How do we hold onto passion in daily life? Waiting for the inspiration to find the courage to express ourselves creatively can often leave us in the waiting state indefinitely.  As much as we might like the creative process to be carried upon the effortless wings of Spirit all the time, Eagle says, “Don’t wait for God to inspire you. Start somewhere and find the spirit in the seemingly mundane.” Read more about the Eagle Spirit Animal Totem – Inspiration.

When you find Spirit in small places daily, you invite in-spiration into your life.  A daily practice of connecting your heart to that which inspires you makes it much easier for Spirit to find you for the bigger winds that could blow your way.  As Steven Pressfield wrote in his book, The War of Art, “The Muse rewards a working stiff.”  Inspiration takes practice.

To engage Big Medicine we must make manageable amounts of spaces in our lives over time rather than one large space once a year.  A daily practice of incremental expansion physically builds stamina and creates the healthy, stable space your body needs to house truly powerful experiences.  If we only danced when we were inspired to dance we might grow dizzy or fall when the Spirit came whipping through us. Practice, even through the awkward clunky days creates a trusting relationship between you and inspiration. If we cram for finals in the last week of school rather than slowly integrate the year’s curriculum over time, we will forget the teachings within the week.  And so what exactly was all that effort for? To earn a paper grade we file away?

Many Eagle Medicine people do not make good grades in public school because public school does not give topics enough time for integration before issuing tests to prove whether you know something or not.  The real test of knowing something does not come two weeks after reading a chapter.  It comes two years later at a bus stop in conversation with a stranger.  Knowledge is nothing if it is not woven into the impulses of our daily life.  To have access to knowledge, whether it is basic data or complex concepts, we must engage the material often- to the point where we know it in our sleep.  Only then is it possible for Spirit to come and teach us some new aspect of what we thought we knew.

The Eagle Spirit Animal Totem asks us why life is worth living? If you’ve drawn Eagle in reverse, your spirits may be reaching dangerously low levels and it is time to lift up and connect with a meta-physical (beyond physical) stream of energy.  When we lose connection to the metaphysical experiences beyond daily life, daily life oddly loses its meaning.

When working with Eagle Medicine, the outcome will always be filled with grace and awe.   The reason we are here is to find the wonder, joy, and awe in all things.  We are not here to suffer or struggle and as a species, we are now learning for the first time in our recorded history how to learn lessons without the motivation of pain.  We are developing the concepts of preventative medicine which is hard to prove since it prevents things from going wrong!

Most people have spent so many years enduring unhappiness that they often need to learn how to sustain happiness, how to create space to have no problems if even for a few hours.  What if nothing were wrong today?  Would you look over your shoulder nervously expecting the next adversity to come your way?  Or would you fully receive the spirit and give over to feeling good?  The more we allow feeling good, the better we will get at it.  When Eagle arrives it is time to drop the mental analysis and the caution and go where the wind lifts you.

Waiting for the outside world to clarify your life’s purpose can cause confusion since there are so many possible purposes to engage in life.  Clarity of purpose is an action from within.  It is the conviction to stop weighing all the options and make a decision to choose a path and give something a try.  Remaining vague about your heart’s desires may cause Eagle Medicine to swoop down and catch your heart in her talons so that you can locate your passions.  If you repress inspired actions Eagle may have you on the run in a victim state.  Stop dodging, stop hiding.  Shapeshift into the courage of Eagle.  She is the thunderclap, the strike of lightning, the cosmic spark of new life in a seed or an egg.  And so are you.

This Medicine is irrational and non-verbal.  If the Eagle Spirit Animal Totem has come into your life, it is time to clarify any fuzzy logic and hone in on clarity about a decision.   There is no hiding from your higher self.  Eagle Medicine is the experience of eliminating mental doubt as well as emotional insecurity so that thoughts and feelings aline into silent perfection.

In Native Teachings, Eagle Medicine is of the highest vibrational frequency of all Animal Medicines. Along with Buffalo, she presides over all sacred ceremonies. Her feather Medicine can not be used for harmful negative purposes.  When in the presence of Eagle Medicine any selfish plots or intrigues unfold into a greater good for all involved. Unlike Owl Medicine or Crow Medicine, Eagle is not neutral. She is only positive. In the cosmic order of things, the opposite of positive is not negative.  The opposite of positive is neutral. From inside neutral, we chose to take either a positive or negative perspective.  Negative lives inside the neutral space of free will- where we live.  When in the realm of Eagle Medicine we are outside the neutral 3rd dimension in the Greater Reality.  The source of all that is- is joy. Eagle Medicine is the realm of “all is well.”

