What does the Mouse Spirit Animal Totem Mean? Proportion

A tiny mammal is living her life unseen alongside your own life.  In the shadows, she knows you are there.  She has tracked your habits with precision and when you leave cake crumbs on the counter she is certain you left them for her.

The Mouse Spirit Animal Totem teaches us that behind the big and obvious, there is always something small and underestimated.  How close do you need to get to something or someone in order to know them?  How far away can you get before you lose sight of the situation? Is it time to let go of the larger picture and delve deep into a detailed investigation? Is it time to ‘get in there!’

If you are lacking information about some area of your life, The Mouse Spirit Animal Totem suggests that you may need to approach closer to gather data.  This marks a time of study, scrutiny, and up-close investigations.  Maybe even undercover reconnaissance work.  Staying small and hidden is the energy needed when Mouse Medicine shows up.  But if it is out of balance, it may be time to step away quietly and come around to the front in a more direct manner.

The Mouse Spirit Animal Totem asks us to commit to the situation at hand by getting closer. Wiggle through the tight spaces and investigate.  The whole mansion is yours to explore so let your whiskers dust every surface.  Ironically, the more specific we can get about something, the more universal our discoveries become.  Much like trying to catch a mouse, if you head straight for something it zips away and leaves you wondering where to start.  Mouse Medicine strategies advise against direct routes at this time. Backroads, zig-zags, and just plain hiding might be more productive.  Watch quietly from a place no one would ever think to look for you.

On the other hand, it is easy to scrutinize something (or someone) to the vanishing point.  Quantum physics is the best example of the power of Mouse Medicine.  The more we investigate, the more reality vanishes before our very eyes.  All issues are relative and can not be separated from their context or environment without losing their meaning or even their existence.  Don’t get caught in an existential trap of trying to prove the realness of things in front of you.  Take them at face value and enjoy them from a distance that enables them to stay in place.  Any closer and things might get a bit trippy.  

Mouse is always asking how do we keep things in proportion. Has something in your life taken on monumental importance and become impossible to approach? Creative endeavors often do.  Mouse can help you break down that big goal into smaller, more managable actions.  Do a writing prompt that lists all the things involved with achieving a goal, then take that list and break down each one of those areas into a single action.  That would be good Mouse Medicine.  Writers of books do not sit down and write entire books.  They sit for an hour or three and write sentences that lead to paragraphs, adding up to chapters that result in a book.  One crumb at a time is the tactic to take when the Mouse Spirit Animal Totem is about. Keep a productive perspective on reality by breaking down goals into bite-sized bits.

Relationships are also a practice in proportions.  If you are dealing with a true friend, know that there is time enough for miscommunication to untangle itself.  No need to hurry or obsess or scrutinize to within an inch of everyone’s life. Communication is good, but that doesn’t always mean ‘talking.’  Use body language, notes, and gestures of gifts.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, put yourself into a smaller situation for a few hours or a weekend.  This can help restore a sense of feeling big and good at something while you also manage the frustrations of learning how to expand your world.  If you are tired of being the leader always in the middle of things, find a way to step out for a bit and retreat into being small.  If you are tired of being the student, sneak away quietly from your current school of life and find someone who needs to hear what you’ve learned. We are always shifting between visible/invisible, big/small, and beginner/expert.

Mouse Medicine Affirmations:

-It is useful to be small and unnoticed sometimes. I don’t always have to be visible.
-I am at peace with this one task at hand.
-This situation is doable.  It breaks down easily and with grace into manageable tasks.
-I need only look right in front of me and accept reality to know what to do next.

Mouse is disconcertingly fast and almost impossible to catch barehanded.  She must be lured out.  What do you find enticing?  What does the object of your inquiry find enticing? Mouse Spirit Animal teachings also remind us to be aware of that which is hidden.  If we do not take time to consider the other mice in hiding around us, they may eat away at our storehouse of grain. Like her neighbor, the Ant, Mouse Medicine is a ‘power-in-numbers’ sort of energy that also has a certain relentlessness.  With year-round fertility and a large litter of babies born at once, the mouse is a formidable survivor who, when left unchecked, completely demolished the human population of Medieval Europe.  Never underestimate the power of the small to grow big.

Has someone started to encroach on your personal space with exhausting persistence? It may be time to simply vanish like a mouse into an unseen passageway and let the big creatures carry on without you for a while.  When we are not fully prepared for the next step in our evolution, it is useful to let ourselves become small to gather the strength we will need to make the next shift.  If we have given all our energy to a particular puzzle and can find no further progress, it is wise to say, “I don’t know and I don’t know how to know at this time. I am putting this puzzle down and moving on to something more manageable for me.” The message here is to take good measurements.  All things, no matter how complex or well-funded are actually very simple.  Everything breaks down to manageable morsels.  What is in your power to do at this time? What needs to stay and what needs to go? When we clean house we increase the size of our world.  When we make space, new friends are able to appear and carry us beyond our limited view into a larger beauty.