. The werewolf stories as well harken back to an older shamanistic tradition where pagans became one with the wolf---their wolf spirit.

The church of course destroyed these older natural traditions, and through the conversions and crusades anything connected to the old ways was associated with evil and the devil. Hence the werewolf became an evil creature of the night.

While the bear in the case of the berzerkers was fierce, the bear is also a healer. This is a much more universal symbol of the bear and is the primary principal behind the typical bear fetish.

In case you are wondering, berzerker is the origin of the phrase, 'to go berserk.'

A number of years ago, I was giving my wife a massage, she had a lot of sore muscles. I don't consider myself much of a healer---I try sometimes, but... SO before I massaged her, I silently invited my wolf to come and join me, and provide whatever help it could to help heal her.

My wife layed in bed with her eyes closed as I massaged her for probably 10 minutes or so, then suddenly lifted her head and looked at me. I asked her what the problem was, and she said that she somehow pictured my hands and arms with lots hair on them.

 

That is a great story of the Old Man archetype, and your comments on the old man are very Jungian (though a bit more spiritual than Jung would actually go----you could tell he wanted to---but to remain true to his profession he did not).

Jung would put it as a knowledge that taps into the collective unconcsious. But you take it, I believe, a step further and protray the collective unconscious as the great totality of the Hindu atman.

When I met the wise old man, who in my case is a Hopi holy man, I at first wondered if he was in fact me---I guess I said that in a previous post---if I was meeting with my 'self.'

In that we are all part of the great spirit I guess that is true, but I haven't been convinced yet that my ego should just be tossed out---so while I can see that on a deep level, I have found my wise old man to be a seperate entity on an experiential level.

I know he is Hopi, because I asked him his name----I knew it was significant and spent weeks and weeks pouring through dictionaries and lexicons of indigenous languages. Finally I found it in the Hopi language----Chief Spirit Guide, is its meaning.

One of the things he told me was the story of the Turtle Maiden. He said that the Turtle Maiden would appear to help people in the distant past and that people have forgotten how she helped them, and what she did for them. The Turtle Maiden would appear whenever a tribe or village desperately needed help. She often brought water to the early pueblos in the Southwest during times of drought. The turtle was her spirit helper.

When I researched this I found that there is various tales of the turtle maiden---typically referring to her as the maiden that fell to earth from under the tree of life, and was rescued by the turtle rising up friom the primal sea. In this aspect she is the Great Mother. But there is nothing about her bringing water.

I then discovered that there is a kachina called the turtle maiden. IN talking with various people knowledgable about her I discovered that the the turtle would bring water to the pueblos in ancient times. When they ran out of water they would look forthe turtle. But then I would ask about the Turtle Maiden, and people said that they didn't know much about her except that she accompanied the turtle. I, however, had been taught that it was the other way around in a sense.

Recently I discoverded that the indians to the SOuth---in Mexico---who share the same language family of the Hopi also have a turtle maiden myth. THis again refers to bringing them water.

 

I feel mine ay be a cow. (I swear, don't laugh at me!)
I've always liked them for some reason. Ever since I was like 3 years old I've been obsessed

 

i dreamed a great bear riding in a boat and leading our tribe . personally i got snakes . snakes is the wave , the vibe to be heard and spoken ~~~ . whenever i get into nevada , i visit an ancient alter stone that has two snakes carved upon it . it's right along highway 50 and there's a free campground there too .

 

Mine is most likey an eagle, becasue i feel somehow that I share some kind of connection with the universe/God and most of the time I see the big picture of things even when it take me a while to see it, and I am also able to find middle ground in all situations so i basically see both sides to everything. I also feel that i might relate to a panther/tiger becasue i have somwhat of a solitary attitude and I have a tendacy to be highly independant. For some reason I also have a bit of a habbit to be there for people who need me.

 

mine i met in the flesh, without ever doing anything particularly physical to look for them.
one of the wonders of growing up far from cities and human distractions, for which i am grateful beyond my capacity to express. much later i had a dream in which they took human form, but still recognized their spirit within it.

 

I read about a neat little ceremony in Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner, that helps people connect with Spirit Animals that may be guiding them or may have guided them at some point in time. At first I thought the ceremony was a little too simplistic to work but I tried it anyway and the results surprised me.

The process is a simple one. You can do this with or without music but I find rhythmic drumming with accompanying flutes beneficial in most Shamanic work. So music or no, just start dancing free style, in a circle. Let your body and your mind go off on a tangent, anywhere they please. Soon you will be mimicking an animal and you will probably be thinking of the same animal.

I was surprised by the result I got from this ceremony because I was expecting a bird, I had been seeing a particular bird often and even doing a little bird dance once in a while. I started the ceremony with my bird dance but as I let go I was compelled to dance differently... I don't discus the identity of my Spirit Helpers but I will say this, the animal that came to me had been a favorite of mine when I was a child. While other kids had stuffed bears I had something else. And when we went to the zoo this little guy was what I really really wanted to see.

I found the experience fun and beneficial. I hope you have some fun with it too.


PS. I know this thread is about Totems rather than Spirit Helpers. I apologize if I have spoken out of place. .

 

Today I had an exp connected with my Totems.

I had been feeling somewhat - not quite depressed, but uneasy, and somehow I had a sense of anxiety. So I got in the car and drove down to the shops. Had a coffee in starbucks, and then went and did a bit of grocery shopping. I bought a large pack of catfood, as I often do, for the cats at the rescue center. In the supermart, they have a box you put it in as you exit the store.

As I was driving home I felt a kind of very deep presence of the cat spirit, and very definitely, giving me 'advice', although not on the verbal, linear kind of level - it's almost impossible to explain, but those with similar experiences will understand. I realized the truth about something that had been worrying me for a while. I could tell that CAT was giving me the solution. Or spirit expressed through cat.