When the Eagle Spirit Animal Totem is out of balance in our lives we may be resisting our true calling.  We may have decided to take everything at face value without any spark of mystery.  Are you settling for the safe and reliable at the expense of finding your gifts and powers?  It is only a matter of time before Eagle lands to reveal to you some new aspect of the Greater Reality.  The Eagle Totem asks that we not get stuck in the illusions of solid matter. Newtonian science solved mystery after mystery, answering question after technical question with accurate and measurable proof.  But it never solved the mystery of the ‘is-ness’ of life.  That is a silent space within us all and Eagle is inviting you in.

Another possible aspect of Eagle reversed could be an excessive amount of attention to the Spiritual Realm to the neglect of daily affairs.  Eagles build nests on solid rock in mountain niches.  She has mastered the art of grounding and can now fly the highest in the sky.  Before you journey forth beyond your body, make sure you are safe, healthy, and grounded and can find your way back to regular life with ease.  Not every moment can be spectacular.  Not every event holds equal significance.  If you’ve found you’ve developed an addiction for the sensational, take a look at your diet to change your brain chemistry.  Cut back on stimulants like coffee and sugar.  Sleep.  Soak.  Eat protein. Try to change your relationship with the do-nothing hours of Sunday morning when nothing much is happening and find a quieter joy in the smaller things in life.

Eagle can see the Mouse and the mountain at once. She is aware of the large and the small functions of daily life. She understands that all is small, and in its simplicity lies the miraculous.  Eagle medicine has the ability to expand the mundane into the extraordinary because all that is is ultimately extraordinary.

This little Gardner does not concern herself with how large the world is.  She measures the span of her realm nut by nut. The Squirrel Spirit Animal Totem teaches us that it is not necessary to travel far and wide in search of what is needed.  We need only dig and uncover all the hard work we’ve already put into the ground. Nothing undoes the work we do.

This little optimist understands that failure is only a temporary mental perspective that can, in an instant, be reframed as practice towards excellence.  If the Squirrel Spirit Animal Totem is visiting, it may be time to clean the house and stock up for a rainy day.  She knows that without organization nothing can be done well.  This high-energy medicine teaches how to anticipate the challenges ahead as well as how to live simply without fear of lack.  This Power Animal Teaching is a fast, spry energy that can zip through a room and have its contents alphabetized before the tea kettle whistles.  Her claws help her leverage her body in all directions and she can clock the length of a tree in seconds flat.  One tree is all the world Squirrel needs, as it contains all reaches of the cosmos from root to seed.

When a person is visited by Squirrel medicine, nothing can get in their way as they pursue their goals. Trying to talk to a person when they are in “nut-gathering” mode can make you dizzy.  They will be up and down the stairs, out the back, and through the kitchen, before you finish your sentence. Following them around and trying to track their logic at such times will confound you.  Best to give them space and let them do what they need to do to get organized.

If you have been dealing with the erratic energy of the Squirrel Totem you may be frustrated by thwarted efforts to help bring calm to a high-stress situation.  It is best not to try and catch a squirrel on the move even if their behavior appears anxious and in need of help.  There is a limit to how much one person can help another person.  In the end, it is the individual who will complete the process of grounding into clarity.  Lingering about and trying to help someone who won’t sit still long enough to receive can cause distractions and more irritations for both parties.  The Squirrel Spirit Animal Totem suggests that we give a difficult issue to the Field and trust that the resources everyone needs are in the ground and will emerge at just the right time to open new solutions.

Squirrel asks us to make note of the differences between nervous energy and passion.  Excitement is a wonderful addition to our activities but we can not allow big energy to get in the way of the task at hand.  If you are overwhelmed by enthusiasm, Squirrel says, break it down- nut by nut.  Make it smaller.  We are only ever as sane as our ability to compartmentalize life’s confusion into manageable bits.  This Medicine also warns to not let misunderstandings build up between people or situations.  Take the initiative to clarify an issue but let the issue go if a resolution is not immediate.  Letting something go does not mean you can never return to it.  Think of how many nuts Squirrel has buried which will either become a snack later or a whole tree of new nuts.  Letting something go is not an act of weakness.  Space is needed for growth to occur.  This medicine knows when to fixate and when to scatter our attention to give new discoveries room to arrive.

