(I bought myself a bear once, it was when I had begun to accept responsibility for my own story; I suppose that I was about 45 or 46 at the time. This was not a teddy bear, all golden yellow with a cute face that I needed to nurse the way a child would, no, this bear was a dark chocolate brown bear with a big nose and a very adult face. This was a grizzly bear that was going to nurse me back to health, what I call “big picture health”. I took this bear to bed with me to nurse an ancient wound that I could not heal by myself. He was my papa bear, and it took 12 months before I forget to take him to bed with me. I found him one day when I was vacuuming under my bed, he had dust and cobwebs on his face, and I knew that his Medicine had worked and that I, was healed.)
A Fairy Story
When I was a little child I used to love climbing into the crisp freshly washed sheets of my bed, and, escaping the torments of my younger siblings, who shared my room. I would pull the sheets right up over my head and shut the day world out for the night. Outside my bedroom window, which was at the level of my pillow, was growing a large leafed coprosma. Mother would say that during the dark of the night when I was dreaming, the fairies were busy all night long polishing each leaf so that it could glisten in the moonlight like a little shining star, keeping the boogie man away, thus giving me a restful sleep. The leaves on that bush and their tiny housekeepers, the fairies, became my guardians who were there for me and left me feeling safe whenever I needed them to. In the morning the evidence was always there. The dark green leaves were so glossy that the dew drops rolled straight off them just like my bad dreams did when I woke up. Mother would always tell me that my good dreams stayed hiding inside me for me to hunt out when I was ready to recover them, just like the golden treasure that was always buried deeply inside the dragon’s cave for the brave knight to seek.
Nightmares
When I was all grown up and was learning how to master the boogie man of my own fear and insecurities, having experienced so many Knightly style challenges on the pathways of my 46 year life, I sought the solace of the cave within, where all that treasure was held. I didn’t realise that I would have to face off against the dragon first. Fear wanted to grip me by the throat and threatened to strangle me as I tried to face up to the tumultuous emotions attached to so many of my past adventures. There had been so many, that the hidden realms of unprocessed judgements were threatening my capacity to meet each day in a healthy way.
Drumming of the Heart
When I was in my apprenticeship with the Dawn Star Teachings, I was taught a guided meditation which I found facilitated a safe process to penetrate those protective barriers we use to guard our story and its associated emotional attachments. I used this technique many times with great success in my own Medicine Circles in later years. So now I will share with you some of my own experience and where it led me in finding compassion and understanding of my own journey and the eventual release of the associated pain.
Friendship
While the Medicine drum was drumming the rhythm of the heartbeat, we were being asked to enter our cave and greet our totem animal spirit who was to act as our tour guide and was waiting for us to arrive. A guided tour of my own inner world seemed very appealing to me. My first visit to my cave was just all fun and games for me, while others in our group couldn’t even get near their cave. Waiting for me as I approached my cave entrance was a great big and very friendly grizzly bear. He filled up most of the entry area, so I needed to become very small to slip past him and into the opening chamber. Once inside, I found that I was no more than a firefly and this suited me very well as I didn’t want the weight of gravity bearing down on my shoulders. I was already exhausted from living so intensely in daytime, so this little retreat was becoming my light relief, my respite and my healing. I needed to feel safe, and to do that I needed to be airborne; fight or flight.
Grizzly Bear (Photo credit: Jackson Hole Central Reservations)
My life at that time had always been filled to capacity with activity. I was a mother, a step-mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a business woman, a student, a farmer, and a friend.’ Time out’ for me always included other people and the few moments that I devoted to myself was usually spent problem solving.
My Medicine Place
This cave was starting to feel like a really good place for me, and a haven from daily demands. My imagination could soar and I could fly and then quickly I discovered the most important thing; I could jump all over my new best friend ‘Bear’, and tickle him under the chin and play hide and seek with him, and never, ever, ever get chastised, because I was a fast, speedier than lightening, dodgem firefly and had virtually no weight, and I didn’t have to prove myself to him, after all I created him. I could just frolic like a child and was ready to settle down, and this, of my own free will, we could go and explore a dream together, whether it was scary or not. Always waiting for me in deeper chambers were other animal friends such as wily fox and when he came, I knew I would be facing some of the more difficult hiding places of my childhood. These totems would always return me to ‘Bear’ in the main chamber afterwards though, and only ‘Bear’ would release me back through the gateway portal to a cognitive, awakened consciousness.