Later on, my daughter telephoned me with some bad news. 21 years ago, when I was still married and my daughter still a kid, we got a very beautiful kitten. At the time, this cat meant a lot to me, she brought me comfort at a time when a lot of my previous ambitions were screwing up. I always felt a 'special relationship' was there.
Anyway, she went to live with my daughter when she left home and settled down with her partner.
Today's call was to tell me she finally quit this world today. 21 is old for a cat.

But what impresses me is the sheer synchronicity operating here. My own neg. feeling, seemingly out of proportion to my present problems, my feeing of the presence of CAT.
As I put the catfood I donated into the box, I almost muttered out loud
' that's a huge contribution' - but I didn't really understand. It is the contribution cats have made to my life that I meant really, because I'm certain part of me knew what had happened.

Driving home. a cat ran across the road - it seemed somehow unreal. Two crows were pecking about in the front of the house when I got back home. My brothers reinforcing the message I think.......but that was prior to the call. Yet I suspected something was afoot......

Sorry if this seems like a rave, but I wanted to get it down whilst it's still fresh.

Love.

 

Nice story and confirmation of the special bond that can develop between us and animals.

 

mines a cat

 

I've been through a lot of life-changing (and transforming) experiences in the last year and my animal guides seem to be switching. Before it was the snake (water), bull (earth), tiger (fire) and elephant (air, that's right, as surprising at it may sound), but they seem not to fit anymore.

I definetely have a soft spot for felines and reptiles in general though. I already met 2 of my new animal guides, alligator for water and panther for fire. I feel the bear is getting closer (he'd be related to earth), but I didn't find my new air guide yet. Weirdly all my animal guides, old and new, are found in India. Someone already said it might be because I lived there in a past life, which makes sense, but I can't confirm on that one.

 

Animal guides can change over time, or you can gain additional ones. Last year the Red Tailed Hawk came into my life, which was a new one for me. A Lakota friend of mine gave me a Red Tailed Hawk feather after returning from a trip around the country. It was on the full moon around August-September. I asked him why he gave it to me then, because my understanding is that it is especially significant if the Red Tailed Hawk comes into your life around the full moon, and in Spring or Fall. Its purpose is to bring you closer to your life's purpose. I asked my friend why he gave it to me, and he just said he thought I should have it (this is not really a Lakota tradition, but at an archetypical level the lessons of spirit animals are all the same regardless of tradition---it is just how the symbols emerge that define it in one tradition from another).

I took the feather to my office thinking it would bring good luck to my job--I felt my life's purpose would fit in with that. Oddly enough though, in the months that followed, I actually started questioning what the heck I was doing there. In addition I was targetted by another individual who was using others as scapegoats to make up for his own incompetence. By January, I no longer worked there. My life has taken a major turn and I feel that I am working towards my life's purpose. I am probably living a lot healthier, and I am certainly more happy.

We are heading into the summer which is a period of ceremony for many tribes. This month there are a lot of vision quests. If you have a chance to do this (I would suggest doing it with someone qualified to lead one, such as a medicine man. If you have to pay for it---forget it. CEREMONY IS NOT TO BE PAID FOR!!! If you have to give tobbacco or a gift, then that is how it should be) then you will probably find animal helpers. I certainly felt the presence of my animal spirit there, but everything that happened on my vision quest involved other animals who showed me and taught me things. It was a very amazing experience. There were no 'visions' for me, as in hallucinations. But nature, particularly animals, showed me things in answer to the prayers I spoke, in answer to the directions I prayed, and at the moments I prayed in that direction. Some things were so obvious that the animal acted almost strange. A swallow for example flew right accross in front of me, then stopped mid air in front of something it was showing me, then jerked its beak forward to point at it, before flying off. I immediately understood what it was showing me and the meaning. A later time, a butterfly spent several hours on a bush as if it was digging nectar out of a flower---but there was no flowers, only leaves, and I knew it was teaching me a lesson in patience, a singificant answer to a prayer, and the answer that most apropriately came from that direction. Some of the animals have come back to me since then, to remind me, or for whatever reason. There is a lot of preparation before a vision quest, but it is an incredible experience. I will be heading up to vision quest again within the next week or two.

We are also heading into Sundance season. After my first sundance, as I drove home, I would see animals out of the corner of my eyes---but I would turn and there was nothing there. Sometimes I thought I saw one cross the road in front of me, but when I would look, I didn't see anything. Last year my son went with me to Sundance. As we drove through the Colorado mountains, he asked me if it seemed there were animals in the shadows and the sides of the road, but then when you look, there is nothing there. I was excited because it was happening again for me too, but I was never sure if it was just my imagination. I explained to him that happens to me as I make my way to sundance, and back. Obviously my imagination wasn't running away with me if it was happening to him too. This year he has already felt that once or twice---I told him SunDance is approaching.

We will go to a Sundance up on Pine Ridge this year in the last week of June. There is another in July that we may try to get to also. This is another amazing experience if you can get to one. Ask someone for the do's and don'ts there and really dig the ceremony. I first went as the objective observer---the anthropologist studying a culture. But after a few hours I was drawn emotionally into the ceremony. Later I did a flesh offering for the tree, when I happened to see some people doing that (Basically they cut tiny tiny pieces of flesh off my arm with a scalpel (I told them 5 at points to resemble the 4 directions ofthe medicine wheel and the center). It didn't really hurt. But after that, the sundance took on an even deeper level of emotion for me. I was only there for 1 day that first time, but after returning home, and waking the next morning, I felt as if a part of me was still there until they finished the ceremony that day at about 1:30 (as it was the 4th day ofthe ceremony).