Conversations at parties are an excellent example of the Squirrel Spirit Animal Totem in action.  We dress our best, move from group to group, and topic to topic, tossing seeds in all directions.   Some topics reach people while others don’t.  But we give them all a try in the spirit of fun. We have no idea what we might say next or which chemistries might grow tree-sized.  Squirrel’s energy explores the surface of personal dynamics with others rather than the more serious depths that come with intimacy.   Squirrel does not burrow into the ground.  She builds a nest in the branches of trees.  This can mean it is a time to climb up rather than burrow down.

On a practical note, this medicine is also a good teacher in how to dress with an easy, comfortable fashion. Call on Squirrel medicine to find the style of clothing that expresses your personality perfectly in any situation.  Never overdressed and never underdressed, Squirrels tail is the envy of the forest.  Like a network of highly charged fiber optics, her tail is her most expressive attribute.  She communicates her passions and irritations with riveting flicks and shakes and invites you to be just as expressive.  She is a gardener who celebrates every nut well buried.  Her medicine asks us to take time to celebrate a job well done with a little squirrel dance in the woods.  Wiggle and shake that lovely tail of yours for a moment every day.  Everyone has at least two stunning features about them.  What’s yours?

In all cases, the Squirrel Spirit Animal Totem is asking us to find time to connect to all the joys of small accomplishments.  Well done.  Good job.  Keep gathering.

The wisdom of the Sacred Fool is a tricky, uncanny medicine that can neither be sought nor avoided.  It trips you when you think your steady and deserts you as you wobble for support.  As we expound and pontificate about the meaning of life, we may be getting a parking ticket and we may have let the soup boil over.  The Coyote Spirit Animal Totem is an invitation to laugh at whatever obstacles come your way.   Laughter is a test of Grace. And Grace is the ability to drop a plan before that plan drags you under and grinds you up.

Coyote is native to North America and has distant relatives in the African Jackal.   Like all dog relatives, he is descended from the Wolf, and shares many aspects of the great Teacher medicine which Wolf offers.  Unlike the Wolf, however, Coyote has changed his old breeding, housing, and eating habits to adapt to the tide of human industrialization.  This canine has actually managed to colonize in most major cities and thrives in urban environments cut off from nature.  He slinks from playgrounds to back yards, along sidewalks hunting domesticated cats and dogs as well as rats and other alley dwellers.  He learned to thrive among buildings as well as trees.  He can live anywhere and is found everywhere; in the desert, mountains, beaches, and forests.  He is not fussy and has learned how to become a part of his environment even as it changes. 

He’ll make do with what he’s got. The Coyote Spirit Animal Totem teaches us to drop sentimental attachments to the way things used to be and get on with surviving the way things are now.  Coyote knows that life is change and nothing is too sacred to change.  No church, no forest, no marriage can ever stay the same.  If your car has been towed no amount of yelling, complaining, or crying will change that fact. Give up the mental anguish and find a way to laugh. The ten block walk to the evil towing company to retrieve your car may turn out to be fun, rain or shine, but only if you drop the notion that you’re exempt from inconveniences. When it comes to plans, Coyote travels light and thrives on side trip excursions off the main path. His whole life is a side trip excursion. Coyote’s plan is all about changing plans to suit the moment since the moment is where to find the fun. Avoiding change will set the Coyote Spirit Animal Totem on your trail to trip you up and remind you how to adapt. Laughter breaks your fall.

Coyote is an expert thief and escape artist who has been known to walk into convenience stores, navigate down the aisles to his snack of choice and make off with a bounty.  Coyote medicine people can talk themselves off the hook and have you driving across town on an errand before you know what hit you.  His teachings will not be a structured, systematic lesson.  It is a guessing game of infuriating trial and error.  Coyote lessons are taught backward, upside down, and inside out often yielding frustrating conclusions. He is a jester and a clown, challenging the seriousness of the sacred and reminding that the glossy life, without the grit, is no life at all.  He teaches you how to take off the make-up, how to sing off-key, and how to find the true meanings of ceremony behind the garments and trappings. If you can’t find the humor in his lessons they could be painful and embarrassing. If you can figure out how to laugh it all off, the hard lessons can be a wild and exciting adventure. By learning how to laugh at unexpected or undesired outcomes Coyote teaches that there are no mistakes, only a variety of experiences and a manifold of possibilities.  Most so-called mistakes are, in fact, a matter of personal perspective and a form of judgment on how a situation ‘should’ play out per your preferences.  Coyote reminds us to let go of how we think others should be and what we think is ours. He understands on a cosmic level that anything goes here on Earth. It’s a Free-for-all in the Third Dimension built on free will, random chance, and probability. The Coyote Spirit Animal Totem is not so much about figuring out the ‘right’ answers to Life as it is navigating the boggling variety of choices for your life and staying in the game for the fun of it. He questions what we think we know and reminds us that no thing is truly yours. All that you have is borrowed and eventually given up and returned to Earth.  The truth of you needs no thing. When Coyote is afoot, whatever you think you know, you can know for sure, you don’t know it.