My Medicine Path
Years further on, I was camping by the river in Clayton County, Iowa in the National Park and just at dusk while my friend with whom I was travelling was cooking a meal, I noticed the bushes along the river’s edge were coming alive with firefly. Real glow in the dark firefly, darting around, flicking on and off, just as I had done on ‘Bears’ great shoulders. How fascinating, and for me, how moving. I felt as though I was in very good company and that we were all related. I offered tobacco to Great Spirit in gratitude for the vision and the intimacy of life no matter where we travel, within or without.
The following day we discovered that we were also near the Effigy Mounds (we were travelling east on our way to Pennsylvania), and so when we made inquiries, the ranger asked us did we want to see the bear or the eagle. Guess what I said?
So, off my friend and I hiked, up the hill and through the woods. I could almost visualise the moccasined feet of the young braves stealthily and silently flitting through this soft foliage in another space-time, as though gravity was only a counterpoint to their flight. Our trail demanded from us a silent meditation and a reverend step. Suddenly a clearing appeared before us and lo and behold, there it was; my great big grizzly bear; my friend, totem, gatekeeper, and cave tour guide; my witness to my truth and my protector when I became fearful of my own history.
Little Bear Mound at Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa, USA as seen from the ground. The white outline was added to make the shape visible from the air. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In Honour and Respect of You
Immediately we took off our shoes, placing them to the side and without word we walked in two directions, one for the Northern Hemisphere energy flow that we were in, and one for the Southern flow from whence we had come. The white stone pebble path followed the outline of the mound in the perfect form of the sacred Bear; the Gate-Keeper of the West; The Woman’s Lodge, and the water element of The Dreaming or Dreamtime as Australians know it. I had travelled Northward, across the Equator, from one great continent to another from ancient land to ancient land journeying from childhood to adulthood on a thread of light, one hoop on the Medicine Wheel of Life. White Man journeying back to Red Man roots where Yellow, Black, White and Red Peoples come together equally to face the Centre or the Sacred Heart of the Self, of the Mother Planet, through Great Spirit in harmony and in relationship.
Good Medicine
In this story though, I am in the West on the Medicine Wheel, in the darkness of the womb of life and death, of blood and of bone, of nurture and nature. It is here that we learn the sacred laws for woman; maiden mother, crone and healer, herbalist and ancient Knower of all things, the place of Intuition. It is here that the past is assimilated into the present as preparation for the future, or in other words, the All Present. It is here that records are kept, the Akashic, the thirteen moons of the calendar year, the cycles and the seasons, all thirteen of them, for each change offers something new and something old, the inundating high tide and the receding low tide, the ebb and flow of life. In the West, the primal waters flow conducting renewable energy just as the stream of lifeblood flows throughout our veins, and just as the sap flows in the trees to provide us with the essential oxygen that we humans and other animals depend on for survival. The Sunset, the autumn, and the maturity of life are the times of returning home through the renewing of the past and the polishing of long memory from which we gain strength, and can find compassion and forgiveness of the naivety of earlier times. I will never forget the past because if I don’t receive the message that flows in the current of the river, then holocausts will surely be born again out of my forgetfulness.
A mother grizzly with a cub (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We alone can change the course of history, with its repetitious nature and it’s never ending cycles. We can re-member our own Akashic records, seduce the dragon of protective loyalty that stands guard to the Keep of buried treasures within; treasures of dreams and ambitions, of passions and of magic that will turn to dust if we do not resurrect them from our own bone yards, and put them to usefulness, to goodness, to goddessness. By releasing the associated emotions of our challenging life’s experiences we help to heal our immortal wound, and thereby release the spontaneous inner child who does not hesitate to explore every new opportunity for adventure, now intuitively choosing the right path for the highest good of all. Sometimes, we adults just need to get out of our own way and allow our inner child to trust Great Spirit in its Goodness.
Aho, Mitakuye-oasin (all my relatives)
White Feather 