When out of balance, Coyote Medicine is his own teacher and his own student in a closed system that allows no new insight.  He can become stuck, like the famous Wile E. Coyote, learning the same lesson over and over again till it lands like an anvil on his head.  He’s fascinated and lured by prospects of quick, easy gain, always losing more than he gambled.  Coyote is half the size of a wolf.  His scrawny, scruffy stance gives him a suspicious and often guilty appearance as if he’s been up to something dubious.  He makes no attempt to conceal his mischief and wears it rather as a banner to proclaim his wit and daring.  He’ll give anything a try and is willing to play the fool as a tactical strategy for personal gain.  He’ll risk high stakes in games of chance with such reckless conviction that he evokes our baffled sympathy and awe for his sheer commitment regardless of how foolish he has behaved.

Coyote is the wild cousin to the domestic Dog and so his Trickster medicine also shares the attributes of Loyalty that his domesticated kin teaches.  He travels with a chosen mate faithfully and is a dedicated family man.  Both parents participate equally in child-rearing.  They live in abandoned, (or not quite so abandoned) ground burrows and spend most of their lives playing and socializing with other relatives.  They are opportunistic foragers, finding clever ways to get other animals to do the heavy labor of hunting.  Coyote has developed a tenuous business relationship with the Badger. Thick as thieves, these two often team up to flush out and catch small burrowing meals. Badger digs and Coyote catches.

Because of the range of his complex personality, it is easy for humans to underestimate this wild animal.  He is just on the verge of domestication, neither wolf nor dog, and is unpredictable as such.  He is a savvy charmer and a vicious enemy all in one.  His duplicity can be heard in the eerie forlorn sound of his call that seems to laugh, mock, and grieve all at the same time.   This unique call speaks metaphorically to the nature and power of laughter.  Laughter is a human tool that can destroy if aimed at someone and elevate if shared with them.  Coyote medicine asks you to take a look at the quality of your laughter.  Is it aimed or shared? Is it a weapon or a gift?  Aiming to mock not only diminishes your target, it trains your own heart to close and stand guard, for surely if you have laughed at someone you can expect retaliation. Mocking another is, in reality, violent self-sabotage as it pollutes the quality of your personal experiences with toxic comparisons. Holding others in contempt only leads to isolation.  Finding the ability to laugh at yourself allows others the space to relate to you and share their own weaknesses. Sharing our concerns and fears with others dissolves the importance of those fears, rendering them powerless. Unity of true laughter turns a group of mixed company into a Pack.

The romance between Wind and Water catches fire in the beauty of Dragonfly, quickening our sense of the ever-shifting nature of reality.  All is seeming and all is change.  The journey of Dragonfly teaches how to navigate the dream stuff we call life.  Her medicine is inherent in her name.  Is she a Dragon or is she a Fly?  She is the master of illusions and light.  Her iridescent form streams through an evening meadow casting a sense of grandeur in the mind. The Dragonfly Spirit Animal Totem is the medicine of projection and spectacle.  She is the evening gown with glimmering beads.  She is the ballerina on point.  She is the brief crack of lightning in a coming storm.  She is the thespian, conjuring magic into our imagination. Upon closer inspection, however, she is a confounding strangeness to the human mind…

The dragonfly has the distinct honor of bearing compound eyes.  She sees through the illusions of light and form into a dimension deeper than our daily reality.  The human eye holds one lens per eye in its design.  In comparison, Dragonfly possesses 30,000 lenses per eye.  Due to advanced skills in Flicker Fusion Frequency, Dragonfly’s visual experience of the world differs tremendously from our own.   Flicker Fusion Frequency is the rate at which an eye can distinguish separate static images before the eye fuses them together into motion.  Humans perceive roughly 50 static images per second before the images blur together.  Dragonfly is able to perceive around 300 individual static images per second giving her an advantage in perceiving motion.  So, if you took a Dragonfly to the movies, she would see the film for what it really is; a slide show of photographs.  This optical triumph is trumped by her astounding skills of flight.

Believed to be the very first flying life form on Earth, she is also the most advanced in aviation.  She is a hovercraft with extraordinary precision and maneuverability. Her long narrow body is carried by two sets of wings both moving independently of each other giving her the ability to stop in mid-air, travel backward and forwards, and blaze through the sky at around 30 mph.  She is one of the oldest living beings on Earth with an ancestral record found in rocks dating 300 million years ago of giant descendants bearing wingspans 2 1/2 feet long… the first legendary dragon.

Dragonfly has definitely downsized since prehistory, but her shape and form have become a mythic icon within the human psyche, calling forth the iridescence of magic and illusions.  Iridescence is a color phenomenon which does not utilize the common materials known as pigments we find in rocks, plants, and our own skin. Iridescence is achieved by the architecture of Dragonfly’s wings and body which bends and refracts light in such a way as to create seemingly other worldly vibrancy.

The Dragonfly is a dance of light.  This attribute beckons the ability to get others to see what you wish them to see.  You could meet The Dragonfly Spirit Animal Totem at a club on Saturday night and walk right past them at the grocery store on Sunday.  They are master illusionists and the life of the party.  Their presence brings a phosphorescent color to any event, lifting it from the mundane into the remarkable.  But the experience of magic and wonder by design is brief and intense. The Dragonfly Spirit Animal Totem knows that awe is not a long-term state in which to dwell.  She also reminds us that those seeming bursts of sudden beauty, those overnight smash hit top-of-the-charts successes often cloak years of hard work behind their illusions.  A good book lasts about a month.  A good film lasts two hours.  A good song lasts ten minutes at best.  But the time behind these experiences involves years of work and transformation from within the artist.

The lessons behind the magic of any spectacle is best illustrated in the stages of Dragonfly’s life as she moves from water to air.  The dragonfly spends most of her life in the developmental stage known as nymph form.  Nymphs live in still waters for several years, embodying gills and living life as fish do.  Then one fine day, this young nymph is suddenly gripped with an unstoppable conviction to climb out of the water, crack open her childhood form and emerge from the husk of her old self into her adult being, Dragonfly.

This process of metamorphosis is a profound metaphysical teaching for the human spirit.  Cracking through and emerging from her own old body shell, Dragonfly lights the stage of the world for a few months before returning once more to the Earth.

Her life is brief and spectacular.  And with it she shows us that it is possible to completely transform a way of being using only the intelligence found within.  When the answers to your questions may seem outside of you in books and teachers, remember that the power to find those answers lies within you.  It is your own conviction that truly teaches you. No one ‘gives’ you answers.  You take them when you are able to see them.  That is the learning process which allows all things to be your teacher.  Dragonfly shows us how to undergo deep profound change on a cellular level.  This medicine of transformation is shared by all living creatures. Our own processes of metamorphosis, though much less spectacular, are still observable in the awkward stages of puberty.  Life is change.  Change is inevitable.  To resist becoming what nature intends causes pain and disease.  Resisting the flow of change out of fear of danger ironically puts you into much greater danger than if you yielded to the truth of your being.  When caught in the illusions of stasis, you are vulnerable to surprise attacks from the ever-on-rushing world around you.   The Dragonfly Spirit Animal Totem knows from experience that change is growth and ‘growth’, on a cosmic level, sometimes involves downsizing to allow for balance.  Let the old fall away and transmute into a new expression of self.  She asks you to break through the mental constraints keeping your colors dull.  Crack open the old identity and become the next experience.

She is an insect.  Her medicine is not rational and will not spend much time in  the thinking brain.  You will not be able to have long cozy journal discussions with her about the process of change as you might with Bear, or Whale, or any of our mammal relatives.   She will flash through your mind in a sudden knowing out of the ‘seeming’ blue.  She defies logic.  She is the power to summon new energy into being.  Insect medicine is a psychedelic journey for the human mind far removed from our mammalian comprehension.  If you take mushrooms or other hallucinogens, you have placed dragonfly medicine into your visual cortex and entered the world of illusions. You find that nothing is real or solid, save the witness that is you.  When Dragonfly medicine is out of balance there can be an excess of illusion and an excess of substances.

So estranged is the relationship between humans and insects that if you look at the artistic renderings of ‘aliens’ in film and television you will find that insects are the primary source materials for the disturbing shapes that touch  our primal fears.  Insects make our skin crawl.  Why?  Because their skin crawls and cracks open.  That’s what they do. They are a living teacher of the process of dying and rebirth.  We turn insects into monsters when we fear what they teach us about the nature of life.  Bugs may feel alien to us, but they are not aliens.  They are, ironically, one of the oldest most successful designs the planet ever grew.  We are the youngest design.  The distance between us is a fascinating journey.

The Whale Spirit Animal Totem is one of the oldest teachers on earth.  This elder has seen the passing of not only centuries but millennia.  And her wisdom is as vast as the ocean.  Information can never be lost, only forgotten. And what can be forgotten can be remembered.  While the Deer Spirit Animal Totem guides us into healthy forgetting, Whale is signaling a time that you now have greater resources to deal with what needs to be forgotten.  You are a much larger being than you may realize and at any time, you are always invited to connect with the infinite field of knowledge Whale holds.  The messages of Whale will be low and subtle.  You will need to find a quiet place to sit and listen when you want to enter her library of records.

The whale is the world’s largest mammal and teaches lessons in vibration and sound.  Whale Medicine is all about hearing the faint soft voices, the low-frequency messages, and maintaining remote bonds that are real and strong, though far away.

Whales are able to communicate across vast oceanic distances via low-frequency sound vibrations. In this way, the whale’s throat is technically their ‘ear’ because they send and receive vibrations which are felt as wave language.  We also experience wave language but often do not pay attention to what we hear because we are so oriented toward verbal communication.  But non-verbal sounds carry a great deal of information when we attune ourselves to listening to the world differently.

Whales are not able to completely sleep at sea due to the danger of drowning if rendered unconscious. The adaptation for this dilemma is that the two hemispheres of the whale’s brain take turns sleeping. Thus the whale is often simultaneously awake and sleeping.  This speaks of the ability to rest while working and to trust your autonomic nervous system to take care of you.

Whales are metaphorically described as swimming libraries. It is believed that within the vast intellect of whales is held the Akashic records, containing all knowledge and experience in the history of all life. This could also be called the Knowing Field, and is a non-physical dimension of energetic information.  Shamanic practices journey into the Knowing Field or Akashic records whenever they seek to bring healing to a person or situation.  And it is the Whale who is the honored Record Keeper of all events past, present, and future in the cosmos. Their strange song rings a knowing of astral realms and elemental depths beyond our comprehension and beyond time. They are an audible expression of the wonder and majesty of the cosmos, dreaming and awake at once.

If Whale is visiting, sounds are crisp and isolated with deeper meaning than usual. The crinkle of grocery bags, the honk of a car, the hum of a refrigerator, all things ring an unlikely song in Earth’s symphony. When whale medicine is singing in your life, the tone of what people say communicates more effectively than the words they use. Whale asks that you switch between the two hemispheres of your brain as well as the two hemispheres of your being and listen without added mental logic to the truth of a given tone.

Life is a cycle round and round. There are times of productivity and there are times of rest. The Bear Spirit Animal Totem is the vital practice of deep rest and rejuvenation. This medicine involves minimizing action, conserving energy, and retreating into the cave. It is a time to pad around the house in socks and grubbies and forage the cupboards for snacks between TV shows.  Take a break and hibernate. Be a little lazy. You may not have finished the task at hand and you may not want to stop, but it is time to let your mind wander with no particular goal. Wintertime comes whether we are ready or not. Bear Medicine tells us to yield to the natural ebb and flow of our own personal energy.

The Bear Spirit Animal Totem also teaches how to personally prepare for survival in harsh conditions.  Bear Medicine is a forest energy or snow energy of a solitary nature. Bears do not organize into social systems like wolves. In fact, they are often a threat to their own species. A male bear will often kill the cubs of another male in an effort to assert his own lineage.  Mothers raise their young without the help of a partner and after two years every cub is kicked out of the den to brave their own adventures alone. Despite this seemingly forlorn dirth of companionship, bears are quite playful, amusing themselves in snow, water, trees and grass. Polar bears have often been observed playing with Huskies in snow camps.

Contrary to popular knowledge, bears do not completely hibernate in the sense that their body temperatures only drop a few degrees rather than the drastic degrees that qualify a fully dormant state. For this reason it is easy to wake a sleeping bear. If left undisturbed, however, a bear in semi-hibernation will sleep for several months without waking or leaving the den.  Bears are rather progressive and open-minded when it comes to food and they have a widely fluctuating relationship with gaining and losing weight. With the exception of the Panda, who dines on a strict bamboo diet, all other seven species of bear will eat berries, flowers, salmon, and honey, going to intricate lengths to obtain the latter.

Bear is akin to the dog family and she is also a distant kin to the raccoon family.  Moaning, barking, huffing, growling and roaring are the bear’s means of vocal communication. Physical communication includes standing up to full height on their hind legs.  When a bear chooses to do this he shifts his nature from a four-legged being to a two-legged being and instantly asserts his physical superiority over all other two-leggeds.  In this way, it is often easy to underestimate bear medicine people until something happens to compel them to stand up to full power.  When bear medicine chooses to stand on her haunches and tower to full height, be prepared for an overwhelming presence.  Hold your ground but don’t fight. You won’t win with these odds. Even though bears are fierce, they are not predatory in nature (except with their own kind). They do not hunt in the classical sense of stalking and capturing. The closest a bear comes to classical hunting is to stand on a rock by a river during salmon season and wait for fish to literally jump into their mouth.

The second efforts of hunting involve foraging your garbage. With this disposition in mind, bear is suggesting you use the tactic of backing off.  Let life come to you a bit. Reduce your speed, reorganize the game plan, and take some time to retreat into your cave and meditate.

Conversely, the Bear Spirit Animal Totem could also be telling you it is time to wake up and get out into the light of day. Stop hiding and use your faculties to brave the forest. You are fully equipped with metaphorical fur and claw to tackle whatever obstacle stands in your way between you and your joy. Get out into the fray before you starve to death. Bears are quite sufficiently equipped for adventure and so are you.  Take a chance. Make a mistake. Mistakes make you strong.

The Deer Spirit Animal Totem teaches us about how to return to tranquility after an unexpected upset.  Deer lives with lions always on the outskirts of her peaceful life. She has no concern for their existence until they cross an invisible boundary that makes Deer lift her head and pay attention.  Once boundaries have been crossed, she enters a state of pure reaction with the single goal of returning to peace.  If the lion encroaches closer, the Deer takes flight until distance is regained.  Once the proper distance is achieved and danger is gone, Deer teaches us to return to tranquility and think no more of the lion’s existence.  Deer does not appear to live in a state of anger or frustration once she has escaped the lion’s threat.  Her family does not organize a plan to rid themselves of lions once and for all.  They deal with what comes as it comes and return to peace when it is over.  

This is the Spirit Animal Teaching for what humans call Forgiveness.

Instead of worrying about pending threats or living in a state of tension about the future, Deer focuses on her immediate personal interests, only taking note of the lion if it encroaches too close. When Lion comes into range, Deer takes action.  Once the lion is out of sight, Deer forgets all about it until the next time he encroaches. In this way, she does not give the lion any more of her time or energy than the big cat deserves. 

It may feel dangerous to drop your vigilance on things or people who have hurt or shocked you in the past and who may very well show up again to cause trouble. But the truth is, letting it go conserves your energy much more than living in the nerve-wracking stress of vigilance.  There is value in out of sight, out of mind when powers at play are beyond our control.

There will always be lions in the woods.  Let them have no more of your time than absolutely necessary.  Skirmishes and conflict only last for brief amounts of time- minutes at most.  The rest is mental anguish- a churning of past and future.  Deer teaches us how to recognize when a real threat is over and how to return to your life’s joy as fast as possible.

Deer has utter trust that her instincts will rise up with perfect timing when needed. Trust that you will know what to do when the time comes.

No matter what recent events may have thrown you off your life path, let nothing and no one keep you from returning to your peace of mind. It is only through relaxed tranquility that you will be able to access your gifts and life purpose. You are here for a reason unique to you alone and the world needs you to live in the power of that reason.  You have a skill that is effortless to you.  Focus on your gifts and skills every day.  Let nothing interfere with you and your relationship to learning.  Return to your passion now.  Think no more about the lions lurking.  Your peace and inner joy is THE ONLY way the world heals.  Know that the world is truly healing, even if all you hear about are the casualties.  The world is much too large to report on all the tiny, infinite moments of peace and harmony that are occurring everywhere, in every corner of the globe.  There is peace.  All is well.  Finding your peace brings peace to those around you and those peaceful people, because of you, bring peace to those around them… and the meadow thrives.  Lions have their place and their importance.  In all circumstances, seek joy.

On the teaching of forgiveness:

Even though it is used as a verb- to forgive- it is not something we can actually do.  How does one perform the act of forgiveness?  When we try, we often find ourselves frustrated and feeling inadequate.   “I should just get over it…” “Why am I still obsessing about this?”  And if we can’t get over it then there must be something wrong with us.  Forgiveness is not an action.  It is an inherent loyalty to seeking peace and tranquility.

Forgiveness, scientifically speaking, is the ability to remove the charge of anger and pain from our thoughts of a person or past situation.  How to remove that charge is a unique private process of discovery which involves a whole body response. The ability to access that body response begins with a deep desire to access the peace and joy of life rather than maintain the agony of having been wronged.   It is a turning towards beauty rather than a turning away from pain.  If there is anything we can do to forgive, it would involve turning towards peace rather than turning away from frustration.  Do you see the difference?

If my movement is motivated by a desire to exclude or eliminate or ‘let something go’  I am actually turning deeper into the frustration.  We can not turn away from something without having something to turn towards.  It is in specifying what we are turning TOWARDS that we naturally release and turn from the conflict at hand.  Deer Medicine says, “focus on what pleases you, not on getting away from what displeases you.”

When we find ourselves unable to forgive it is easy to internalize the frustration and find fault with ourselves.  The idea that there is something wrong with us is actually a passive form of control.  It is compulsively more comfortable to believe we are somehow deliberately resisting correct behavior than it is to consider the possibility that we, in truth, have no power over the situation at all.  When we internalize we escape the unbearable possibility that life is random and has no inherent logic or meaning.

The human mind is wired for reason and significance.  And this capacity is coming from a true spiritual reality that assures us (when we can connect to it) that all is well, that there is inherent reason and significance to Life.  But some experiences are too large to understand in our current limitations.  Our five senses are only a fraction of the greater picture of Reality.   The patter of its logic extends beyond our abilities to comprehend.  So when confronted with the painful question of, “Why has this or that happened?”  “Why is he or she behaving like this or that?” – instead of saying, “Because of no reason- we internalize and ask, “What have I done to cause this?  How am I responsible for my life conditions?”

And these are good questions to ask.  But it is here where we can get stuck in a battle for control and slip into self loathing.  We live in a dimension of confounding duality.  Life events are both IN and OUT of our control?  We can affect situations and we can also have nothing to do with why something happened.  Knowing when we are part of the situation and when we are not is the evolutionary process.

Sometimes things happen and we don’t really know why.  Not knowing why is a tough place to be in.  But the Deer Spirit Animal Totem is an invitation to be comfortable with not needing all the information to ensure constant security at all times.  We can know that we have what we need right now and when we need to know something, those messages will come to us in the right time.

Forgiveness is not found in the animal nations because is not necessary.  They live in a state of being that sees no reason to forgive.  To a Deer, a lion does not need forgiving.  He needs only to be avoided.  If avoidance isn’t possible, Deer Medicine knows that the violence she suffers at the lion’s claws does not define her being and though her body may die the lion’s actions need not stop the flow of her eternal energy.  She becomes a gift to the hunter so that life continues.   

Deer Spirit Medicine is a profound sacred communion with what it takes to recover from life-threatening violence.  She is a healing medicine of ever-present gentleness regardless of the demons who hunt her down.  Her dedication to restoring a tranquil life experience is her offering to you when you need help releasing tension caused by sudden, unexpected trauma.  She does not waver in her soft, persistent caring and she never closes her heart.  Her poise and grace hold an indestructible space for all creatures to find refuge.  She is the dignity of the forest, regal in her powers of resilience.  Her message to you is, “Forget.”  

Deer medicine teaches that the path to peace is found in the ability to assess each moment as new and independent of the previous situation.  Deer does not judge the lion and she doesn’t hate the lion for the endless assault to her species.  She leaves the lion alone and simply does not acknowledge him past what is necessary.  She does not scheme ways to exact revenge or clarify her strength and power.  Her nature has learned that there is no way to stop the larger movements of violence of an unpredictable world.  She can only focus on honing her reflexes for swift alertness.  She invites you to restore yourself to a tranquil life experience by not being pulled into the stresses of conflict beyond their immediate event.  Return to peace by finding something in your immediate environment. It could be a lovely color combination of a plant or object nearby. It could be a sound or song that reminds you of beauty.  The Deer Spirit Animal Totem is a call to release fear and return to Tranquility.